Prince Charles shuns fossil fuel investments

A global campaign to blacklist fossil fuel investments has now won royal backing.

The Prince of Wales is the most prominent name to emerge from a Financial Times' survey of British individuals and institutions that are shunning coal, oil and gas company holdings.

Seven foundations, including three of the Sainsbury family's charitable trusts, say they have decided fossil fuel companies are "no longer sound investments".

The National Trust, the Church of England and the universities of Oxford and Edinburgh are reviewing their shares in such companies.

But some of Britain's leading voices in the climate debate, including the Royal Society, are continuing to invest in the fossil fuels that scientists say are propelling global warming.

These holdings are under growing scrutiny as a grassroots campaign modelled on the 1980s divestment movement to end apartheid in South Africa spreads around the world.

The effort to make fossil fuels the new tobacco has led heirs to the Rockefeller oil fortune, California's Stanford University, the World Council of Churches and the Australian National University to announce plans to cut or curb their holdings over the past 12 months.

In the UK, divestment plans have been announced by the University of Glasgow, the British Medical Association, SOAS, University of London, and the publishers of The Guardian newspaper, which has launched its own anti- fossil fuel campaign: Keep it in the ground.

Several other institutions and individuals have also decided to abandon such assets, the FT has learnt, including the heir to the throne.

Prince Charles, a vocal climate action champion, does not comment publicly on his personal financial dealings. But sources at Buckingham Palace confirmed that "his private investments and his charitable foundation do not have any fossil fuel holdings".

Sir Richard Branson has taken a similar approach to his personal investments, a spokesman for the Virgin Group founder said.

Greenpeace UK said it did not have an investment portfolio and WWF-UK said it had excluded oil, gas and coal assets from its investments since at least 2005.

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"It's very much on the radar and with our commitment to tackle climate change we know we need to look at these kinds of issues carefully," said a spokesman for National Trust, which has about £5m invested directly in fossil fuel related companies - about 0.5 per cent of its total investments.

"The debate around divestment from these companies is an important and complex issue, which needs to be considered carefully, taking into account the effectiveness of such an approach and the impact it would have," he added.

The Church of England, which has a £9bn investment portfolio, has holdings in coal miners such as Anglo American and oil groups including Shell and BP.

It helped lead a successful shareholder push to encourage BP to be more open about the impact of climate change on its business earlier this month and hopes to achieve a similar outcome at Shell next month. [EDS: May]

Instead of divestment, the Church has so far opted to engage with companies to encourage more climate-friendly action. But that support is not automatic, said Edward Mason, the Church's head of responsible investment.

"What I've said to oil and gas companies when I've met them is our support is not unconditional," he said. "We do have the option of divestment on ethical grounds."

Separately, seven charitable bodies, including the Waterloo Foundation, which has an endowment worth £110m, and the Sainsbury family's £35.7m Ashden Trust, said they were selling out of fossil fuels in favour of greener assets.

"We are concerned about protecting our financial returns over the long term and believe that fossil fuels are no longer sound investments," the group told the FT, explaining that tumbling renewable energy costs and tougher climate regulations were likely to "strand" oil, coal and gas assets.

<>The foundations, whose combined endowments are worth more than £210m, said their work on poverty and the environment also meant: "We cannot, in good conscience, invest in companies that are accelerating climate change, which disproportionately affects the poor, profoundly impacts the environment and, if unabated, is predicted to wipe out half of global GDP."

But the far larger Children's Investment Fund Foundation, which has a $4.4bn endowment fund and makes large grants to campaign groups such as the European Climate Foundation, has not taken such action.

The Geneva-based Oak Foundation, which last year made a $75m grant to the ClimateWorks Foundation, declined to comment on its investments.

The Royal Society, the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, has called climate change "one of the defining issues of our time" and has published a number of reports outlining the risks of inaction.

Oil and gas companies make up roughly 3.9 per cent of its investment portfolio, worth £196m in December, though the society said it keeps all investments "under regular review".

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