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On Friday 24 March 2023 we held the Divest USS: Help stop your pension fuelling climate change online forum for university staff and students as part of UK Divest’s national Day of Action. You can watch the recording here. The event was chaired by Ellie Harrison (University of Dundee) and featured presentations about the DivestContinue reading “Online forum event for university staff and students”

We’re working with Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS-UK) to encourage students to get involved in the Divest USS campaign. If you’re a student at a UK University, there’s a simple action that you can take. Please download our template motion and ask your Students’ Union/Association Representatives to submit it to your University’s finance committee. TheContinue reading “Calling university students to get involved in the campaign”

USS keep arguing that it is their fiduciary duty to focus on generating as much income from their investments as possible despite the evidence that many members want them to stop investing in fossil fuels and other high carbon investments and also stop funding new oil and gas fields through corporate bonds. The article hereContinue reading “The Economic Case against investing in fossil fuels”

USS                  David Russell, Head of Responsible Investment Innes McKeand, Head of Strategic Equities                         Alexandra Bradshaw, Investment Communications Manager                         Rebecca Mason, Senior Legal Counsel DivestUSS         Paul Kinnersley, Cardiff University                          Brian Hoskins, Imperial                          Bill Spence, QMUL                          Kat Thorne, KCL Mark Maslin, UCL The path to Net Zero USS outlined their recent activity regarding reducing the carbonContinue reading “Meeting between USS representatives and DivestUSS December 8th 2022”

USS should be listening to Universities as to how they determine their investment strategy. Vice Chancellors, Principals and Finance Officers all need to be assured that their staff can be confident of pension returns long into the future. However the Climate Emergency and USS’s policy of continuing to invest in companies that are exploring andContinue reading “Standard letter for VCs, Finance Officers to send to USS”

USS regularly publish a list of their top 100 public equity investments and along with this, provide a search engine so that one can search to see if they have a holding in individual companies (but if not in top 100 they don’t tell you how much they hold in that company).  See https://www.uss.co.uk/how-we-invest/where-we-invest/public-market-investments The June 2022Continue reading “USS’s Public equity investments (June 2022)”

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thames-water-fined-4-million-after-catastrophic-sewage-blunder website 27/5/21 Thames Water has been fined £4 million after untreated sewage escaped from sewers below London into a park and a river. In New Malden The court was told approximately 79 million litres of sludge escaped across an area of about 6,500 square metres. It took 30 people a day for almost aContinue reading “References for tweets 07/11/2022 about Thames Water”

USS holding £ 92 million in Glencore  https://www.uss.co.uk/how-we-invest/where-we-invest/public-market-investments Glencore being fined over one billion dollars for ‘Foreign bribery and market manipulation’  https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/glencore-entered-guilty-pleas-foreign-bribery-and-market-manipulation-schemes Glencore being fined over 28 million dollars by UK Serious Fraud Office https://www.sfo.gov.uk/2022/06/21/serious-fraud-office-secures-glencore-conviction-on-seven-counts-of-international-bribery/ ABP exits Glencore https://www.ipe.com/news/abp-exits-glencore-investment-over-human-rights-concerns/10055740.article

If you have ever contributed to USS, some of your money is supporting illegal settlements in Palestine. On the USS website list of investments can be found several of the 112 companies identified by the United Nations in 2020 as doing business in illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian land.             Many of the 112 companies areContinue reading “Your money is supporting illegal settlements in Palestine”

We have met recently with USS and were informed of their plan for interim targets for their pathway to ‘net zero by 2050’. Worryingly these interim targets – 25% reduction by 2025 and 50% by 2030 – are based on carbon intensity rather than absolute emissions. Using carbon intensity means that if the fund grows,Continue reading “The way forward for USS”