Harvard President Bacow’s Email Gives Preview of Endowment’s Goal of Exiting Fossil Fuel Investments
Posted on 09/10/2021
In an email to Harvard affiliates in the afternoon of September 9, 2021, Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow stopped short of using the word divest. Bacow did say that “legacy investments” through third-party firms “are in runoff mode.” Bacow said that financial exposure to the fossil fuel industry imprudent. Bacow wrote that HMC “does not intend” to make future investments in the fossil fuel industry. He said Harvard University would not renew HMC’s partnerships with private equity funds that have holdings in the sector once its current obligations to them expire.
Harvard Management Company (HMC) manages the university’s endowment and for quite some time invested in private funds that invested in the oil & gas industry in its natural resources allocation.
A footnote in Bacow’s letter said the HMC holds a legal obligation to fund “up to the maximum capital committed at the time of the investment.”
In April 2020, the President and Fellows of Harvard College instructed HMC to set the Harvard endowment on a path to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050.