Resources
Public employees deserve a secure pension, safe working conditions, and a livable place to retire. While fossil fuel investments are extremely volatile and risky, fossil fuel pollution drives climate chaos in California — including extreme heat, flooding, toxic air pollution, water contamination, and wildfires. Our pension funds actively investing in fossil fuels is undermining our…
What’s a public pension? What does public pension divestment mean? Why is this good for workers? Has divestment worked before? Get your questions answered with our Financial 101. Read below, or download the PDF. What is a public pension? What are CalPERS and CalSTRS? A public pension is a pension system for public employees –…
CalPERS has roughly $9.4 billion dollars, and CalSTRS $5.4 billion dollars ($14.8 billion in all) of stock and bond investments in the top 200 coal, oil and gas production companies.
On June 28, 2023, the University of Waterloo released a groundbreaking report revealing that by not divesting, CalPERS lost $4.7 billion in missed returns, or $3,163 per beneficiary. CalSTRS lost over $4.8 billion in missed returns, or $5,114 per beneficiary over the last ten years, by not removing fossil fuels from their investment portfolio.
This report looks at CalPERS’ proxy voting patterns and companies’ reports on greenhouse gas emissions to determine the effects of engagement. The report concludes that engagement alone is unlikely to convince fossil fuel companies to transform at the speed and scale required.
Read the full report. As the impacts of climate change begin to wreak havoc on our bisophere, the fossil fuel divestment movement has gained remarkable momentum. Globally, 1,500 institutions representing over $40 trillion in assets have already committed to some level of divestment from the fossil fuel industry.1 Despite over a decade of pressure from…
The “fiscal impact” analysis for the Appropriations Committee in the state Senate or Assembly can make or break a bill. For divestment bills, CalPERS and CalSTRS have repeatedly given imprecise, incorrect, and inflated figures on the costs of divestment, including in the numbers reported to the Appropriations Committee for SB 1173, the Fossil Fuel Divestment Bill.
CalPERS Corporate Knights report demonstrates that investment in fossil fuels have lost CalPERS billions of dollars during the past decade.
Clair Brown’s advanced economics students at UC Berkeley released a report detailing three factors contributing to CalPERS’ financial risks and the societal costs of fossil fuel asset ownership.