After years of student campaigning and meetings with school officials to discuss what course of action would be best, SUNY-ESF became the first SUNY campus to divest from fossil fuels.

Brenda Greenfield, executive director of the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry College Foundation, said the school’s commitment — announced Dec. 1 — means that SUNY-ESF must remove all direct investments in the 200 companies that have been identified by 350.org — a website that organizes campaigns and public actions in the name of combating climate change — as companies of concern.

SUNY-ESF never had any direct investments because of its mutual fund approach. Therefore, Greenfield said, 350.org would consider SUNY-ESF to have indirect investments.

“The next thing would be to find out how you can take a mutual fund portfolio and screen it for these 200 companies,” Greenfield said. “What we’re doing right now is investigating other mutual fund projects that might work for us.”

She added that the SUNY-ESF students involved with the divestment campaign have asked the school to try to achieve this over a period of five years.

 

Divestment was not an easy decision to make, Greenfield said, and something the school has given a lot of thought to.

The first thing SUNY-ESF officials had to consider, Greenfield said, was whether divestment would have a financial impact on the school, with the trade-off being SUNY-ESF providing either fewer scholarships to students or less funding to academic programs.

“So you really need to weigh what’s the right thing to do in that situation,” Greenfield said.

She added that there is also discussion on whether divestment is the right thing to do from an environmental position.

A lot of energy companies are making investments into renewable energies or green technology. Withdrawing support from those companies, Greenfield said, is perhaps doing the opposite of what SUNY-ESF is trying to achieve.

Ultimately, she said, the College Foundation Board wanted to show some support for the students’ passion for divestment. She added that as an institution that is involved in the environment, the College Foundation — which holds SUNY-ESF’s $22 million endowment — thinks divestment is the right thing to do.

Katie Oran, one of the students involved with Divest ESF and the campaign for SUNY-ESF to divest, said all of SUNY-ESF’s endowment is in mutual funds. This means the university is invested into a pool of money, which is then invested into different sectors across the market, she said.

She added that this gives SUNY-ESF a diversified investment portfolio so in the case that the market isn’t doing well, the school won’t lose all of its money since other parts may be doing better.

The College Foundation Board, Oran said, was concerned that by divesting from fossil fuels, it would no longer have a diversified portfolio, and if some part of the market crashed, SUNY-ESF would lose all of its investment.

 

However, Oran said SUNY-ESF is responsible and hypocritical for educating the next leaders, scientists and politicians that will be fighting against climate change while also investing in companies “whose sole business practice is causing climate change.”

“For an institution, an educational institution which is educating the next generation, I think it’s morally wrong for that to happen,” said Oran, a sophomore environmental studies major at SUNY-ESF.

Oran added that it is not financially smart for universities to be invested in fossil fuels considering oil just dropped below $30 a barrel for the first time since 2006. Renewable energies are now cheaper and expanding more than fossil fuels, she said.

Oran said she thinks the decision to divest was made now because there are more opportunities to invest in renewable energy companies rather than fossil fuel companies. Investing in these renewable energy companies will allow SUNY-ESF to still have its diversified portfolio, just without the fossil fuels, she added.

Alex Poisson, a sustainability coordinator at SUNY-ESF, said if one school divests, it will not really have an impact on fossil fuel companies, but if a massive number of schools divest, “it’s almost like a run on the bank, but it’s a run on a stock.”

Divesting reduces the stock price of a company, Poisson said. That makes it more difficult for that company to raise funds for projects, so “in a sense it kind of directly targets the actors who are continuing to extract more fossil fuels,” he said.

“So it’s kind of sending a clear signal to the markets that further extraction and further drilling is not viable and … new investments should go toward renewables, research and development and things like that,” Poisson said.

Other SUNY schools, such as Onondaga Community College, University at Buffalo, New Paltz and College at Geneseo, have been taking steps toward divestment, he said.

 

In addition, Poisson said the Student Association for the SUNY system passed a motion in the fall in support of divestment for all SUNY schools that was approved by the executives but did not pass the general meeting. That motion will come up again this spring, he added.

“I think it should make a difference that ESF has taken a step toward divestment. And that’s also what we’re hoping the way I’ve been seeing it,” Poisson said. “ESF is a relatively small college, but the SUNY system is the biggest university network in the country. If we can make a decision that helps these people make a similar decision, then the impact will be bigger.”

Greenfield said that while SUNY-ESF was encouraged by Syracuse University’s decision to divest from fossil fuels in March 2015, she does not think it influenced SUNY-ESF’s decision to divest. This is because both colleges had to take different approaches to divestment based on their funds — while SU invests into individual stocks, SUNY-ESF has mutual funds, she said.

“I think ultimately we feel that we’re supporting (our students’ futures) by really making this move and making a public statement to try to move more institutions in a positive direction to improve our climate’s future,” Greenfield said.

 

Published on January 19, 2016 at 11:10 pm

Contact Sara: smswann@syr.edu | @saramswann