The carbon footprint of our investment portfolios

Our invested assets are a significant lever we can use to catalyze climate action for a net zero future. By 2025, our goal is to reduce the financed emissions intensity of our investments by 25% from 2020 levels (for public equities and publicly-traded bond portfolios). By no later than 2050, our goal is for our entire investment portfolio to be net zero.

Along the way, we will set new interim targets and disclose our progress toward these goals at least annually. In addition, our asset manager, Addenda Capital, set a target that 75% of its assets under management will be net zero aligned by 2030, meaning they will be managed to be on track for attaining net zero by 2050. Co-operators and Addenda are committed members of the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA) and Net Zero Asset Manager (NZAM) initiative respectively, representing like-minded peers that are developing best practices and ways to reach these ambitious goals.

As part of our commitment to best practices, in 2023 our asset manager, Addenda Capital, engaged an independent third party to review its methodologies. The resulting recommendations prompted us to restate prior year results to reflect best practice and the latest available data. More details on these restatements and our methods can be found in Financed emissions of investment portfolios.

2023 Net-zero investment performance

In 2023, the financed emissions intensity of our public equity and publicly-traded bond portfolios decreased by 6.8% from 2022—but was still 6.7% above the newly-restated 2020 baseline (of 44.8 tonnes of CO2e/$1 million invested), when societal emissions were temporarily depressed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our restated baseline is 42% lower than our previously disclosed baseline, significantly increasing the level of ambition required to meet our 2025 interim target. We continue to engage actively with our corporate investees that are most emissions-intensive, as well as with public policy makers in an effort to bend the curve on societal emissions, not just within our investment portfolio.