Goddard College Follows Trend, Divests Fossil Fuel Assets
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Following in the path of several other institutions before it, Vermont’s Goddard College has announced the finalisation of its divestment of fossil fuel assets, a move the College believes is part of its long history of taking ‘imaginative and responsible action in the world.’
The finalization is obviously the result of a long work in progress, but news of the College’s divestment comes only a couple of days after several related pieces of news: Over just a couple of days, the Online Schools Center released their Top 50 Green Schools (in which Goddard did not rank), and 300 faculty members from Stanford University wrote to the president and the board of Trustees, calling for the University to complete its divestment from fossil fuel investments.
Goddard College’s endowment is now invested into fossil fuel free accounts at Trillium Asset Management in Boston, the third college in Vermont — joining both Sterling and Green Mountain College — to divest.
Interestingly, unlike Sterling and Goddard, Green Mountain College ranked eighth in the Top 50 Screen Schools ranking.
“The divestment from fossil fuel company investments is one action in Goddard College’s long history of taking ‘imaginative and responsible action in the world,’” said Interim President Robert Kenny. “The College’s recent efforts to reduce its carbon footprint have led to a number of energy saving activities, including a proposal to convert our 20, oil burning heating furnaces to a single, centralized, locally-sourced wood chip plant. This divestment is a logical extension of those efforts, and we are proud to finalize its implementation.”
Goddard’s decision to divest from fossil fuel assets follows in a long line of such divestments over the past years, as publicly-facing organizations are forced to look at their investment portfolios.
Complete fossil fuel divestment would, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, cost upwards of $5 trillion — a number nobody is going to be achieving any time soon.
However, progress is being made.
In December, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund announced that it would be reviewing its investments, and excluding climate offenders on a “case-by-case basis.” That news came only a few weeks after Norway’s largest pension funds manager announced that they would be divesting completely from coal energy, transferring approximately $75 million into renewable energy.
And with Christmas almost upon them, two Canadian pension funds announced their intention to jointly acquire a portfolio of renewable energy and water infrastructure assets valued at over $2 billion.
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