Norway's pension Fund was regarded as a model for environmental criteria of investments. He still has many of the climate-damaging investments.

oil Rig off the Norwegian coast at Stavanger photo: Lars Lindqvist/DN/TT/imago

STOCKHOLM taz | "This is really hopeless," says Anja Bakken Riise, President of the environmental organization "Framtiden i våre existing" ("the future in our hands"), the annual balance sheet of the Norwegian "oil Fund". On the return, it is certainly not: a whopping 19.9 percent of the Fund achieved in the since 1996, a large - flow part of the state's Oil and gas revenues, in order to let after the end of the Ölzeitalters future generations to share in this wealth.

Riise's displeasure comes, therefore, as the rate of return has been achieved: Namely, as before, with far too much climate-damaging investments. In this case, the Parliament had adopted in Oslo as early as 2015, a decision that the "foreign pension funds", as it is officially called, should no longer invest in climate-damaging activities, especially not more in coal companies. However, an analysis of the Fund balance by "Framtiden i våre existing" shows that the Fund has not disconnected since then, of the shares of a single company as a result of climate damage criterion.

Although the ethics Council of the Fund have different proposals, but the Fund management is not a single followed. The reason: It was complicated, criteria for "unacceptable levels of greenhouse gas emissions set" of individual companies, that is why the tests took longer.

But also corporations, in which, this is certainly not likely to be particularly difficult, because they make their profits to a very considerable part of coal production and combustion, continue to be from the oil Fund, the German Uniper, the Italian Enel, the British-Australian BHP Billiton group and the British-financed – including-Swiss Glencore. A total of 5.5 billion euros of the Fund's assets were placed in 2019 in such companies, an increase of almost 700 million euros compared to the previous year.

The "oil Fund" had once been a pioneer, as regards the inclusion of climate criteria in its rankings, now he was a latecomer, complain of Norwegian environmental organizations. In its annual report, the Fund estimated the greenhouse gas balance sheet of the company in its equity portfolio itself, to 108 million metric tons of CO2-Equivalents. This corresponds to more than the double of the corresponding balance sheet of Norway and is an increase of one Million tons compared to the previous year. A development in the wrong direction, complaining Bekken Riise.