Paper short abstract:

Workers are increasingly aware of the connection between their pension savings and carbon emissions. Thus, pension companies have begun to decarbonise. By producing lists, they exclude specific corporations from their investment portfolios. I explore the exclusion lists as central devices.

Paper long abstract:

Recent heat records and extreme weather serve as reminders that rapid decarbonisation is needed. Sustainable finance has become a dominant regime for addressing one of the most acute planetary problems. Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) managers are increasingly hired to implement what is in vernacular referred to as responsible investment practices. My empirical focus is on Danish pension companies strategizing to align with the Paris Agreement. Nevertheless, there is a disconnect; every pension company in Denmark, to some capacity, invest in fossil-fuel-based corporations in which carbon emissions occur as a central part of the business operation. This paper explores how the increasing awareness that workers are connected to global capital through their pension savings implicates the decarbonisation project. The analysis is based on fieldwork at a pension company, interviews with ESG employees as well as pension companies’ ‘exclusion lists’. These are documents determining which corporations do not align with the pension funds’ investment strategies. The lists vary in size; while some have less than a hundred companies on the list, another has 945 companies excluded, all based on different definitions of responsibility. I show how exclusion lists work as devices integrating and, therefore, producing different definitions of carbonisation and decarbonisation into financial streams. By assessing the exclusion lists political power on the concrete side of intervention, the paper opens up for a discussion around how financial key actors continue to make possible planetary carbonisation while attempting to part-take in decarbonisation projects.