 OK, we are back online. This is it is still Tuesday, February 22nd, and this is still government operations, Senate government operations. And we are looking today at a bill that is S 251. It's about divestiture from fossil fuels, divestiture of our pension funds from fossil fuels. And we have with us today, Richard Brooks from Stand Earth, and we're going to he Mr. Brooks has a bit of a time constraints. So we're going to let him kick off. And then we're going to hear from the treasure because she didn't get a chance in our last meeting to weigh in on this. And what I'm going to do first, Mr. Brooks, you're not usually with us. So I'm going to have us introduce ourselves and then we'll just jump to you. So I'm Jeanette White from Wyndham County. Hi, I'm Anthony Polina from Washington County. Ryan Collamore from Rutland County. Allison Clarkson, Windsor County. Aisha Rumhens, Stilton County. And Richard, thanks so much for coming on very short notice and being prepared to be here. We appreciate it. Great to have you. So thank you. So if you want to just jump in and talk to us about your experience and give us lots of information, that would be great. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. Thanks for thanks for putting me at the top of the agenda. I appreciate that. And it's nice to meet you all, senators and treasurer. I'll just tell you a quick bit about myself and I'll dive into it of the day. So my name is Richard Brooks. I use he him pronouns. I'm based in Toronto, Canada. Grew up in Montreal, though, and spent quite a bit of time in Vermont. So I appreciate the great green state. And my background is working on environmental issues for a couple of decades, mostly on forest and climate issues. In the last few years, I've been working on climate finance and working on supporting advocates to work with their pension funds, usually public pension funds to move out of fossil fuels and to increase investments in climate solutions and had quite a bit of success doing so in a number of different states, which I'll talk a little bit about during my I guess my testimony. Again, thank you for the time. First and foremost, I wanted to say that divestment should really be looked at as a responsible fiduciary act. This isn't so much from my standpoint about climate leadership or taking action on climate change. First and foremost, as fiduciaries, your your primary responsibility is to act in a fiduciarily sound way. We know that divestment is legally sound. We know that it's fiduciary, right, fiduciarily right. And it's no longer novel. You know, this is not a new issue. This is not. I don't think senators and advocates are asking you to take a step that no other pension fund has taken before. We have now more than 1500 institutions with assets over 40 trillion dollars who have made some form of commitment to divestment from fossil fuels. And these include very large mainstream banks, insurance companies and increasingly pension funds. New York State, New York City, Washington, D.C. Baltimore, Maine, Minnesota, San Mateo County in California, Los Angeles are all U.S. examples of pension funds who have moved forward with pursuing divestment. So this is this is becoming the mainstream and they broke in the ground already. And I think it's really up to Vermont to step in and follow in their footsteps. They've done all the legal and financial checks to make sure that divestment is sound. And most of these funds are bigger than Vermont's fund. All share in common with Vermont, a requirement to ensure that the fund remains sound and all have concluded that phasing out investments in fossil fuels is one of the ways to do so. Many have coupled this with setting goals and commitments to increase investments in climate solutions at the same time, including investments in community based initiatives that can net a return for the fund while also advancing solutions in their own jurisdiction or nationally or internationally. Just two weeks ago, you may have seen that the New York State Comptroller announced that he was going to be moving the Common Retirement Fund, that's the state pension fund out of investments in twenty two shale oil and gas companies. And that amounted to about three hundred and twenty million dollars that they were going to move out of those companies. At the time, Comptroller Denapoli said, I quote, as market forces and new policies drive the energy transition, we must align our investments with a profitable and dynamic future. The shale oil and gas industry faces numerous obstacles going forward that pose risks to its financial performance. To protect the state pension fund, we are restricting investments in companies that we believe are unprepared to adapt to a low carbon future, end quote. So that is a very clear and simple statement that I think speaks volumes about the approach that Vermont should be taking in regards to investments in fossil fuels. If you believe that fossil fuel companies need to be engaged and pressured to change their business practices, then you are implicitly admitting that their business models, as they currently stand, are inherently out of line with climate science and the direction of policy and regulation. You are admitting they are financially risky by saying, we need to engage fossil fuel companies to change their business practices. If their business practices were sampled, you wouldn't be wanting to engage those companies. There would be no reason to engage those companies. So I think that speaks to the issue of having a seat at the table. Why would you as a shareholder be concerned about their viability if it wasn't, if they didn't present a risk to the pension fund? And your foremost duty is to de-risk and enhance returns for your pensioners and for the taxpayers or farmers. And for the taxpayers of Vermont. There is no energy economics worth their salt, who hasn't confirmed that we are entering a period of rapid transition of global energy systems that favor renewables and that the outlook for the oil and gas sector looks increasingly dim. There's an increasing risk of stranded assets. And we're seeing right now, the present day, that global geopolitics are not favoring coal, oil and gas right now. Part of the reason why we're having an energy crisis in Europe and in Southeast Asia is because of geopolitics. When you have renewables, there is no fuel that has to be transported around the globe. It's the wind and the sun and the tides that you rely upon. And those are controlled in your own backyard. They aren't subject to the winds of geopolitics. So if only for that reason, we should be getting out of fossil fuels. That's a real clear signal to fiduciaries. Seen differently, though, and I do want to note that there are pension funds, there are investment boards who do want to remain invested in fossil fuels, so they have this seat at the table so they can try their hand at engaging fossil fuel companies. There's nothing limiting a fund from remaining invested with a number of shares in the fossil fuel company, which gives them a seat at the table that allows your voice to be heard, and you can continue to attempt to talk to oil and gas companies into changing. This doesn't require... Anthony, can you take over for a minute? This doesn't require you to have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in those fossil fuel companies. You can have a seat at the table with 100 shares. You don't need 10,000 shares to do so. Effectively, you can have your cake and eat it too while you try that approach. That being said, though, there is no track record that I'm aware of of successful engagement with fossil fuel companies, despite shareholders doing this for more than two decades. In the past year, many institutional shareholders have pointed to the Exxon director vote as a sign of success of the shareholder engagement approach. In that case, three independent directors were elected to the board of Exxon over the