Dutch pension fund PME is no longer investing in coal producers, which is the next step in the metal fund’s sustainable and responsible investing policy.

The high CO2 emissions of coal and the societal need to make the energy supply more sustainable mean that mining companies who solely focus on coal no longer have a future-proof business model, PME said.

PME chair of the trustee board Eric Uijen said: “PME is specifically focused on sustainable investing. We therefore ask the companies in which we invest to actively contribute to less CO2 emissions and a cleaner energy supply. In PME’s investment policy, there is no longer room for (mining) companies that are only focused on the production of coal.”

The pension fund expects that in the long term coal will no longer be used for the production of energy. This would turn investments in coal producers into stranded assets, which PME does not want to invest in.

By 2021, PME wants to have reduced the CO2 footprint of all its investments by 25 per cent, and 10 per cent of the portfolio will need to contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.

Aside from producers of coal, PME also does not invest in tobacco and oil from tar sands.

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