This story was originally published by Canada’s National Observer and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Canadians stand to lose over $100 billion in the energy transition as investors around the world continue to pour money into fossil fuel assets that will eventually become worthless, a recent international study finds.
Many of the identified losses will come through people’s pension funds and investments. People with their retirement savings tied up in funds like the Canada Pension Plan, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, or the Alberta Investment Management Corporation are at risk of seeing their savings threatened if an energy transition is not well managed given how deeply invested in fossil fuels many pension plans are.
To avoid the more serious impacts of climate change, the world must rapidly move away from oil, coal and gas. As that transition happens, fossil fuel assets — like the equipment used to extract oil and gas, not to mention the oil and gas itself — will lose their value. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, sought to understand who will take the financial hit as... Read more
