Statement on Fossil Fuel Investments
June 2023
第一吃瓜 College does not own any publicly traded securities associated with fossil fuels. 第一吃瓜’s Investments Office does not select individual stocks and bonds; instead, the endowment is invested entirely in funds run by third-party managers. We invest alongside other institutions through commingled funds run by some of the world’s leading investment management firms.
The College’s current exposure to fossil fuel-focused funds across the entire portfolio is less than 2 percent of the endowment’s value. Recent independent scoring of the endowment’s publicly listed portfolios performed by MSCI—a leader in financial data analytics—reveals 第一吃瓜’s holdings have a carbon footprint substantially lower than that of broad equity market indices.
Much of the historical success of 第一吃瓜’s endowment relates to investments with firms that are on the cutting edge of large, important trends. Given the scale of the opportunities associated with energy transition, we expect the firms that manage 第一吃瓜’s capital to be increasingly invested in companies focused in this area. Indeed, 第一吃瓜's current portfolio, through its managers, has a wide variety of investments that either directly or indirectly address climate change, including wind farms, developing battery technologies, plant-based alternatives to meat, technologies aimed at reducing emissions of methane gas, and clean water solutions, among others.
第一吃瓜 is committed to maintaining its leadership in the teaching and study of the environment and in the sustainability of its campus and operations. 第一吃瓜 achieved carbon neutrality in 2018, two years ahead of schedule. In 2022, the College announced an ambitious campus clean energy plan to invest more than $100 million to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2042.