Caisse des Dépôts to phase out oil from fixed income holdings
Caisse des Dépôts, the €320bn French public sector pension fund is phasing out oil from its fixed income holdings as part of a wider update of its climate policy.
The investor, which is currently the third largest asset owner in Europe, will no longer buy bonds from oil-producing companies, a move which will include oil majors such as TotalEnergies. In addition, the fund will also freeze its exposure to the oil sector across all asset classes which would involve a commitment not to expand exposure to oil shares, the fund revealed.
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Transition planning and regulation are the key reasons for the phaseout, Nathalie Lhayani, chief sustainability officer at La Caisse told Net Zero Investor. “Under CSRD, we have to publish every year a climate transition plan, and as we took a commitment of aligning our activities to a 1.5 degree scenario, corresponding to net zero by 2050 commitment target, we chose to make sure that our commitments for the oil and gas sector converge with the new recommendations from SBTI” she explained.
Overall, the fund has only limited exposure to oil bonds, she adds, with some €4.8bn of the turnover exposed to the oil and gas sector and €2.5bn invested in the upstream part of the value chain across all asset classes. Environmental campaigners have welcomed the move but would like to see the fund go further, extending the phase out to LNG firms, particularly those developing new LNG terminals and gas-fired power plants such as ENGIE.
“At a time when many other investors, including French pension body Ircantec and life insurers like Maif and Suravenir, have already stopped all new investments in companies involved in LNG expansion, Caisse des Dépôts must go further and stop financing fossil fuel expansion across the entire value chain” said Agathe Masson, Reclaim Finance sustainable investments campaigner.
A spokesperson for La Caisse des Dépôts said that the fund had excluded direct financing of upstream gas production projects since 2022 but opted to apply shareholder engagement for its downstream segment, which includes gas distribution and transport with views to reaching decarbonisation targets. While the new commitments did not specifically target the LNG sector, they did de-facto also apply to companies that produce gas which were the same as those producing oil.
The move could send a signal to the oil and gas industry, with fresh bond issuances to refinance existing debt. In 2025, Total for example issued three tranches of long-dated bonds, some maturing as late as 2045. TotalEnergies released its latest outlook to investors today which included a 3% growth target for the oil and gas sector between 2025 and 2030.
The firm plans to maintain production at around 3 million barrels of oil equivalent per day through 2035.
