Sustainable Investing

Sustainable investing, sometimes referred to as ESG investing, integrates environmental, social and governance factors into investment decisions. Sustainable investing is based on the belief that companies’ efforts to address environmental risk, foster positive relationships with stakeholders and implement effective governance structures that promote responsible business practices are key determinants of long-term performance.

At OMERS, our core mission is to deliver secure and sustainable pensions to our members. We believe that well-run organizations with sound ESG practices will perform better, particularly over the long term, and that investing in these companies is consistent with our fiduciary duty.
 
Our approach to sustainable investing is grounded in four overarching strategies: (1) integrating ESG factors into our investment decision-making processes, (2) actively engaging with our portfolio companies to promote sustainable business practices (3) collaborating with like-minded institutions to exchange information, evolve sustainability practices and advocate for better transparency, and (4) continually adapting our approach to ensure it remains relevant and effective over time.
 
Our Sustainable Investing Policy can be found here.

We believe the world is transitioning to a lower-carbon economy, the pace and scope of the change will largely be determined by government policies, innovation and technological disruption/adoption. As long-term investors, we see significant opportunities to invest in clean energy and our portfolio is shifting to reflect this.
 
While OMERS continues to carefully and selectively invest in traditional energy assets as part of a balanced and diverse energy portfolio, clean energy is a significant and growing part of our strategy. Our commitment to clean energy is reflected throughout our portfolio, including through the achievements of our real estate arm, Oxford Properties which is ranked in the top 3% globally for sustainability and through our investments in Environmental Resource Management (ERM), Bruce Power, Arctern and Leeward Renewable Energy.

We believe that as the world transitions to a lower-carbon economy, there is a vital role for responsible, long-term investors such as OMERS to provide leadership on the cleaner and safer production and transportation of traditional energy. Today, we believe that traditional energy assets still form part of a balanced and diverse energy portfolio, and that to divest completely from traditional energy would mean that we lose our voice, and influence, in a very significant portion of the energy market. We use our influence as investors to help ensure that the traditional energy companies we have ownership positions in adopt a proactive approach to creating long-term, effective, relevant and transparent ESG strategies.

Any industry or sector exclusions are determined based on a set of criteria approved by our Senior Executive Team that consider risks posed by ESG factors, as well as OMERS fiduciary duty.
We believe that investments in companies engaged in the following activities meet those criteria, and therefore do not meet our risk-return requirements:

• civilian firearms manufacturers;

• cluster munitions manufacturers; and

• tobacco producers and manufacturers.