“No-one wants to save throughout their life to retire into a world devastated by climate change.” Mark Fawcett, chief investment officer Nest.

Nest, the largest pension scheme in the UK by membership with 9 million savers, has announced a new climate change policy to decarbonise its investment portfolio. The policy will align Nest with the Paris Agreement goals and sets out a goal of being net-zero across the entirety of its investment portfolio by 2050 or earlier, with the expectation that carbon emissions in its portfolio will halve by 2030.

To achieve this Nest is moving £5.5bn of shares into climate aware strategies, representing 45 per cent of Nest’s entire portfolio and begin divesting from companies involved in thermal coal, oil sands and arctic drilling wit the commitment to be completely divested by 2025 at the latest, unless these companies have a clear plan to phase out all related activity by 2030.

Nest will also invest a greater proportion of its funds directly in green infrastructure, building on the £100m Nest has already invested in renewable projects across Europe and commit its fund managers to making progress against set benchmarks, including analysing how Nest can halve its emissions by 2030.

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