industries linked to oil, gas and tobacco will be excluded from the label

This is a small bomb in the energy sector and for investors because the new version of this “Socially Responsible Investment” (SRI) label will notably exclude TotalEnergies. Concretely, investment funds which will support companies presenting a project in hydrocarbons, such as oil or gas, will no longer be able to claim the label from March 2024. The new version will even go so far as to exclude companies from the sector tobacco and those that have their headquarters in fiscally non-cooperative countries.

The redevelopment of this label had been in the works for several months. Until this summer, industrial lobbies did everything to avoid the obstacle but the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, decided, to the great satisfaction of the various environmental defense associations.

Regain credibility

This label was set up by the Ministry of the Economy and Finance in 2016. It is the main recognition, a buffer of sorts, to be sure to place your savings in investment funds supposed to be favorable to environment, respecting social and good governance criteria. Some 1,200 funds of this type are recognized to date, but the label had lost credibility, accused by many associations of being too lenient towards companies in the fossil fuel sector.

Of the 1,200 SRI-labeled funds, an estimated 170 have TotalEnergies in their portfolio, the equivalent of 770 billion euros of investments. French people who want to invest or place their savings in the ecological transition will be able, from March 2024, to take this new indicator into account to redirect their money. As for businesses, they see it as an obstacle because the energy transition requires heavy investments. The Ministry of the Economy has just thrown a spanner in the works: the days of easy financing of the ecological transition are over. This financing will be ethical or it will not be. It’s up to manufacturers to reinvent themselves.