In an op-ed first published by TheFutureEconomy.ca, Patrick DeRochie, Shift’s Senior Manager, analyzes the critical role the Canada Pension Plan has in safeguarding both retirement security and a stable climate for Canadians. To do so, CPPIB must rise above Canada’s petro-politics, end its rampant greenwashing, stop investing our retirement savings in fossil fuel expansion, increase investments in climate solutions and align our national pension portfolio with credible net-zero emissions pathways.

On June 27, 2024, the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation (BCI) released its 2023-2024 Corporate Annual Report. BCI is the pension manager for 740,000 British Columbians, including teachers, health care workers, college and university staff, and municipal and provincial public servants.

Read on for the climate and energy highlights from BCI’s annual report.

Alberta’s public pension manager, the Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo), is suggesting that its failure to set credible climate targets somehow makes it better at decarbonizing assets. We break down for AIMCo how other pension funds have figured out how to walk and chew gum at the same time. For the sake of its members and beneficiaries, AIMCo must put forward a credible climate plan that navigates its portfolio to zero emissions and puts hard stops on investing in fossil fuel expansion.

With yet another investment in fossil fuel expansion, our national pension manager continues to bet on climate failure and puts Canadians’ retirement security at risk. CPPIB cannot continue to pretend it is committed to achieving its net-zero obligations while allocating billions of dollars of Canadians’ savings into the causes of the worsening climate crisis.

Shift recaps how Canadian pensions voted on climate-related resolutions at TD and Enbridge, outlining the leaders, the laggards and the opaque.

In this Climate Pension Quarterly: climate updates from the annual reports of seven pension funds, a recap of the 2024 shareholder season, updates on the Canada Pension Plan’s oil and gas companies, and much more.

Canada’s national pension manager, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), claims it’s committed to net zero emissions by 2050. Yet CPPIB has tens of billions of dollars invested in fossil fuel companies that lack credible transition plans and are expanding and prolonging the use of oil and gas– the primary drivers of climate-wrecking emissions. The actions of these companies do not appear to align with CPPIB’s climate commitments, and expose our national retirement savings to unacceptable risks as the climate crisis worsens and the transition away from fossil fuels accelerates.

Here’s what some of the CPPIB’s fossil fuel companies have been up to in the last quarter.

Last week, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) released its Fiscal Year 2024 annual report, growing our national pension portfolio to $632 billion and reporting some progress towards CPPIB’s net-zero by 2050 commitment.

Read on for the climate and energy highlights from CPPIB’s annual report.

Read the op-ed from Laura McGrath, Shift’s Pension Engagement Manager, in Corporate Knights.

“There’s a lot of progress here for pension members to appreciate. The portfolio managers charged with investing for their futures are beginning to understand that there’s no retirement security on a dead planet. But let’s not discount the work that’s still ahead.”

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s (CPPIB) proposed acquisition of Allete could become a smart investment in a major U.S. electric utility player– but not without a clear and credible climate-aligned transition plan for all of Allete’s subsidiaries. We are concerned that CPPIB’s announcement does not include any mention of the actions required to retire Allete’s risky and climate-polluting coal and gas assets in line with CPPIB’s net-zero commitment and global climate goals.

In deciding whether or not to support a shareholder proposal calling for full disclosure of Enbridge’s scope 3 emissions on May 8th, Canada’s largest pension funds need look no further than their own policies, reports or membership in Climate Engagement Canada.

On May 8th, Enbridge is holding its Annual General Meeting (AGM), where the shareholders and executives of Canada’s largest fossil fuel pipeline company will gather to make key decisions about the coming year. Shareholders will be voting on a proposal asking the company to “annually disclose all of its scope 3 emissions using accepted definitions and in absolute terms.”

For Canada’s pension sector, voting for the scope 3 emissions proposal at Enbridge’s AGM should be a no-brainer.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments, or CPPIB) marked Earth Day by committing US$300 million to fracking expansion in Ohio. While CPPIB announced nothing about the investment, Houston-based oil and gas company Encino Acquisition Partners LLC (Encino Energy, or EAP), which is 98% owned by CPPIB, announced CPPIB’s commitment to “EAP’s accelerated development of the Utica oil play.”

HOOPP’s 2023 Annual Report and 2023 Climate Disclosure, released in March, recap HOOPP’s inaugural Climate Strategy, describe a number of incremental improvements to the pension fund’s internal management of climate-related risk and provide moderately increased transparency to beneficiaries. If HOOPP can acknowledge the limits of engagement with fossil fuel companies and reduce its exposure to this declining industry, then the pension fund would be well on its way to protecting its portfolio from stranded asset risk.

This month the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan released its 2023 Annual Report, which included an update to its climate strategy. Here are the report’s key highlights when it comes to climate risk and the energy transition.

In this Climate Pension Quarterly: a Climate Approach from AIMCo, OMERS’ 2023 Annual Report, updated proxy voting guidelines from OTPP and UPP, updates on the Canada Pension Plan’s oil and gas companies, and much more.

CPPIB has tens of billions invested in fossil fuel companies that are expanding and prolonging the use of oil and gas. The actions of these companies do not appear to align with the CPPIB’s climate commitments, and expose our national retirement savings to unacceptable risk as the fossil fuel industry faces terminal decline and the energy transition accelerates.

Here’s what some of the CPPIB’s fossil fuel companies have been up to in the last quarter.

OMERS took a significant step forward in 2023 by releasing its Climate Action Plan. But the pension manager still has work to do to strengthen its ambition, demonstrate actual emissions reductions in its portfolio and the real economy, improve its climate engagement and disclosure, safeguard significant investments from physical and transition risks, and place exclusions on new fossil fuel investments. Shift looks forward to OMERS improving on these measures and providing further updates to its beneficiaries.

Today, Shift released its annual Canadian Pension Climate Report Card, an independent benchmark for evaluating the quality, depth and credibility of climate policies for 11 of Canada’s largest pension managers.

This second edition finds that despite incremental progress, Canadian pension funds remain off track, especially compared to international peers. Far more work is needed to ensure Canadian pension managers fulfill their fiduciary duty to invest in plan members’ long-term interests and protect Canadians’ retirement security in a pathway aligned with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global heating to 1.5°C.

The recent actions of four companies, on whose boards Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Director Deborah Stein sits, are indicative of an oil and gas industry that is expanding fossil fuels, lobbying to block government climate action, and fighting tooth and nail to prolong the use of fossil fuels. These companies are acting in ways that directly undermine the OTPP’s commitment to net-zero emissions and the rapid transition away from fossil fuels that is required to protect the retirement security of working and retired Ontario teachers. A year after Ms. Stein joined the OTPP Board, let’s take stock of what the companies on whose boards she sits have been up to in 2023.

In this Climate Pension Quarterly: a new Climate Transition Investment Framework and Climate Stewardship Plan from UPP, a climate change strategy update from OPTrust, and a busy quarter for the CPPIB, which highlighted its growing oil and gas investments on the first day of COP28, an international conference at which the world agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. All that and much more in this edition of the Quarterly.