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Report: Norway's $1 trillion wealth fund falls short of coal divestiture goals

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Report: Norway's $1 trillion wealth fund falls short of coal divestiture goals

Norway's opposition party is facing a backlash for allegedly backpedaling from its vows to "close all loopholes" that allowed the country's $1 trillion wealth fund to remain invested in companies with large coal operations, Bloomberg News reported May 30.

The Labor Party led the opposition in 2015 in urging the government to impose stringent criteria on coal investments. The current rule bans investments in miners or utilities that rely on coal for more than 30% of their activity or income, leading to the exclusion of 69 companies.

However, a recent report by environmental groups Greenpeace and Urgewald estimated that the fund still has investments of 16 billion Norweigan kroner in companies that should have been excluded under the current criteria.

"We should already have put in place a significant tightening of the criteria since we, for example, can see that the fund is invested in companies that are building coal power plants," Bloomberg quoted Kari Elisabeth Kaski, a member of the committee for the Socialist Left, as saying. "Labor is running away from its earlier promises of a fund without coal."

Labor lawmaker Svein Roald Hansen told Bloomberg that expanding the criteria could be challenging.

"We're invested in companies that have their tentacles all over the place," he was quoted as saying. "It's not easy being rich and staying away from everything that's not so good."

As of May 30, US$1 was equivalent to 8.19 Norwegian kroner.