UK – The Threadneedle Low-Carbon Workplace Trust (LCW) has secured two local authority pension scheme equity commitments – from Flintshire County Council on behalf of the Clwyd Pension Fund and The Environment Agency Active Pension Fund.
Dawn Turner, head of pension fund management at the Environment Agency, said: “The evidence is growing that, over time, more environmentally conscious buildings will experience higher net income growth and be viewed as lower risk and thereby deliver higher returns.
“If environmental issues are set to affect the current and future value and performance of property assets, then the environmental performance of property assets must be seen as a fiduciary as well as a social responsibility for pension funds.
“As active members of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change and supporters of the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark, we are very pleased that the first new commitment under our new real asset portfolio is an investment in LCW.”
LCW is a partnership between Threadneedle Investments, commercial real estate developer Stanhope and the Carbon Trust, an organisation helping businesses, governments and the public sector to accelerate the move to a sustainable low-carbon economy.
UK pension funds are increasingly embedding social, environmental and economic considerations of climate change into their investment philosophy, with total UK managed assets in sustainability-themed investments now estimated at £7.5bn (€8.7bn), according to Eurosif’s European SRI Study 2012.
