Sweden’s AP7 is adding 14 firms to its blacklist, all for failure to act in line with the Paris Agreement due to large-scale coal operations or oil sands extraction without credible transition plans, it has announced.
The SEK967bn (€92bn) national pension fund which provides the default option in the premium pension system, said a total of 102 companies were now banned from its investment universe, with this latest batch of exclusions mainly involving coal companies.
Charlotta Dawidowski Sydstrand, head of ESG at AP7, said: “We do not make sector-wide exclusions but blacklist companies with large-scale operations in thermal coal and coal power that haven’t initiated their transition.”
She added that the pension fund’s new set of blacklistings was the result of its engagement with the companies, and analysis in which it had found many other firms to be moving in more positive directions.
“In some cases, it is too early to determine the credibility in companies’ transition plans, but over time it will become increasingly clear,” Dawidowski Sydstrand said.
Among the 14 companies are US firm ConocoPhillips, India’s Adani Enterprise, Shenzhen Energy Group in China, and Canadian business Imperial Oil.
AP7 said it sold shares to a value of approximately SEK4bn as a result of the new exclusions.
AP7 also said it had also removed five companies from its blacklist, after ascertaining that there was no verified information about ongoing norm violations by those businesses.
Toshiba and TC Energy Corp are among the five re-categorised as investable companies for AP7.
Back in December 2021, AP7 announced it was adding seven more companies to its blacklist, involving total divestments of SEK284m, with five of the firms being banned from the portfolio because of coal, as a result of their misalignment with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
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