Call to major philanthropic foundations to back move to renewables

By Practical Action CEO Simon Trace

Ahead of the global Climate Change talks in New York this week a group of 160 environmental prize winners from 44 countries called on the major philanthropic trust and foundations around the world to apply their billions of dollars of trust funds and endowments to “turn the tide of climate change”. Co-ordinated by the European Environment Foundation (I declare an interest here as I am a Trustee), the environmental laureates declaration on climate change was published in the International New York Times, a week before world leaders arrive in New York for a UN Climate Summit.

“We, 160 winners of the world’s environmental prizes, call on foundations and philanthropists everywhere to deploy their endowments immediately in the effort to save civilization,” say the laureates. “The world’s philanthropic foundations, given the scale of their endowments, hold the power to trigger a survival reflex in society, so greatly helping those negotiating the climate treaty.”

Jeremy Leggett, founder of Sunny Money and the charity Solar Aid helped to organise the crowd sourced fund-raising for the advertisement and describes on his blog 4 ways in which the laureates think Foundations could help:. The first is to invest in zero-or-low-carbon climate-solution companies and projects, as debt and/or equity, ideally relaxing the interest rates, hurdle rates and exit timeframes usually sought. The second, relatedly, is to divest from fossil fuels, and to reinvest in clean energy companies. The third is to stay invested in fossil-fuel companies, and campaign to put shareholder pressure to end spending on exploration for and development of new reserves. The fourth option is to accelerate zero-or-low-carbon markets, new and embryonic, by giving grants – on a scale they have never before – to the multiplicity of projects that can make a difference across the greenhouse-gas emissions spectrum, including new projects of the foundations’ own design, based on the vast collective and individual experience of they and their networks.

Having made that call last week it’s encouraging to see Reuters report today that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has announced today a pledge to divest a total of $50billion from fossil fuel investments, with one of the signatories and an heir of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, saying, according to Reuters that “We are quite convinced that if he were alive today, as an astute businessman looking out to the future, he would be moving out of fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy.”

If even the Rockefellers are moving out of oil perhaps we have reached a turning point?!