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Our 2024 Responsible Investment Report highlights the investment risks and opportunities the Fund faces. These include climate change, human rights and biodiversity. 

This year we examine the investment case for solar energy, positive impact via affordable housing investments and a forward look on natural capital investing.

We outline our focus areas for 2025 to ensure we meet our environmental, social, and financial priorities.

Our 2024 strategy includes a commitment to local impact investments, an approach embodied in our recent collaborative investment in south-west solar farms. Find out more in the case study, including where we plan to invest next for local impact. 

As committed responsible investors for over 20 years, our strategy covers our approach to responsible investing. You can also read about our approach to reaching net zero by 2045.

The new investment forms part of the largest operational solar deal ever transacted in the UK. It involves the Avon, Cornwall, Devon, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire LGPS Funds, who share a strong commitment to tackling climate change. The collaborative investment in south-west solar will generate around 196MW, enough to power nearly 70,000 homes.

Avon Pension Fund has announced an ambitious new goal to be net zero across all its investments by 2045. The latest move builds on significant work already completed by the Fund to maximise the real-world impact of its £5.4 billion investment portfolio. 

Following a consultation, in 2017 the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) issued initial recommendations for reporting to help stakeholders in financial markets understand their climate risks and opportunities. This covers the areas of Governance, Strategy, Risk and Metrics & Targets and Avon Pension Fund has now adopted this guidance and set out its own disclosures in this report.

Avon Pension Fund is pleased to announce it is transitioning its entire legacy low carbon equity strategy (~£780m) into the recently launched Paris Aligned Benchmark (PAB) developed by FTSE Russell and Brunel Pension Partnership.  

With the G7 Summit taking place this weekend in Cornwall, we’re proud to announce that we are a signatory of the 2021 Global Investor Statement to Governments on the Climate Crisis.

In signing this document, we stand alongside 456 other investors worldwide with a combined asset-worth of over $41 trillion. It calls on all governments in 2021 to increase their climate policy action and ambition urgently by COP26 (UN Climate Change Conference) in November.

Our 2021 Carbon Metrics Report details the weighted average carbon intensity (WACI), fossil fuel related revenues, reserves exposure and the disclosure rates among companies within the Fund's listed equity portfolio.

In light of the Climate Emergency, there is growing pressure on countries and organisations alike to publicise what they are doing to address and tackle the issue. As your Pension Fund, we know it is our responsibility to be transparent and to explain our actions in the matter, especially when it comes to investment. We’re pleased to have a new tool in our box to help us keep that promise, that we’d like to share with you.