Harvard University will divest its $42B endowment from all fossil fuels
University president cites need to decarbonize economy
"Harvard will divest itself from holdings in fossil fuels, the university’s president, Lawrence Bacow, announced late on Thursday.
Harvard Management Company, which oversees the university’s vast endowment of almost $42bn, has already been reducing its financial exposure to fossil fuels and has no direct investments in companies that explore for or develop further reserves of fossil fuels, Bacow said in a message. . .
The university has legacy investments in a number of private equity funds with holdings in the fossil fuel industry. Those indirect investments constitute less than 2% of the endowment, according to Bacow.
The school has not made any new commitments to these limited partnerships since 2019 and has no intention to do so, he added. . .the university had made investments along with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Engine, a fund that, among other things, “seeks to accelerate the development of technologies that promise to address the challenges posed by climate change”.
The university will also work to achieve “greater transparency in the greenhouse gas footprint of all of our investment managers, along with the development of protocols for assessing and reducing the footprint for entire investment portfolios,” he wrote.
“We must continue to work with our investment managers and with industry if we are to bring about the transformation of our economy that climate change demands,” he added.
> A campus campaign created almost a decade ago called Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, reacted by saying: “It took conversations and protests, meetings with administration, faculty/alumni votes, mass sit-ins and arrests, historic legal strategies, and storming football fields. But today, we can see proof that activism works, plain and simple.”
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