为什么撤资fossil fuels makes financial sense

Students at Swarthmore College are in their fourth week of a sit-in to push their college to divest from fossil fuel companies.

他们是正确的？最近，我花了两天时间与斯沃斯莫尔学生，教师，职员和理事，参与可持续发展和撤资的问题。竞彩足球app怎么下载作为一个长期投资者，包括作为基金投资一个增加了5亿$的前任董事总经理，我提供，超出了学术界的观点。

两年前，化石燃料的公司在养老投资组合中包括被认为是合理和谨慎的立场。今天，来自化石燃料撤资 - 特别是煤 - 出现更多的财政和道德上负责任的选择。

相比于两年前的今天撤资的金融基本原理包括一个更大的可能性，当前和未来的化石燃料储量将不被烧毁。这将推动化石燃料的企业的估值大减少。由于化石燃料公司目前代表了大多数养老分配的显著％，是自导致化石燃料的股票价值大幅减少their stranded assets会导致大量的养老损失。

在撤资时机和风险方面，后期divesters将经历资本大的损失。从财务回报的角度来看，这意味着上攻来自化石燃料的回报是今天不到那是两年前，而下行风险较大。这改变了养老分配的风险收益等式。

撤资的道德争论深受斯沃斯莫尔学院师生阐述 - 并在许多其他院校的学生和教师竞选撤资 - 反映了高等教育机构对撤资加速运动。很显然，斯沃斯莫尔学生的道德，责任和参与 - 而这些属性是中央对机构的卓越。

撤资讨论的道德和责任的尺寸通常被视为比更主观的，并以某种方式从属于，审慎理财的问题。在现实中，撤资辩论所有这些方面都是不可分割的。

让我们两点我们可以都同意开始：首先，气候变化是真实的，并已开始带动天气，干旱和风暴的频率和严重程度大的变化。其结果是，它开始推动城市设计移民方式的重大变化，以及作为实现清洁能源，备用电源，公用事业能源结构，在保险转移等二，气候变化对现实资产配置地面和更大的科学把握和共识人为的气候变化趋势，有力地表明，气候变化的严重程度甚至不如我们以前的理解。

I will discuss several arguments against divestment before addressing the case for divestment. These arguments against divestment, increasingly made by organizations — including universities — funded by the fossil fuel industry, are largely wrong.

淡出煤炭公司的投资回报

First, it is argued that because the 50-year historical return of fossil fuel stocks has been good, future fossil fuel share returns therefore will continue to be good, and divestment now therefore would lower future returns. However, the last half-century time frame is not relevant to the current climate change divestment and stock price risk.

相关股票价格回报期是近几年左右的时间，在此期间，化石燃料的回报 - 特别是煤 - 一般均跑输大市。未来的回报也可能会变得更糟。麦格理，已大量资助的化石燃料项目，一个全球性的银行，在3月的报告的研究机构介绍了美国煤的前途“increasingly bleak”和预期的波浪未来煤炭破产。

A related argument is that shifting money from firms that invest in expanding fossil fuel reserves and extraction might reduce financial returns that could fund scholarships and so could hurt the less well-off. The argument that continued investment in coal and other fossil fuel resource firms is today a smart risk-adjusted investment strategy defies common sense — and recent actual stock returns data.

此外，即使环境健康影响的文献进行了回顾最少证明了不太富裕不成比例从燃烧化石燃料造成的空气和水的污染和气候变化的成本困扰。由于经济学家在其3月28日发行说明;“煤杀死每年大约80万人，其中大多数是穷人。”

Even a cursory review of the energy labor intensity literature demonstrates that the fossil fuel part of the energy industry is far less labor intensive than renewable energy or energy efficiency, so creates far fewer jobs than a clean energy investment strategy. A realistic assessment is that concern for less well-off should compel rather than restrain a shift away from in coal.

第三，有人认为，重新加权组合排除化石燃料既可以在切换到新的投资组合中，并在日常管理费用方面是昂贵的。然而，在一个典型的大学投资组合的规模，并假设有序退出过了几年，没有理由对费用或增加任何费用。对化石无燃料的标准，与其他机构一起做特别是投资的权重调整，实际上可能会降低交易/管理费。这在下面更详细讨论。

Fourth, it is asserted that divestment selling off of fossil fuel firms would involve dollar amounts too small to have any material impact and therefore be a pointless gesture. However, divestment decisions by Swarthmore and other leading academic institutions would have a public relations, moral and leadership impact vastly larger than the dollar amount involved, as powerfully demonstrated by the success of the South African divestment movement. The fossil fuel divestment movement increases pressure on energy companies to shift toward cleaner energy.

