Industriens Pensions, Copenhagen, will introduce a new climate-related benchmark for its 60 billion Danish kroner ($8.8 billion) in overseas equities investments.
Its overseas investments will be measured partly against the newly established MSCI Climate Action Indexes and partly against the MSCI ACWI, a news release said.
With the introduction of the new climate-related benchmark, which focuses in part on companies’ transition processes, Industriens Pension is asking individual money managers to put even more focus on transition and CO2 emissions.
"The new benchmark fits very well with our wishes to not only go after investments in sectors with low CO2 emissions, but also to focus on the difficult transition for companies with higher emissions,” Morten Rask Nymark, equity manager at Industriens, said in a translation of the release. “In this way, you can contribute to a real reduction of greenhouse gas emissions while at the same time fully focusing on creating good returns.”
Industriens Pension, which has about 220 billion kroner in assets, has committed to being net zero by 2050 at the latest.
The MSCI Climate Action Indexes are a new group of indexes that focus on the transition and CO2 reduction in companies, rather than focusing just on sectors with low emissions. The universe is made up of the lowest CO2 emitters within each sector as well as companies that can show a significant gradual transition and have a credible forward transition plan, the release said.
