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Inside Business

Oil is polluting investment portfolios as well as the planet

A report from Carbon Tracker highlights the miserable performance of fossil fuel investments and shows a marked decline in share issues. But the sector still has supporters among banks seeking to turn a quick profit, writes James Moore

Wednesday 31 March 2021 00:00 BST
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<p>Oil: polluting the planet and your savings</p>

Oil: polluting the planet and your savings

They used to call it “black gold”, but oil’s lustre has faded dramatically over the past decade, and the same is true of other fossil fuels. 

The performance of energy stocks over the last decade or so, per the MSCI global energy index, has been miserable. That’s one of the points made by Carbon Tracker, the energy think tank, in a report published this morning titled “A Tale of Two Share Issues”. 

It shows that the value of share offerings in fossil-fuel production and related companies dropped by $123bn (£90bn) over the last decade, underperforming in the MSCI All Country World Index by 52 per cent between 2012 and 2020. 

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