Interactive tracker: Bond investments in fossil fuel and energy companies by several state pensions
Data from Investing in Climate Chaos report by Urgewald. Data reflects publicly available holdings as of May 2024.
As the climate crisis deepens, fossil fuel and dirty energy companies show no signs of slowing down their polluting projects. But they can’t do it without help from big investors, including public pensions.
To pay for their polluting projects, dirty energy companies and fossil fuel corporations raise billions of dollars by selling new corporate bonds to investors. Public pensions, which manage the retirement savings of public employees like teachers and firefighters, help fossil fuel companies raise money by buying these bonds, funneling our tax dollars and workers’ hard-earned savings into new refineries, oil wells, pipelines, and polluting power plants.
Continuing to invest in polluting companies not only puts our clean energy future at risk, it disrupts the ability of our friends, neighbors, and colleagues to retire by threatening the stability of their savings.
To understand the severity of this problem, the Sierra Club took a look at how much money our public pensions are investing into fossil fuel corporations and other dirty energy companies via their investments in bonds.
Our analysis shows that state pensions are invested in hundreds of controversial companies in dozens of countries, including companies that have ties to:
- LNG imports and exports, including Venture Global’s controversial Plaquemines LNG export facility in Louisiana
- Utilities across the US that burn coal, including Duke Energy, Berkshire Hathaway, and Dominion Energy
- Fracking in the Permian Basin
- State energy companies in Qatar, Kazakhstan, France, Chile, and more
- Petrochemical companies in China
- Controversial pipelines like the Dakota Access Pipeline
The top 5 state pensions listed in this interactive tracker — Minnesota, California, New York, Wisconsin, and Florida — each have more than $1 billion invested in fossil fuel and dirty energy companies.
Why are only bonds, and not shares, shown here?
To stop fossil fuel expansion, we need to stop the influx of money to companies that continue to make new investments in fossil fuels. For energy companies, most money comes from the sale of bonds to investors, loans from banks, and sale of fossil fuel products to customers. These are the biggest avenues to stopping fossil fuel financing.
So, why aren’t stocks (or shares) captured here? In regard to stopping the flow of money to fossil fuel companies, not all investments are created equal. Investing in shares of fossil fuel companies only puts money in the hands of dirty energy companies when the company is selling those shares for the first time. The majority of publicly traded fossil fuel stocks have been in the market for some time, meaning investors are buying and selling to each other. In these sales, no money is going to the fossil fuel companies.
This is why looking at bonds is a much more important avenue for stopping the flow of money to polluting companies. Bonds are a primary way that companies raise money for their continued operation and new projects. If investors stopped buying bonds from companies involved in fossil fuel expansion, it would make it much more difficult for dirty energy companies to build new pipelines or drill new wells.
Why aren’t all states shown here?
The figures included in this interactive tracker are a dramatic underestimation of the fossil fuel debt held by state pensions. Due to limited disclosures from pensions and financial databases, the data shown here are an incomplete picture: not all state pensions are included, and not all fossil fuel bonds held by the included pensions are captured. For example, Minnesota doesn’t necessarily hold 3x more fossil fuel bonds than other states — we simply currently have more publicly available data on how Minnesota pensions invest their money.
While the data are incomplete, it helps begin to paint a picture of how pension savings are being invested in polluting companies.
In the coming months, the Sierra Club will be working to expand this database. Stay tuned!
Get in touch
For questions or more information, please email sustainablefinance@sierraclub.org.
Learn more: How public funds can stop investing workers’ savings in climate destruction.