wishes of management with promises to reform and change the company, to change the direction of the company after years of failed engagement by shareholders. But we're now eight months into the tenure of those new directors, and there's been little change. In fact, there's been quite a few reports that Exxon continues to expand greenfield expansion of new fossil fuel infrastructure, including places like Guyana over the rights of local communities in the Permian Basin, one of the largest source points of methane emissions in the US. And recently, the CIO, the chief investment officer of CalSTRS, which as you may know is the second largest pension fund in the country, recently voiced his disappointment and frustration with Exxon, who he said was at risk of going the way of Blockbuster and Kodak. CalSTRS was one of the pension funds which led the push to get new directors on the board of Exxon, and they are admitting that the company is not changing despite that pretty monumental victory, quote unquote, for shareholders. I think that's a reason enough to focus on other ways of addressing the climate crisis and de-risking the pension fund in Vermont. So I think you find yourself at a key moment where the economics of the industry are clearly declining in the long term, which is your investment horizon. It's not the short term, it's the long term. And when climate science has never been clearer, when the impacts of fossil fuel companies on frontline and racialized communities is well known and well documented, and importantly, when you have viable, investable alternatives that already exist. Other pension funds have broken the ground, as I've already stated, and that's really, I think, time for Vermont to follow in those footsteps and clean the climate leadership that you want to set for yourselves as well. Passing this bill is the way to do that, and I guess that concludes my testimony. I'm having to take any questions and speak to my experience in states like New York. Thank you. So committee, anybody have any questions? Yes, Senator Polina? One is a quick one, then the other one might be a little bit longer, but you know, the fiduciary responsibility means the funds are supposed to make money. So is there, is it too early to tell whether or not fossil fuel free funds are going to outperform or perform as good as regular funds? Or do we see them performing better, worse? Is it too early to tell? I'm just wondering sort of what your take is on that. Yeah, that's a great question. If you look at the performance, the S&P 500, including fossil fuel companies versus the S&P 500 excluding fossil fuel companies, you go back one year, three years, five years, 10 years. In all cases, the S&P 500 without fossil fuel companies has outformed the S&P 500. And that's looking backwards. Now looking forward, we know the look, you can't always, you can't base future returns based on the past. I think that answers half of your question. Looking forward, based on what the International Energy Agency is saying, we don't need more fossil fuel expansion. We need to accelerate the transition to renewables. The companies that are going to benefit from that transition are renewables companies and the energy companies that are transitioning. Most of the oil and gas sector is not transitioning fast enough and they're going to get left behind. We have seen a share price increase and bond price increase in the last year with oil and gas companies. And many folks who I think aren't supportive of divestment will point to those returns and say, well, if you had divested a year ago, then you wouldn't be able to benefit from this spike in share prices for oil and gas companies. But that's a temporary spike. I think it's important to remember that the investment horizon for pension funds is 20, 30, 40, 50 years. It's not year to year. So you look 30 years into the future and you think about what the energy systems are going to look like in 30 years time and it's not going to be based on oil and gas. I mean, all the science is saying that if it is based on oil and gas, then we have a much bigger problem. The problem being that we are at risk of the chaos caused by climate change. It seems, I mean, if I could just follow, it seems that a lot of organizations, entities have divested it. I'm wondering if, I'm sure there's hesitancy amongst a lot of these folks to begin with and they see challenges in divesting. I'm wondering, isn't there at this point sort of like a playbook that we could follow, you know, based on the New York example, perhaps, I mean, you know, where we could sort of have a sense of direction and how to go about divesting in a way that is going to be, you know, good for us? Absolutely. I think that should give you comfort that there are others who have done it. As I said, there are much larger pension funds who have done it and have done it in a legally sound way, in a fiduciary sound way. They do have playbooks and some of those funds are open to sharing and advising on that and I would definitely counsel reaching out to New York State and New York City to understand what processes they led or they went through and what kind of consultants and experts they attained or retained to advise them on their divestment plans. New York City, for example, hired Makita and BlackRock. You know, BlackRock is no, you know, radical, lefty organization. They are the world's largest asset manager with trillions of dollars of assets under management. They advised that there would be no negative impact for New York City to pursue divestment and outlined an approach that they could take that was sound and responsible and they followed through on that approach and now divested $3 billion from fossil fuel companies. So I have a follow-up to that and then I'll go to Senator Clarkson. But I know that we talked about this the last time we had this here that this bill does not follow the New York model at all and so my question is if we pass this bill we're not following the New York model and so I guess my question is how do we, if we want to follow the New York model we have to change this bill. So we can't just pass this bill because then it doesn't do that. So I guess my question is you advised us to just pass this bill but on the other hand we're looking at making some changes and I think we heard last time that there was interested in looking at the New York model and how that might be implemented here. So and the other question I have is in terms of timing this bill is very aggressive in terms of timing and the other question I have is tying it to this particular list which I understand is a what's the word I want to use? It's a for-profit, it's a private list. So I have those three questions about do we pass this bill as it is or do we look at making changes that would allow us to do more of what New York did? Yeah I think this is an area where I think I mean it's more up to you than up to me around this. My advice would be you know craft, if the bill works for Vermont then I think that's the bill that you should pass. That being said I think gathering advice from others including New York State and New York City, Maine, Baltimore is a responsible approach. I don't think it hurts to have their direct expert opinion on how they've pursued things and what kind of steps they had to go through, what kind of roadblocks they reached and how they went around them. You know most of the pension funds are managed in very similar ways but they are unique as well and I think having more advice rather than less is always helpful and then I think making an informed decision about whether there should be modifications to bill based on that I think would make sense. In terms of the I think the proprietary nature I think you're referring to the carbon underground 200 list is that? Yeah I think that's what I'm referring to. Yeah so the carbon underground 200 list is as a common, it's been a commonly used I guess list of companies that