Nest going net-zero to support green recovery

30 July 2020

NEST publishes on its website:

• New investment policy to make Nest scheme net-zero by 2050
• Nest’s CIO: “No-one wants to save throughout their life to retire into a world devastated by climate change”
• Nest to invest £5.5bn in climate aware strategies
• Four out of five (79%) UK consumers want a green recovery from coronavirus, 65% believe their pension should be tackling climate change

Nest, the largest pension scheme in the UK by membership with 9 million savers, has today announced a new Climate Change policy to decarbonise its investment portfolio.

The policy aims to align Nest with the Paris Agreement goals to keep global temperature rises within 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. It sets out a goal of being net-zero across its investments by 2050 or earlier, with the expectation that carbon emissions in its portfolio will halve by 2030.

To help achieve this Nest is making a series of immediate commitments:

• move £5.5 billion of shares (equity) into climate aware strategies, representing 45 per cent of Nest’s entire portfolio. This will immediately reduce Nest’s carbon footprint by the equivalent of taking 200,000 cars off the road
• begin divesting from companies involved in thermal coal, oil sands and arctic drilling and be completely divested by 2025 at the latest, unless they have a clear plan to phase out all related activity by 2030
• invest a greater proportion of its funds directly in green infrastructure, building on the £100 million Nest has already invested in renewable projects across Europe
• actively pressure companies to align with the Paris goals and divest from companies that show little progress following sustained engagement
• commit its fund managers to making progress against set benchmarks, including analysing how Nest can halve its emissions by 2030

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