Angelides Urges ‘Green’ Focus
State Treasurer Phil Angelides, who has used his office to advance an agenda of socially responsible investing by public pension funds, on Tuesday launched an initiative to promote investment in environmentally friendly technologies and companies.
The so-called Green Wave initiative, unveiled during a media event at a Silicon Valley manufacturer of solar energy cells, asks the boards of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System to together invest $1 billion in stock funds that specialize in companies with good environmental track records.
In addition, $500 million of the pensions’ combined $250-billion portfolios would provide venture capital to promote the growth of companies creating cutting-edge “clean” technology, said Angelides, who sits on the boards of CalPERS and CalSTRS.
Under the treasurer’s proposal, the pension funds also would require companies to issue regular reports detailing their corporate environmental practices. The pension funds would make sure that their $16 billion in real estate holdings use so-called green standards for construction materials and energy efficiency.
Angelides said his strategy would earn “solid returns” in two ways: by limiting the risk of investing in companies that carry environmental liabilities and by fostering the development of “a wave of technological and environmental growth.”
Angelides’ initiative is in line with his record of activism in urging California government pensions to invest in inner cities and to pressure corporations and mutual funds to provide transparent financial information, said Beth Young, a senior researcher with the Corporate Library, a corporate governance watchdog group in Portland, Maine.
Young noted, however, that the funds had a legal obligation to their investors to make sure that financial issues don’t take a back seat to “feel-good issues.”
Analysts at CalPERS, the largest U.S. pension fund, are studying the potential effects of Angelides’ proposal for environmentally proactive investments, and a preliminary presentation is scheduled for a board meeting next month, spokeswoman Pat Macht said.
