{"id":6570,"date":"2016-01-22T07:32:28","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T07:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6570"},"modified":"2016-01-22T07:32:28","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T07:32:28","slug":"what-nus-did-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/01\/22\/what-nus-did-next\/","title":{"rendered":"What NUS did next"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NUS published two new reports this week. \u00a0One is a national status report on university investments in the fossil fuel industry (based on Freedom of Information [FoI] requests); the other is a report on student and staff attitudes towards fossil fuels and renewables.<\/p>\n<p>You can access both\u00a0reports <a href=\"http:\/\/sustainability.nus.org.uk\/divest-invest\/about\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here are \"a few juicy headlines\" from the FoI requests:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a398.9m of university endowments is definitely invested in extractors of fossil fuels<\/li>\n<li>NUS\u00a0estimates a grand total of \u00a3596.8m in endowment investments in fossil fuels (extractors, suppliers and technology and infrastructure)<\/li>\n<li>9.3% of endowment investments are in fossil fuels, compared to just 0.30% tobacco and 0.81% arms;<\/li>\n<li>~4% (\u00a318.7m) of the ~\u00a3450m research funding from UK industry and commerce last year came from fossil fuel companies<\/li>\n<li>14% universities have governors linked to fossil fuels industry.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The\u00a0attitudes survey (N=5000)\u00a0revealed:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Students and staff are less sure about divestment (44% think their university should divest from fossil fuels), but are united on renewables (87% agree that their university should invest in renewable energy);<\/li>\n<li>Half of HE student respondents say that they would be more likely to donate to their university, later in their career, if they knew the institution had stopped investing in fossil fuels;<\/li>\n<li>Staff pensions \u2013 47% would consider fossil free pension scheme, but none exist;<\/li>\n<li>61% of all respondents say their institution should use 100% renewable energy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>NUS has a plan ...<\/p>\n<p>Over the next 18 months, it\u00a0will be working with students\u2019 unions to get:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>i) \u00a0every penny of the \u00a398.8m known endowment investments in fossil fuels divested and reinvested into energy efficiency \/ clean-tech \/ renewables;<\/p>\n<p>ii) \u00a0as many universities and colleges as possible to agree not to put further investments into fossil fuels;<\/p>\n<p>iii) \u00a0as many universities and colleges as possible to commit to 100% renewable energy by a date of their choosing. \u00a0This could be bought (~39% of the energy bought by universities is green), or generated (1.2% of the energy used by universities is self-generated).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There's a short film of the launch event at\u00a0SOAS <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/nationalunionofstudents\/videos\/10153920221056318\/\">here<\/a>. \u00a0100 paper windmills were planted to\u00a0represent the \u00a3100m of university endowments invested in fossil fuel extraction companies. \u00a0If only it were so simple.<\/p>\n<p>I think it's worth rooting around in the appendices of the FoI-based <a href=\"http:\/\/s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/nusdigital\/document\/documents\/21132\/45821643fe8e49f9d3800bede83a76dc\/NUS_Divest-Invest_FOIs_report__Jan_2016.pdf\">report<\/a> to see what endowments UK universities have, and how much of them are invested in energy, arms and tobacco. \u00a0There are some eye-watering numbers. \u00a0The \u00a31.7m that Trinity\u00a0College, Cambridge has invested in Big Tobacco stood out for me. \u00a0By comparison, Homerton only has \u00a31m.<\/p>\n<p>It's a drop in the ocean for Trinity, of course, as their total endowment is some \u00a3884m. \u00a0Whilst that sounds a lot, it, too, is small beer compared to Harvard where the endowment is said to be worth some $36bn. \u00a0For comparison, the\u00a0USS pension <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uss.co.uk\/UssInvestments\/InvestmentsTypes\/Equities\/Pages\/USStop100investments.aspx\">fund<\/a> is worth about\u00a0\u00a341 bn and has significant holdings in defence, tobacco and fossil fuels. \u00a0Then there's the\u00a0Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund that's worth about\u00a0$790bn.<\/p>\n<p>And the UK's SWF? \u00a0Ah! \u00a0best not mention that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NUS published two new reports this week. \u00a0One is a national status report on university investments in the fossil fuel industry (based on Freedom of Information [FoI] requests); the other is a report on student and staff attitudes towards...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}