2015: The Year Divestment Hit the Mainstream

No longer a movement confined largely to college campuses and religious institutions, the fossil fuel divestment campaign went mainstream in 2015, earning support from lawmakers, big banks and celebrities.

Even as the year wound down, the divestment pledges were still coming in.  The University of Massachusetts board of trustees voted on Dec. 9 to divest the school's approximately $757 million endowment of holdings in coal companies.  Earlier this month at the Paris climate talks, a round of new divestment commitments were announced, including those by the French Ensemble Foundation and the Norwegian capital of Oslo.

To date more than 500 institutions and hundreds of individuals in control of more than $3.4 trillion in assets have agreed to at least partially sell their investments in coal, natural gas and oil companies, according to the environmentalists tracking the industry at 350.org and Divest-Invest. That represents a nearly 70-fold increase in assets tied to companies involved in divestment since September 2014.

"It's been a huge year for the fossil fuel divestment movement," 350.org campaigner Lindsay Meiman told InsideClimate News.  But the fight's not over, she said.

Arguably, the movement's biggest victory occurred in California, where lawmakers passed legislation (Senate Bill 185) ordering the country's two largest state public pension funds to divest their assets in coal mining companies.  California Public Employees' Retirement System and California State Teachers’ Retirement System represent more than 2.4 million retirees and are worth nearly $500 billion; less than 1 percent of those funds are invested in coal.  Similar divestment legislation was proposed in Massachusetts and New York, but has not faced a vote yet.
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Several cities in the United States already took that step this year, from San Francisco to Ann Arbor, Mich., to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Another sign of the divestment movement's growing prominence came from an unlikely sector: banks.  In May Bank of America announced plans to reduce its financial exposure to coal companies.  Since then, Crédit Agricole, Citibank, and Allianz have all made similar commitments targeting the coal sector.

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