Huge Pension Fund in Norway Will Divest Many of Its Coal Holdings

The Norwegian Parliament has voted to sell off many of the coal-related investments in the government’s massive $890 billion pension fund, a significant boost to the growing fossil fuel divestment movement. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the largest such government fund in the world, and parliament voted Friday to order the fund to shift its investments out of billions of dollars of stock in companies that rely at least 30 percent on coal. A spokesman for the firm that manages the government’s pension said an important reason for divesting in heavily coal-reliant companies is “long-established, climate-change risk-management expectations.” The Norwegian Parliament’s decision comes on the heels of other fossil-fuel divestment steps taken by major groups and organizations, including the Church of England, the large French insurer Axa, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.