Market Forces has updated its guide to compare the fossil fuel investments of your super fund
You can have an impact by directing where your super funds go – one person’s super may not seem like much but collectively a trillion dollars make a difference.
Superannuation trustees have an obligation to think about your long term wealth. Nothing can be so important to that wealth than a liveable environment in which to live it. But they can make wealth for you as well, by investing in the industries of the future, rather than those of the past.
While we don’t have a ‘star rating’ system for superannuation the way we do for televisions or cars, Market Forces do have a super funds table and banks comparison table on their website, each of which highlights the super funds / banks financially supporting the expansion of the fossil fuel industry.
The super funds table profiles the default investment options of many large super funds (plus a few of the ethical funds), and identifies whether they have coal, oil and gas exclusion policies in place, as well as what proportion of their members’ share investments are invested in the global companies with the biggest fossil fuel expansion plans.
Similarly, the banks comparison table identifies how much each bank has loaned to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016, and also identifies the banks that haven’t lent a cent to fossil fuels during that time.
Asking your super fund or bank to put your money in new renewable energy infrastructure has a long term return. Investing in coal and gas, while fossil fuel power stations are closing because they cannot make money, is asking to lose money on stranded assets.