How do you balance returns against ESG criteria? In other words, are there different thresholds for an investment’s success depending on its environmental sustainability rating?
Andrew Collins, Director of ESG Investing, SFERS
Replied Jun 23
Our mission is focused on “securing, protecting and prudently investing the pension Trust assets, administering mandated benefit programs, and providing promised benefits”. All our ESG initiatives mu…
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How do LPs think about impact investing in conjunction with ESG criteria?
Andrew Collins, Director of ESG Investing, SFERS
Replied Jun 03
SFERS does not have a carveout to target “ESG”, “sustainable”, or “impact investing” strategies. However, we are more than open to investing in impact strategies where they otherwise meet our risk/re…
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How is your organization getting involved in socially responsible and impact investment?
David Erickson, Chief Investment Officer
Replied May 26
We’re still focused on trying to be leaders in socially responsible and impact investing. It's hard to do. We don't want to sacrifice returns, yet we want to have measurable impact&mdas…
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How does your institution use ESG principles to determine how to reinvest assets divested from fossil fuels?
Andrew Collins, Director of ESG Investing, SFERS
Replied May 24
We began restricting investment from thermal coal in 2017 and certain oil & gas companies following that beginning in 2018. For most of these companies, however, we were divesting a relatively minima…
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How does your institution engage in shareholder activism and proxy voting once it identifies a priority for change within an organization?
Andrew Collins, Director of ESG Investing, SFERS
Replied Apr 29
Our proxy voting priorities are guided by our Proxy Voting Guidelines, which we revisit each year to ensure we are casting our votes in alignment with our evolving expectations of good corporate gove…
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How can investors navigate the tension between the public pressure to devalue polluting assets by divesting, and the opportunity to create change from within by retaining a seat at the table?
Andrew Collins, Director of ESG Investing, SFERS
Replied Apr 21
This is a great question and one that I alluded to earlier in how we’ve approached our fossil fuel investments. We believe that there are certain ESG risks that are uncompensated, which is why our bo…
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ESG is about more than the Environment: it’s also about Social Impact and Corporate Governance. Aside from investments in companies that pollute the environment, what other types or categories of investments typically pose a risk or a hazard from an ESG standpoint, and what do you do about them?
Andrew Collins, Director of ESG Investing, SFERS
Replied Apr 01
This is a great point, and certainly 2020 will be remember as the year that the “social” element of ESG rose in prominence. All signs indicate that social issues will continue to be a focus going int…
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Private equity firms are making fewer new investments in fossil fuels and are pivoting toward renewables. From a purely market standpoint, just how risky are fossil fuel investments going forward?
Andrew Collins, Director of ESG Investing, SFERS
Replied Mar 22
Among the other trends that Covid-19 may have accelerated is the move away from fossil fuels. It remains to be seen if and how demand rebounds over the next few years, but there are more and more cal…
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What criteria, aside from total carbon footprint, do you use to determine whether or not an asset is sustainable or unsustainable?
Andrew Collins, Director of ESG Investing, SFERS
Replied Mar 15
Fundamentally we believe that the world – from a regulatory and technological perspective – is moving towards one that is lower carbon and eventually net-zero carbon. So, for us, an asset is sustaina…
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How do you measure the carbon footprint of your assets?
Andrew Collins, Director of ESG Investing, SFERS
Replied Mar 04
In March of last year, SFERS was one of the first US investors to announce our ambition to be a net zero greenhouse gas emissions asset owner by 2050. This reflects an ambition to invest in alignment…
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