Norway's Green Party is forcing the capital city's $9.3 billion pension manager to sell out of fossil-fuel companies, building on momentum from helping reshape guidelines for the nation's $860 billion sovereign wealth fund, Government Pension Fund Global, Oslo.
Officials at Oslo Pensjonsforsikring AS, the city's pension fund, are working on how they will implement the proposed ban and are compiling a list of companies the fund will need to sell, CEO Aamund Lunde said by phone. Mr. Lunde declined to say how much will be sold or how many companies would be covered.
“It will all take some time to settle — we will cooperate” with the government on this, Mr. Lunde said.
The Green Party surged in municipal elections last month, winning 8.1% of votes in Oslo, making it the third-largest party. It will now for the first time form a government with the Labor Party and the Socialist Left.
“Oslo will take responsibility for the climate, both through our own policies and our investments,” Lan Marie Nguyen Berg, first candidate for the city's Green Party, said in an e-mailed statement.
The city also will halve carbon dioxide emissions compared to 1990 levels in five years, reduce them by 95% by 2030 and work to ban cars in the inner city, according to a governing platform released Monday.
The Green Party entered Norway's parliament for the first time in 2013 and has since spurred a shift toward greener policies. The party set in motion a drive to ban the sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, from coal investments that eventually gathered support across eight parties. That move could trigger about $6.6 billion in divestments.
