Wandsworth weighs up renewables, asset owners demand engagement

Wandsworth considers renewable infrastructure

The £3bn Wandsworth Pension Fund is considering renewable infrastructure funds in which to invest. It has also made new private debt commitments and is transitioning away from UK equities and index-linked gilts, as agreed in its last strategy review. At a meeting held on March 16 2022, the scheme’s pension committee asked Mercer to identify possible renewable infrastructure funds to consider for investment at a future meeting. The scheme is keen to look into funds generally focusing on the climate transition or on net zero, rather than on funds targeting specific sectors within the asset class such as power generation or energy storage, the meeting's draft minutes stated. In December, the scheme agreed to top up the asset class by reinvesting capital receipts from an infrastructure fund run by JPMorgan Investment Management, in which it held about £87.1mn as at year-end 2021. Some $10.2mn (£7.8mn) has since been reinvested.

This article originally appeared on MandateWire.com

Net-Zero alliance calls for ‘dramatic expansion of engagement’ over climate

A coalition of 71 institutional investors with combined assets under management of $10.4tn (£7.95tn) has demanded an improvement in engagement over climate change in an effort to “change the rules of the game”. The Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance identified three priority areas: sector and value chain engagement, policy engagement and asset manager engagement. The alliance pushed for the widening of conversations with different stakeholders in order to achieve accountability standards that it said are not always attainable when engaging with a single company. It also called upon asset managers to reassess their own fiduciary duties and increase their stewardship activity with respect to climate change.

IIGC highlights climate investment gap

Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement will likely require more than $126tn of investment in climate solutions until 2050, according to the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change. The group argued that investors have “an immense opportunity” to align their portfolios with the accord, highlighting that with $32tn of investment required this decade, more than 70 per cent of this sum could be provided by the private sector. The power and transport sectors will endure the biggest financing gaps relative to historic levels over the next decade, at $10tn and $4tn respectively. The Asia-Pacific region, meanwhile, is forecast to require almost 40 per cent of total global investment. It is reckoning with the largest scale-up in financing compared with historic levels, needing $9.1tn in the 2020s.