https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
For the resources industry, the trick to meeting ESG standards was pretty simple: sell your dirty fuels, especially coal. If you did, investors who cared about the health of the planet would love you, and your company’s valuation would go up.
The formula seemed solid a few years ago, and a big number of mining giants sold or spun off their coal assets. Canada’s Teck Resources was the latest to pursue the black-to-green transition with the sale, announced last year but not yet approved by Ottawa, of its metallurgical coal business to Switzerland’s Glencore.
Today, the formula is already looking like a relic of the now-ailing environmental, social and governance movement. Exhibit A is the Glencore report, released this week by Australia’s Tribeca Investment Partners. The report, in the form of a 16-page letter to Glencore’s board of directors, makes recommendations on how the company could inject some life into its underperforming shares.
For the rest of this column: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-coal-is-dead-or-at-least-was-according-to-the-esg-crowd-long-live-coal/