Harvard University to Divest $ 42 Billion Endowment of All Fossil Fuels | Divestment from fossil fuels

Harvard will divest its stake in fossil fuels, university president Lawrence Bacow announced Thursday evening.

Harvard Management Company, which oversees the university’s vast nearly $ 42 billion endowment, has already reduced its financial exposure to fossil fuels and has no direct investments in companies that explore or develop new fossil fuel reserves. Bacow said in a post on the university’s website.

The university has legacy investments in a number of private equity funds with stakes in the fossil fuel industry. These indirect investments constitute less than 2% of the endowment, according to Bacow.

The school has not made any new commitments to these limited partnerships since 2019 and has no intention of doing so, he added.

Bacow said the legacy investments are in “trickle-down mode” and will end when those partnerships are wound up.

Harvard has already committed to achieving zero net greenhouse gas emissions across the entire investment portfolio by 2050, he said.

“Given the need to decarbonise the economy and our responsibility as fiduciaries to make long-term investment decisions that support our teaching and research mission, we do not believe such investments are prudent. “, he wrote.

The move follows years of student protests that prompted Harvard to divest from fossil fuel companies.

A campus campaign created almost a decade ago called Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, responded by saying, “It took conversations and protests, meetings with administration, votes from faculty / alumni. , mass sit-ins and arrests, historic legal strategies and assault football pitches. But today we can see proof that activism works, outright. “

The group also tweeted about their “massive victory”.

Former vice president, environmentalist and Nobel laureate Al Gore tweeted that Harvard is “finally divesting” from fossil fuels and added: “Let this be a strong signal to other institutions that the fossil fuel age is approaching. its end. “

Harvard was also under pressure from progressives in the Massachusetts state legislature.

The elite private Ivy League University, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has by far the largest endowment of any university in the world.

Harvard is building a portfolio of investments in funds that support the transition to a green economy, Bacow wrote.

He said the university had invested with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the engine, a fund that, among other things, “seeks to accelerate the development of technologies that promise to address the challenges posed by climate change.”

The university will also strive to achieve “greater transparency of the greenhouse gas footprint of all of our investment managers, as well as the development of protocols to assess and reduce the footprint of portfolios. ‘whole investment,’ he wrote.

“We must continue to work with our investment managers and with the industry if we are to bring about the transformation of our economy required by climate change,” he added.

Teenage environmental activist Alexandria Villaseñor simply tweeted: Hey @DivestHarvard you WIN!