奇怪的是，一种说法是由从撤资，大学弃权在支持全球变暖并不意味着同谋。但大学花费精力的大量管理他们的投资，并决定继续投资扩大煤炭和其他化石燃料储量的同时，越来越多的学术同行的撤资是 - 顾名思义 - 关键的高校资源的分配故意。主动投资弃权相反。

最后，也有资金雄厚的气候变化旦论点 - 即撤资是不理性的，因为人为的气候变化尚未得到证实，气候变化可能是有益的，等高等教育，所有的地方，都应该站出来为科学事实气候变化，而不是赞同旦，他们的各种论点。高等教育也必须要求对化石燃料工业资助的研究和文章全学年的透明度，而且必须包括政策，以消除利益冲突清晰。

For example, some higher education institutions include as board members people who are professional third party paid managers of college funds that lack fossil-free investment options — and so have a clear conflict of interest.

What stranded assets could mean for fossil fuel returns

在过去几年中已经看到了严谨的分析周围的论点，即出现在碳约束的世界，不可燃的化石燃料储量绞合资产that will lose value. For example,最近福布斯件注意到，“由美联社委托，由调查公司标准普尔Capital IQ执行2013报告发现，大学捐赠是拉到200家化石燃料公司由撤资运动目标的出本来可以避免巨大的损失。”

An important threshold in the recognition of fossil fuel asset value risk was theDecember decisionby the Bank of England to “set a new standard for all central banks and financial regulators on climate risk by agreeing to examine, for the first time, the vulnerability that fossil fuel assets could pose to the stability of the financial system in a carbon constrained world.”

除了身为已故divester，从一个迟到divester也给高等教育机构的道德和品牌受损的财务成本可以预期要大。今天，许多申请上大学最好的，最有道德的学生很关心地球和气候变化问题。而家长普遍欢迎他们的孩子更广阔的责任感。

那些决定继续将其资金用于公司，其业务是投资和扩展的化石燃料储量和化石燃料燃烧高等教育机构正在迅速成为对谁关心气候变化和他们的星球未来的很多同学不太理想。鉴于全国各地的在校园里的激情和学生的快速成长的参与和教师在这个问题上，大学品牌保护的情况下进行短期撤资是非常强的。

The asset of moral authority

一月份信（PDF）by many of Stanford’s faculty to Stanford's president and board of trustees put the issue this way: “If a university seeks to educate extraordinary youth so they may achieve the brightest possible future, what does it mean for that university simultaneously to invest in the destruction of that future?”

一个斯沃斯莫尔学生领袖斯蒂芬·奥汉隆，arguedthat “as the school where this movement began, the world is watching us. It is unconscionable for Swarthmore … to invest in and legitimize the fossil fuel companies that are wrecking the climate, poisoning communities, and jeopardizing the very future for which our education is meant to prepare us.”

More than two dozen colleges already have committed to divestment, and this movement is growing far more rapidly than the South Africa apartheid divestment movement, which it otherwise closely resembles. Over 1,000 U.S. cities have committed to carbon reduction targets, and many of these can be expected to shift to low or no carbon investments. There are now low carbon investing conferences, reflecting growing interest on the part of fund managers to service this rapidly growing new market.

尽管言辞相反，转移到无碳或低碳投资策略的成本很低或为零。我担任顾问，以渗透投资管理，其推出的首个低碳交易所买卖基金，于2010年在伦敦证券交易所上市。

现在有那不征收或非常小的额外费用低碳投资选择范围不断扩大。这通常是通过添加化石自由屏幕到现有的管理的基金或通过跟踪化石的分类指数做无论是。参数组合Associates的$ 135十亿资产管理公司，提供加入低碳屏幕的任何投资策略的选择。添加此化石免费的屏幕 - 一个被称为化石免费指数公司开发的 - 仅增加了0.05％的（百分之一的二十分之一），以现有的基金费，0.4％的年度总成本。

化石自由指数还提供了基于S＆P 500指数排除了26行与化石燃料的储备，也有0.4％的年费化石自由指数。这些都是比较低费方案，并很可能比多数基金认为高等教育机构目前投资成本较低，而且越来越多的高等教育机构在太阳能光伏发电，能源效率和对自己的校园等清洁能源项目的投资，通常是为实现长期的财务回报优于通过第三方基金经理做出捐赠的投资 - 在提高大学运营，并为学生提供宝贵的实践学习机会。

撤资是更有可能提高受什么伤，风险调整后的财务回报，以及早期撤资是一个谨慎的品牌保护选择。撤资也是道德上负责任的选择，因为气候变化的成本已经变得巨大，尤其会伤害那些谁是不太富裕。

The rapidly growing divestment movement, with its morally and logically founded demands, exemplifies the qualities of responsibility that great academic institutions welcome and support in their students. On this issue — the defining issue of their generation and many future generations — student divestment advocates clearly are right.