University of Cambridge announces divestment from fossil fuels after five-year student, staff campaign

In a major break with the energy sector, the University of Cambridge committed to full divestment. The University will cut ties with the fossil fuel industry including BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and other companies in which they invested in for the past 20 years.

The University of Cambridge announced it will “remove all direct and indirect investments in the fossil fuel industry from its £3.5 billion endowment fund by 2030,” according to a press release. Under the University’s sustainability ambitions, the vice chancellor announced the University of Cambridge will also divest from public equity managers engaging in “conventional energy” by December 2020, and allocate those funds to renewable energy by 2025.

The decision was made after a student-led divestment campaign, Cambridge Zero Carbon, “coordinated a democratic motion backed by 324 Cambridge academics calling on the University to produce fully-costed strategies for divestment” in 2019, a press release stated. The University’s Investment Office handed down the decision as a result of the findings in the University’s commissioned report.

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