GLASGOW City Council’s new pensions investment policy has come under fire for retaining stakes in fossil fuel companies worth hundreds of millions of pounds. 

Environmental campaigners north of the border allege that the policy banks on the failure of crucial United Nations climate talks due to be held in the city in November. 

The Strathclyde Pension Fund (SPF), run by Glasgow City Council, was asked create a plan to divest from fossil fuel companies before the Cop26 UN climate summit opens. 

With the pensions committee due to meet tomorrow for the last time before the summit, the proposed new policy would allow significant investments to be retained indefinitely. 

Campaigners say that under the mooted changes, most major oil companies are likely to be deemed acceptable to invest in and that there is no requirement for investments to conform to the council’s own climate emergency plan. 

The policy also contains no references to specific figures, timescales or deadlines, making it easy for companies to obfuscate to avoid divestment, with the paper admitting under the policy that “most” of its current investments in energy companies would be retained. 

Activists in the city expressed their shock at the proposals and accused the council of “greenwashing.”

Isla Scott of Divest Strathclyde said: “We are frankly aghast that Strathclyde Pension Fund is still happy to pour hundreds of millions into financing the very companies who are driving the climate crisis and who are getting away with murder.  

“We want to see SPF put in place a real policy that will ensure they divest from these climate-destroying companies and reinvest in a sustainable future.”

Last week, Friends of the Earth Scotland estimated that Strathclyde Pension Fund has over £836 million invested in fossil fuel companies, more than any other Scottish local authority.  

Friends of the Earth Scotland divestment campaigner Ric Lander said: “Continuing to invest hundreds of millions in climate polluters is financial folly and morally repugnant.

“Fossil fuel companies can’t survive if we succeed in building a sustainable future. 

“That also means that, unless this policy is radically altered, Glasgow will host the world’s climate crisis talks knowing its pension fund is banking on their failure.”

A spokesman for Strathclyde Pension Fund said: “It’s welcome that campaigners recognise that our direct investments in industries like oil and gas are already decreasing. They are also dwarfed by our investments in clean, renewable energy.

“The fund’s exposure to oil and gas is less than half of what it was just five years ago, in terms of a percentage of our passive equity — and closing in on a two-thirds reduction in terms of the overall value of the fund.”

Glasgow City Council was approached for comment.