helps pension funds and investment boards designate their divestment asks to those companies that are very likely most at risk from the transition to renewables because they hold the largest reserves on the planet and baked into their share and bond price is the value of those reserves. Those reserves because many of them will not get developed and not get developed are at risk and they are the ones that will likely suffer the largest economic impacts from a rapid transition to the renewable sector. So the fact that it's a priority list that fossil fuel I think they're called fossil free investment solutions now offers I don't think that should give you too much pause again because it's been commonly used by other states and cities so far in the implementation of their divestment plans. Thank you. Senator Clarkson. Thanks. Thank you. Yes I'm hoping that we can redraft this and incorporate the aspects of the New York model. I have two questions for you. One is the argument for staying in is sort of the CalSTRS argument which is if you're in you have a seat at the table. Now we're pretty tiny seat at the table I mean of the three bears you know we're the tiniest little bear and we have a pretty you know our pension funds are pretty modest compared to some of the others here. How do you respond to that argument because clearly CalSTRS is profoundly disappointed by Exxon it's new board members and what it's done so that's question number one because that's the argument that our treasurer and has generally put forward is that we should stay in because we can affect policy and the second thing I want to ask you about is the risk because to me the risk of the world about to sue the bejesus out of the fossil fuel industry for what it's done to our world and the impact of what we have to spend to clean up our world that those lawsuits haven't even begun so to me every one of our fossil fuel investments is under you know potentially huge risk of being worth almost nothing so it's not it's a stranded asset that is you know a huge could be a huge liability in not so distant a future so those are my two questions for you. Yeah I think on the first question again I think you said it better than I did you have a very small c of the table but more importantly you know when you look at the track record of institutional shareholders who have focused their shareholder energy on fossil fuel companies which where you're trying to get them to change their core business not some ancillary aspect of their business but the core business there isn't a track record of success anywhere in the world so you don't have fossil fuel companies that I can point to who have heard from shareholders and as a result from hearing from shareholders they've switched to being renewable companies that doesn't exist anywhere with companies where it your shareholders are exercising or you know flexing their muscles on an issue that's not a core business so how many women are on the board of X company or what's the what's the diversity of the senior management team at another company or reporting on human rights issues related to some aspect of their supply chain those shareholder resolutions and that type of shareholder engagement does have a track record of success and I think that's a place to focus your energy especially as you have limited staff resources to engage companies I would focus on the sectors where you can achieve real change through shareholder engagement and not waste your energy on companies that are fundamentally are not you cannot change them they will go the ways of dinosaurs some of them may succeed but that's not a bet that I would make with taxpayer money I think that's something that you can do you know on the side but definitely don't do with taxpayer money especially in the in the case of a pension fund which you know you need to make sure is 100 funded for your taxpayers and the second question around risk of stranded assets and companies being sued there there are now currently dozens and dozens of climate related lawsuits against fossil fuel companies in the United States as well as around the world very similar to what we saw with tobacco companies several decades ago tobacco companies also face their own divestment movement and the reason for that divestment movement was to reduce the power of tobacco companies particularly around political lobbying right now there is a government in the country where tobacco companies are welcome at the lobby table and that's a result of the divestment movement and because of those big lawsuits I think we're facing the same thing with fossil fuel companies and those lawsuits are going too soon you know might be another five ten fifteen years they are soon going to cost those companies lots of money they're already costing those companies a decent amount of money in terms of legal fees it's going to cost them lots of money when it comes to damages as as it will come out and again just a reminder you are investing for the long term you're investing for the next 30 40 50 years it's not about the next year or two and so that risk is just going to escalate the best time to get our fossil fuels it's probably about 10 years ago the next best time is right now because you actually have a bump in share prices and so it's time to sell when it's high because it's not going to stay high like this and I'm you know I'm not an economist this is not my uh it's not my uh my my area of study but ask any economist and I'm sure they will tell you that the the outlook for these companies is is growing dimmer by the day thanks thank you uh yes senator uh rom hensdale I don't know if this is is what you're referring to Richard it's sad to think there is a bump in share prices today as I understand it because of the the lack of certification from Germany of the new natural gas pipeline from Russia so it just goes to show what's really interconnected to global conflict how we are pulling fossil fuels out of the ground you can comment on that but that wasn't my question my question was just we had started and thank you for coming in on very short notice and answering so many of our questions um you you had talked about working with the new york state comptroller's office and we had started to talk about who we might bring in I didn't know if you wanted to add any color or nuance to to who we might bring in from uh new york and who you've worked with most closely yeah um yeah so I I think definitely um happy to put you in touch um with the new york state comptroller directly um and uh you can speak to him um his director of corporate governance Liz Gordon is a is is great he has a lot of experience in shareholder engagement and is implementing the uh derisking and divestment plan that the comptroller has laid out at the new york city level there are several great people in the new york city comptroller's office new comptroller in place um but he is committed to continue to implement the plan that was put in place by the previous comptroller and they were the ones who as I as I mentioned hired mechita and black rock to advise them on the implementation of their divestment plan so and those and those reports are actually publicly available I'm happy to share those after we get off this chat or this testimony um because those would be great documents for you to look at as well so if you could send that information to gail carrigan then we will uh contact them and see see who we need to have testify thank you no problem okay I am thank you so much for joining us and um my apologies for the delayed invite that was my my bad and I take responsibility for it so thank you for um joining us and with that and we're certainly welcome to stand I know that you asked in your um email to um be hooked up with the with our treasure because there were some things that you thought that could be done outside of legislation and um so there there is our treasure right there and her um email is best