Almost half of the most sustainable European investment funds, according to them, invest in fossil fuel industry or airlines. Write that Follow the Money and Investico after research with nine other European media, including the Spanish newspaper El País and the French Le monde.
The journalists examined 838 funds that, according to their own words, invest in ‘dark green’, and therefore fall within the most sustainable category. Of those 838, 388 invest in the fossil industry and aviation, for a total amount of 8.5 billion euros, according to the study. Together, the researched funds invest 619 billion euros. About half of the most sustainable funds available in the Netherlands also invest in the fossil fuel industry and aviation, the media write.
Funds from Actiam, Robeco and BlackRock, the world’s largest investor, among others, hold shares in non-sustainable companies, according to the media. NN Investment Partners, the investment arm of Nationale Nederlanden, is also listed. Companies that appear more often in the share packages are the American energy company NextEra Energy, airlines such as easyJet and Lufthansa and the German energy company RWE. Only companies without a “real reduction strategy” of dependence on fossil energy were included in the study, writes Investico.
European definition of sustainability
European investment funds classify themselves into various sustainability classes, of which ‘Article 9’ is the most sustainable. There is discussion about the rules associated with this. Follow the Money and Investico write that the companies in which funds invest must be sustainable in order to remain in the Article 9 class – they must not “inflict any significant harm to people or the planet.”
Supervisor Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) says against Investico that the European definition of sustainability is so vague that the classification of fossil investments is difficult to verify. Some investment funds believe that their non-sustainable investments are allowed, others say that in some cases they invest in the most sustainable companies within a sector.
The media writes that some investors have already reclassified their funds. Robeco leaves in a response NRC know that it moved seven funds from Article 9 to Article 8 last October, due to “clearer guidelines” from, among others, the AFM and the European Commission. Not all shares within those funds met “our definition of a sustainable investment,” said a spokesman.
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