Climate change is a major issue for many reasons, but did you know it can also affect your pension?

When you retire, the money you get as pension benefits comes in part from Amey plc, as the sponsoring employer. The rest comes from the way we’ve invested that money on your behalf.

The costs associated with extreme weather events and the move towards a carbon-neutral economy, can have a significant impact on businesses and on the financial markets.

This in turn means it can affect the investments of a pension scheme like ours, and ultimately affect your individual pension pot.  

With this in mind our investment managers now consider climate change as a factor in investment decisions.

It's part of a process designed to make sure our investments remain profitable for members over the longer term.

This process includes looking at a wide range of environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors, including specific factors like climate change, to decide if a particular investment will be a good source of income for the next ten, twenty or thirty years.

For example, new government restrictions on the fossil fuel industry are likely to impact returns over time and could even exclude oil and gas altogether as practical investments for pension schemes.

You can find out more about our approach to investments, including ESG factors in our Statement of Investment Principles (SIP) here