dot pierced at vermont dot gov and she is right there yes p e a r c e no one ever spells it correctly right p e a r c e at vermont dot gov and so there you've made the contact and we'll see where we go from there so thank you thank you so much I appreciate your time uh treasurer pierce I will reach out to you to talk about banks and um some upcoming climate related resolutions which I'm sure you're already aware of we love to talk and um I um for best over treasurer pierce so call me best please sounds good thank you so much okay great thank you so much thank you Richard give give our best to Toronto thank you lots of Clarksons up there so um we're going to the best did not get a chance to weigh in last time we talked about this because we got cut short on time so we're going to give time to Beth right now to do this and I'm going to say that um at four o'clock I have to jump to a uh chair's meeting and I'm going to ask Anthony to take over so thank you okay best go ahead sure if I can take one minute the life my computer blacked out on one screen I'm over here and this if I look distracted this this particular setup is a little distracting so I'm going to see if I can do something a little different so that I'm not uh is that any better I don't think so nope I'm looking back over here it's fine we're all used to standing on our heads and now I've made it worse no we want a face though there you go um I'm going to let someone else try to fix this for me give me one second I'm great at technology can you tell yeah me too well at least she has helpers there you go we're gonna have to stick a piece of gum on thank you place there we go thank you okay perfect thank you very much and I'm going to ask you a favor in the process you know what I'm trying to get through a lot of material and there are going to be questions I'd like you kind of hold your questions so that we can deal with them in groups so that we really can get through there needs to be some kind of continuity to to this and I would appreciate that that opportunity so so I did send a powerpoint I don't know if everyone has it or whether we need to put it up on the screen I think we have access to it it's posted on our website all right so I'm going to go through there's a lot of pages I will try to skip through a lot of them but basically in the summary that I am chair of the the ESG committee for VPET the Vermont Pension Investment Commission and we had a meeting on February 4th to review s251 and the committee has a strong commitment to addressing climate change and I'll get through some of that in a bit but we think that that that that this particular bill is contrary to the the completed studies we've had for VPET and we're not in support of it we would argue that divestment does not reduce fossil fuel emissions but rather abdicates our voice and affecting positive change engagement with companies has proven to be effective and I'll talk about some of those efforts and VPET has engaged on a number of issues including climate change with positive positive results and we'll talk about that in a bit as well in 2017 we engaged a pension advisor to and it was selected by the environmental community to study divestment what we heard was that divestment increases costs and creates additional risk to the portfolio we exercise our fiduciary responsibilities by doing that and while divestment was not considered feasible our consultant which was pension consulting alliance did make recommendations on steps to address climate change VPET adopted an action plan based on that and we made progress on each component. Tom talked to you the other day about working and retooling our our carbon reduction policy and I think that that's a direction that we want to go in and it's consistent with the the concerns and the direction that VPET has made in terms of steps on climate change. Any discussion of divestment should be proceeded by an independent study and I believe that anything less is an abrogation of our fiduciary responsibilities. When Mr. Brooks was talking I I took notice of some things he said they did all the legal checks they looked to make sure it was sound they they had Makita and BlackRock take a look at it. You don't make decisions about investments without going through a process that that is consistent with our fiduciary responsibility. There are two stages to this and that's on page I would be helpful if I actually put pages on this I guess it's four that there are two stages to this one is what we call procedural prudence and that's a process by which a fiduciary reaches a decision and substantive prudence is the outcome of that process and fiduciary duties have a responsibility of the both you make it an adequate investigation but then you make a decision based on that that investigation right now the studies that are out there which were one done by our staff one done by an independent advisor and a third done by PCA which was an investment advisory firm that was picked out of a group of three that were provided by members of the environmental community all pointed to the fact that divestment was not appropriate for our portfolio and I want to stress that I am not making a comment on divestment in general I am making a comment specific to the due diligence that we've made and I'm more than happy to have another study and another process and to say that we don't need studies we have to move on part of our fiduciary responsibility is to make sound judgment based on facts and I think that given what Mr. Brooks just said I think he would agree with that we need to have a process in place to to make sure that what we're doing is correct and I would welcome that type of process the PCA study was a great example of a procedure on substantive prudence in action and any course change that we are going to make or will contemplate making should be done with with the same type of prudence that we had the last time with respect to the committee supports alternatives that were prevented presented by VP chair Tom Galancos at this meeting today in his presentation and I'll just mention those quickly VP carbon policy should be vetted by the ESG committee but we are looking at that expanded engagement activities identifying priorities to target three collaboration with pension oversight joint committees pension boards the legislature and interested parties we see this as a collaborative approach and if you have time I would recommend you take a listen to the audio versions of all the meetings we had back in 16 and 17 including four presentations on fiduciary responsibility to buy investment excuse me environmental advocates to buy councils to pension funds we had a very clear open exchange I think you'd find that that was a very fruitful process for all of us active interview and with divestment positions when engagement fails and creation of a study group to review the 2007 recommendations we are engaged in social economic excuse me environmental social and governance the ESG policies we see that ESG is all about making the decisions that the board has it's integrated into our investment policies there are some materials on page eight I won't go through all those our proxy policies our shareholder resolution information our ESG policy and I have included I guess the term is links to the to the various reports that you can find on our on our site as well as the new VPIC commission site and I would strongly urge you to to take a look at those VPIC engagement does make a difference and I think that I when I heard someone say tiny bear I think that was you senator Clarkson we might be a tiny bear but when we get together with all those other bears we make a loud noise and VPIC does shareholder engagement as an effective means to vote it's as an institutional investor but we work with larger groups we were a founding member of a group called INCR investment network for climate risk that time there were 11 states involved Vermont being