Copenhagen’s mayor says if his proposal is accepted at a finance committee meeting next Tuesday, Denmark’s capital will become the country’s first investment fund to sell its stocks and bonds in fossil fuels.
The Guardian is reporting Mayor Frank Jensen, gave a Danish newspaper information on the coming divestment and they reported the story. According to the Guardian, Jensen said, “Copenhagen is at the forefront of world cities in the green transition, and we are working hard to become the world’s first CO2 neutral capital in 2025. Therefore, it seems totally wrong for the municipality to still be investing in oil, coal and gas. We must change that.”
A council spokesperson said there is no information as to exactly how much of the city’s money is tied up in equities and bonds in the dirty energy sector, or where the monies will be reinvested. Those issues are sure to be discussed at the Tuesday meeting.
Jensen, a Social Democrat, took up the divestment initiative after a small left-wing party on the council brought it up during a meeting, and the idea slowly took on a life of its own.
Growing worldwide divestment movement
Copenhagen will soon join a growing movement worth over $3.4 trillion globally, following in the footsteps of Norway’s capital, Oslo, the first capital to divest of fossil fuels, as well as Newcastle, Australia, the world’s largest coal port, and over 500 institutions, universities, banks, companies and thousands of people who have already pulled their money out of fossil fuels.
With the Paris Agreement recognizing that fossil fuels are high-risk, volatile and toxic investments, a global signal was sent out that the transition to clean energy and renewables were going to boost economies worldwide. And although Copenhagen may be the latest city to join the movement, it certainly won’t be the last.
In 2015, Bill McKibben, of the 350.org climate campaign that started the divestment movement, said: “In the hottest year we’ve ever measured on our planet, big institutions and organisations are finally stepping up to say: we won’t participate in this charade, and we will stand up to the fossil fuel companies that are causing it. A 50-fold increase is a sign that civil society is finally fully on the move in the battle against climate change.”
Renewable energy is booming worldwide
Renewables should edge out natural gas worldwide, becoming second only to coal as an energy source in 2016, according to the Worldwide Energy Agency. More wind, solar and hydro-electric power plants are being built in
developing countries to meet rising energy demands, pushing the cost of energy below traditional sources such as coal, natural gas and oil in some markets, reports the Huffington Post.
EcoWatch reports that hydropower, renewable power through the use of water, is the fastest-growing power generation sector, and by 2018, it will make up at least a quarter of the world’s energy mix. However, with 80 percent of the renewable power generated in the world being hydropower, it is not the best way to go, say environmental and sustainability experts. Building new hydropower plants across rivers will ultimately affect ecosystems adversely.
Non-hydropower technologies, such as wind, solar, geothermal and energy derived from plant sources is growing slowly. These technologies are expected to be eight percent of the world’s energy sources by 2018, up from four percent in 2011. It will take a firm and steady commitment by countries like China, the U.S. and, the European Union to ensure that the world is going to have ambitious climate and energy policies.
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