one of them now that group which is run through series has has trillions of assets that are that are in that fund and the leverage that we have to make change is by virtue of that that those dollars you know there was a comment that we could only keep a small amount in certain investments to make a change it's the power of those collective dollars that makes a difference when we go to the boardroom and to get the votes that we need and we've been able to work with other institutional investors to do this in combination with other other groups as well and there's a list in my presentation of the various affiliations we have to address that I'm going to point out something that it's on page nine the presentation that our engagement allows us to join with other largest larger institutional investors and there's a there's a quote in here from David Sarota in a book called the uprising an unauthorized tour of the populist revolt scaring wall street in Washington I used to have three copies of that book because I loved it so much and I gave it to everyone to read unfortunately no one returned them so I now in need of another copy but I just like to read a quote from them then again the enormous size that makes multinational companies like Exxon mobile seems so immovable is precisely why these seemingly minute victories are actually huge if you if you get a giant corporation with global reach to change even a tiny bit you have made a global impact so I guess that goes back to those tiny bears once again on page 10 of the presentation we talked a little bit about some of our shareholder results and we did do a an engagement with Hess corporation along with the ministers Minnesota State Investment Board we filed a shareholder resolution to encourage the company to reduce its impact on climate change we ended up pulling that that resolution because we had success we in an sec 8k filing they agreed to link executive pay incentives to a flaring reduction target there's nothing more useful than in linking your salary to to to expectations and objectives and we think that that's a very important tool the company announced its plans to eliminate routine flaring by 2025 and endorse the world bank zero routine flaring by 2030 initiatives now we know that companies make efforts and then there's a little lag here and there we'll continue to work with these companies there is no perfect answer to all of this but we are clearly involved in that if you go to page 11 the Exxon mobile presentation that we have here and I know Mr. Brooks you talked about if I let you call me back I hope I can call you Richard here so Richard we did take a look at this and we see this is groundbreaking it was backed by an investor a small private equity firm called engine number one I refer to them as the little engine that could and we there were contested board elections and for the first time I believe in the history of Exxon they they ousted three members of management into that 12 member board and yes it's been eight months but eight months in a process is is just the beginning and having them and and continuing to do this work and to continuing to to address these and keeping the pressure on Exxon I you know I asked I had a great conversation about a dozen treasures and I met with engine number one to discuss the results what happened how did you pick Exxon and and the like and the bottom line for me was that that they saw this as a company that was double down doubling down on oil exploration and stranded assets and I entirely agree with you Richard on that that's why folks picked Exxon mobile as a target we see other companies I'm going to mention one you mentioned core business and and making transformation there's a company in France that would be on that 200 list by the way they were several years back before it became proprietary called to tell SA and to tell has done a lot of work in reinventing itself now I'm not going to pretend that they do not have carbon fossil fuel in interest in investments they do but they've done a number of things to to change its its position and they are investing in in renewables they're investing in companies that that do renewables there's a there's a invest a solar company in Vermont that has these cars that go by and it says on them you know the what do you call them the boy I'm trying to think of the term the the panels themselves and it says panels are provided by sunpower well to tell SA owns over 60 percent of to tell SA so that that oil company has now made a major investment in solar they when that company was having trouble sunpower back in 2012 when there was an issue with solar stocks tanking so again if I was to take a look at a short investment parameter I could say that solar stocks aren't going to cut it because look at what happened in either 2012 or 14 and by the way Richard I would say that 10 years is not a significant period of time to analyze an investment sector given that as you said that that we're looking at horizons of 20 30 40 years but to tell gave them cheap financing in the tune of about a billion dollars they were the first major fossil fuel company to acknowledge climate risk in 2006 they they started doing some of their work in 2009 on on investments and things like sunpower and others they've committed to a shift in its revenue base towards sustainable energy solutions they they exited the coal business in 2015 they they reported that they reduced emissions over the last three years at 20 percent aggregate decline in total greenhouse gas emissions emissions and they as I said they own a majority share in the sunpower this is an example of a company that is making transitions now are you going to ask if you're going to say that you know do you think the company's perfect no I think it's a work in progress but it is in progress and there are companies such as to tell that are making changes to diversify and invest in renewables I hate to have to take them out of our portfolio and send a message that we don't care about that diversification by a the hatchet approach that the s251 would have so I think that we need to rethink that process and rethink the the type of bill that you want to produce you mentioned earlier that that you miss madam chair that is very different than what new york has and you are absolutely correct new york's process is engage engage engage engage until you can't engage anymore that is very different than the main approach was what wiped these out these funds out of your portfolio and I think that before you jump you should do some research make that make an informed choice going back to to the the package that I presented to I kind of I had to have some fun with this so if you go to page 12 of the presentation you see some reactions to the excellent vote across the country the guardian which is a a paper that has clearly sided with the the the issue of divestment said that the exon failed to defend his board against the coup launched by dissonant hedge fund activists engine number one and there was a major transfer transformation I saw another article that said big oil and gas had a no good very bad day it was a great day for the planet and I have a a tweet I guess I never never quite understood how you know Twitter and how that works I still haven't sent a tweet my entire life but this is from Bill McKibbin and it said well yet more news on this watershed day over exon strenuous objections to directors calling for climate change had been elected to the company's board and actually it ended up three with a close vote on the on the third one we also you see sometimes and you say what does that mean when that you see you've withdrawn a a a a shareholder resolution you withdraw it when you've had success and when you've been able to negotiate with the company and you see in our package that we had proposals with activism blizzard on pay on pay parroting hess on flaring reduction targets prosperity bank shares on inclusive recruitment policies and we're able after successful negotiations to withdraw our our shareholder proposals we worked with an entertainment company I'm just going to go through a few of these in terms of reporting on gender and non-binary populations and and pay equity I worked with a group of 11 treasurers to engage a large real estate manager on its hotel management practices during the pandemic and in that case we worked with the union unite 90 percent of its membership had been laid off during the pandemic and we were able to work to get folks rehired we're able to work to change some of the practices now I will grant you that those are not all with the exception of has to tell Exxon that we've I'd mentioned where we've had changes and we've had successes we have an engagement practice with our managers as well we're not just engaging with companies what we're saying is that's talk to our investment managers the people who invest our funds and make a game change there we might have a hundred million dollars with abc investment manager but that manager is managing a hundred million a hundred billion of of dollars in under management with various institutional investors by changing that company's approach we make a difference not just in Vermont's tiny portfolio but again all the bears across the country and putting together to make change so we've done a process over the years to take a look at how our managers do the work on climate change what they have in terms of metrics how do they approach climate change and other ESG activities and you'll find on the VPIC website a full report on the actions of those investment managers in terms of the steps integrating ESG policies into their investment process and I would encourage you to take a look at that I'm going to take a quick look at some of the successes there in just a moment the bottom line is that in 2017 when PCA issued its report it said that we would not be in a position to do divestment however there are ways to move forward and they gave us a number of recommendations as treasurer and a member of VPIC I took those recommendations and put together a five point plan submitted it to VPIC and it was ultimately adopted by the ESG committee and then the full VPIC and we've had progress on all five of those I think I'm going to be running close on time so I won't go through all of them but we've adapted adopted a ESG policy and integrated that into our management manager selection process so we take a look at the their ESG policies including climate change when we are hiring a manager we continue to monitor that manager and performance and how it integrates that into risk and we make decisions about our investments based on that policy PCA recommended exploring and creating a new passive investment vehicle we tried to work on that for a number of years we tried to partner with a larger than us city out west on the coast to do something we're unable to get that done so now we've invested 200 million dollars in a in an investment separate index fund developed for us by rock black rock that that works toward a low carbon transition and we're very thrilled that we were able to do that that's 200 million that's recent we're looking to do more in that area and and we want to see if we can combine our efforts with other institutional investors and and get some value not just for vermont but showing that that model works and getting that out to other institutional investors the treasurer's office also was made a recommendation to explore ways to identify renewable energy opportunities as an asset class or a subset of asset classes we talked a little bit about one of our of our agriculture technology investments and this is a company that works in sustainable agriculture and and creates infrastructure that that supports it that's the line of business this isn't you know something that it's on the side this is what they do for a living and we've invested in that and are continuing to look for other opportunities the other recommendation is that we should look at ways to to do more metrics and with third-party vendors we've hired a a third-party vendor a matrix that allows us to take a deeper dive and in the process of doing our investment manager surveys and questionnaires we're trying to work with those investment managers to get more metrics we were working with the environmental community on that prior to the the onset of coveted and I think we're at a point now where we're going to be re-engaging with those folks beat that could the fifth recommendations the continuous dialogue with the investment managers on climate change and I think that we've been able to demonstrate a great deal of success there all through this package you'll see some of those successes and a little bit of information on each one of those action plan items I'm going to bring us to a to a page and I'll start Beth I'm going to say that I have to leave in about two minutes okay and I don't know about other people but so I have to join you so sadly okay let me just throw a couple of things in here we have artists and partners which is a global equity firm and they have not had any exposure to fossil fuel energy corporations in its portfolio since 2019 something that we identified in our process of working with the managers I acknowledge that BlackRock does maintain positions in some in oil and gas firms including Exxon and Conoco we do have a 200 million dollar investment in a low carbon transition fund and BlackRock has developed a series of ETF funds aligned with the 1.5 Celsius um degree scenario um we've um Blue Vista which is a real estate firm that we have is working now to to incorporate lighting rectifits and lead at certification even if I can't spell certification properly in the powerpoint to as part of their underwriting process when they're looking at investment properties. Benefit partners is a private equity firm they they have now hired a consultant to perform an independent ESG analysis on investments and integrating that into their investment process. Harborvest a private equity firm um scores all of their investments against an ESG template and they're developing an actionable climate change strategy in line with the recommendations and this is important because we see this as the future in terms of metrics the recommendations of the task force on climate related financial disclosures otherwise the TCDF and they included that information in their their report we are also looking at those for metrics in our system um quickly um we have a private and alternative credit company named Aries they've they've been a supporter of the TCFD and they've worked to a lot to they're going to be preparing a report in the next quarter on their their their aligned climate change strategy associated with the TCFD initiatives. Um Newburger-Burman if I can say that correctly private equity firm is a signatory to the net zero asset management initiative which has the goal of achieving net zero emissions in line with the Paris Agreement. Ponifex ag tech was the one I just mentioned that their key their sector their their line of business is environmental sustainability and climate change through investments in sustainable agriculture and lastly I would just point out that in 2014 the treasurer presented and the retirement boards approved a fossil fuel free investment option that was added to our deferred compensation and other retirement investment programs and despite efforts to to publicize that we actually worked with a a field organizer with 350 at the time to try to get some interest in it uh interest has been limited but we're not giving up on that and we're going to continue to to work on that. In conclusion VP is committed to ESG addressing the issues of climate change. I appreciate the work of 350.org and others because they they created awareness of the issues and to me that's very important but there is no one cookie cutter approach and taking a look at the all the tools that we have to to approach climate change is important. When we play one off on the other divestment versus engagement other practices what we do is we we we keep shooting at each other frankly and you give Alec and other groups conservative groups to play in field because we're too busy fighting among ourselves that's not the way we should do things we should work together in a collaborative way to find solutions. The goal again is to to use a variety of strategies to move on these issues. We are interested and by the way we can make contact with you as well we're always in contact with New York City, CalSTRS and New York State and Comptroller Denopoly was one of my favorite people and working on the issues of climate change and we would be happy to to to work with those folks as well and you as we're trying to find solutions and we've looked forward to doing that and we have a joint interest in and dealing with this we're recommending very strongly that it be done with prudence and through a thoughtful process of carbon reduction and again we're delighted that your folks are looking at it. What we want to do is have a process that meets our fiduciary responsibility meets the requirements for both what I refer to as procedural and substantive prudence just like what New York did they did all those steps it's time for us to take a look at those steps before we jump and thank you very much. Thank you and I'm if people want to stay and ask questions that's fine I do have to leave and what I'm going to suggest is that the even the main sponsor of this bill seems to not agree with the bill as it's written right now so what I'm going to do is I'm going to challenge the main sponsor of the bill to work with the treasure and the and VPIC to come up with language that reflects this thoughtful process that we should be going through. I think that's good I we had to get it in as you know by December 1st and I think after more thought I think we would and more research I think we would have maybe chosen something else but okay we are where we are. Yep regardless of how it came about I'm going to and if we want to do anything we're going to have to do it the week we come back from town meeting because that is that otherwise it won't go anywhere anyway so I'm I'm going to put that in your hands. Can I ask one comment before you leave. Yes you know I know the discussion with Richard Brooks was to bring in Makita or bring in somebody else to do studies they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. No I'm I'm not I'm concerned that if we know go that route we don't have any budget that was submitted by the government. I'm not suggesting any studies I'm suggesting that you come up with a piece of legislation that would move us in the direction and you've already had studies done and that's I'm not suggesting any studies that would cost money. No you're suggesting we come up I'm suggesting that the people who introduced the bill should be working with the Treasurer and with VPEC to come up with the language because apparently even the sponsors of the bill don't agree with the language as it is right now. Yep I think that's a good idea. Okay so with that we can talk to you. Yes let's do that and yes and you've got a bunch of us here in Chris Pearson yeah absolutely. And I'm going to with that I'm going to jump I'm going to say thank you to Beth and to Mr. Brooks and I'll see you tomorrow because I'm now almost 20 minutes late for the my forethought. Somebody will catch us up. Thank you very much. This was great. Thank you. Okay. See you later. Bye. Well Brian it's just you and I just kidding. Senator Ron. I don't have any questions. I'm happy to answer. I don't hear whether where Senator Ron Hinstill went. I don't either. But anyway you know it just seems to me I don't have any questions really I would just make an observation that it seems like with the work that's been done in places like New York I mean it should be able to give us a shortcut to moving in that direction. I mean the question with New York that I would have is is it a policy discussion where we implement it as a VPEC policy or is it actual legislation because that's a good question. I'm not sure the answer that either because New York seems to be more policy driven with internal internal decision making and and I'm happy to explore either I just I view legislation as difficult to craft in the time frame you're looking at versus working with policy and with Beth being chair of the ESG committee VPEC did refer the draft carbon policy to her subcommittee at VPEC to review further so that we're already working on that process I just I worry that legislation may just be a little bit too rushed in the one week time frame to get it just right versus looking at like the New York approach which was you know work with their internal subcommittees to come over something that we often work with so that's really for my I think the bill itself was basically a conversation starter which it has done which is good but now we're having the conversation so it's making that's progress I guess but I hope what's been mentioned here and understood is that Beth and I and VPEC over the past four or five years have done a tremendous amount of work in this area with only three staff people so we've really tried to engage and we've really worked with PCA to come up with a plan now getting to the next level and seeing what worked and what didn't and and how we can make it better I view legislation as a way to say you haven't been doing a good job or you haven't been working at it and I think that's more of a last resort and so I'm much more comfortable working with the ESG committee and figuring out what works and what doesn't and and seeing where our successes were and and trying to move forward that way but I worry about legislation and the ancillary effects that could have on our indexing strategy and our private equity and I'm more worried about that versus anything else because it was just a matter of selling the 150 million in stocks yeah we could do it tomorrow the question is how do we then reinvest at a rate that's comparable we're we just got our performance reports for the end of the year and we're in the top 10 percentile for fees in regards to how much we get we pay in fees for all of our funds and and that's in a one year three or five year 10 year and 15 year period we've made tremendous strides in in benefiting taxpayers of the state of Vermont with our well thought out process I would hate the fact that maybe two percent of the portfolio is exposed to some of the sector would would would jeopardize the rest of our 98 percent that's my my concern sure mr chair mr chair I'm back um I apologize I'm now I'm now sitting at Owens um uh station because I managed to wreck both screens in my office so they're black I can't see you and I can't unmute other than that it's perfect you yourself away center collar Richard um if you don't mind can you just reflect on the question of whether new york did policy as opposed to legislation I think it was being geared on policy but can you give us an idea what went on there yeah so um new york city and new york city are different so new york city the comptroller is the um you know is the custodian of the five pension funds um in new york city but each pension fund there has a board um which is a combination of uh elected uh union members polities of the mayor um the comptroller and the public advocate I believe and there's different makeups depending on which board you're on um but basically it came down to um the mayor and the comptroller agreeing that they wanted to move ahead with divestment and then basically initiating conversations with the other trustees who then in the majority agreed to pass a policy that would put in place a plan to divest those pension funds in the end only three out of the five pension funds moved ahead with divestment so the board of education the teacher's retirement system and the new york city employee retirement system the fire and police pension funds decided not to move ahead with divestment so that was a policy passed by the individual pension boards at the behest of the comptroller at the state level um the different structures in place there for that for their pension fund they have a single custodian no pension board and that's the state comptroller who's a single custodian so he could decide tomorrow to divest or not divest I didn't realize that so he makes he's he's a singular decision making he's a singular decision maker obviously he takes the advice of his staff very seriously they are outside advisors and consultants etc um there was legislation that was proposed and was actually moving quite far ahead had a number and a majority of uh sponsors on board both in the state senate and in the assembly and it was going to come down to a vote uh likely at the beginning of 2021 and the comptroller decided to move on um his decarbonization and de-risking and divestment plan ahead of that legislation coming to a vote so I think the legislation in that case was um you know a good engagement tool and was very much focused on educating the public and uh decision makers around this but in the end the state comptroller passed a policy and put in place a climate action plan as he calls it that is systematically reviewing out all of their fossil fuel holdings kind of sub-sector by sub-sector assessing them against certain risk criteria so are they is there capex spending in line with the direction of alignment with the paris climate agreement uh do they have real transition plans in place are they going to you know are they going to achieve net zero emissions do they have emissions reductions in place what's the what is what kind of reporting do they do so a whole series of factors evaluating each company based on those and then divesting from those who uh he deems to be too risky um to financially risky to the funds so a very systematic approach but it's also time limited so he said we have four years to do this we're not going to engage with these companies uh for an infinite amount of time we basically when we start a review six months later if we don't get the right responses and don't have the right plans from these companies then we're out of these companies and so he's gone through coal uh oil sands companies just completed shale oil and gas and now he's moving on to the biggest review which is their integrated oil and made oil and gas majors which includes exxon and chevron those companies so it seems to me i'm just going to say one more thing that i'm going to let us go because we've all been here sitting here a long time not just for this discussion but we went through all pension discussion as well earlier this with this afternoon so but it reminds me back when senator senator when treasurer pierce was talking about a company who i can't remember the name but the one in france i believe that was doing good stuff and had invested in the renewables whatnot you would you would not have to divest necessarily from that company because that company was making efforts to become that zero producer of carbon so i think there would be criteria that would allow you to continue to invest in that company if they were moving in the right direction that's my understanding anyway so i think is that the case well senator senator perlina i believe when i looked at the the current bill um and following the main model it would still be on that 200 list um it was 11th or 12th on the list years ago yeah but a policy would allow us to screen that out based on our criteria that would set up so yeah right i think that we i'm sorry but i just think the bill is not on the table at this point you know to talk about the bill the doing this doing that the bill is the way to start this conversation it's certainly not to be all and end all of the strategy of planning for divestment so i appreciate that and i'm glad to hear that and i'm looking forward to engaging with you and and richard i hope that you can be part of the conversation as well i know that a lot of the environmental groups in in the state are continuing to have dialogues with us and we'll bring them in we all have the same goal i'm uh i've been an advocate of environmental reform i was a a vocal supporter of the global warming solutions act and i continue to to have that commitment i think that our members of vpik have that commitment i know the folks on the est committee do we need to find ways to work together and find a solution and thank you uh senator for pulling us for putting this on the table so that we can have that conversation appreciate it appreciate your willingness to engage just in terms of the climate change um indication it started to rain outside my window as we're having this conversation anyway i want to thank you all for taking the time richard thank you for taking the time making yourself available tests will definitely be a touch yeah i'm happy to uh follow up i'll drop an email um to uh gale uh with some follow-up materials um that yeah and then show this favorite test yeah and just one just one last point i'll just make is just um whatever process that you decide to move forward with is um to ensure that you have the right level of staff resources to be able to implement that process part of the reason why new york city went the way they did which is clear divestment they set criteria identify fossil fuel companies got their advice and then move forward with divestment is because they didn't have the amount of staff that the new york state pension fund has to be able to systematically review and engage with all these companies and i know that vpik is smallest to half and you've done a lot already so um that is a that should be a consideration for you as well if you are not able to do a review of hundreds several hundred companies like the new york state model then you may want to look to something that's more simple and clear cut which could be more along the lines of pure divestment smaller number of criteria um and um that might be easier and more effective and and probably cheaper um than taking the new york state approach so richard if i could comment on that if it's okay senator which is that we don't want to take the uh the easy way out because we don't have the staff we have our associations with a number of groups uh climate action groups and uh and those resources yes we um were short step uh short short staff and we could not for instance do what new york does which is build their own um index fund internally we don't have the capability of doing that but i think that uh we would never want to have a uh a a short outlook on this because we don't have the staff to do it we have to find a way to make it right uh even if we're sure it's handed and uh oh tom will say this is a great opportunity to ask for more staff at the legislation but exactly we may need more just i think we may he doesn't like legislation well but the budget is budget and if you're asking us to do more things with the monies that we have and it's it's a difference between going to wall street and paying them 60 basis points versus asking for 300 grand more um i'd rather ask for the 300 grand more you know from the law so it's it's you know we'll have to explore whatever comes about from our what how that would impact staff and whether eric will meet a couple people or or not and we'll make that decision at that point the budgetary in the legislature for this year so we don't have we don't have time really to change it now but but next year you know as we go through this process we may come back to you next you know december uh this is what we'll need to really do this right and is this where the red direction that you want to go into well that's fair enough appreciate it all right thank you all and we'll be in touch take care don't get rained on okay goodbye