CDPQ announces its new climate strategy

Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a global investment group, announced today its ambitious new plan to fight climate change. Since implementing the organization’s first climate strategy in 2017, CDPQ has surpassed its targets and is now looking to build on this experience to intensify its efforts in achieving a net-zero portfolio by 2050.

Leveraging the expertise its teams have acquired over the past several years, CDPQ is basing its new climate strategy on four vital and complementary pillars to meet the transition’s major challenges.

Two of these pillars build upon the organization’s accomplishments since 2017 while increasing its ambition:

• 1. Hold $54 billion in green assets by 2025 to actively contribute to a more sustainable economy. 
• 2. Achieve a 60% reduction in the carbon intensity of the total portfolio by 2030.

Two new pillars have been added to move CDPQ’s climate action into the next stage:

• 3. Create a $10-billion transition envelope to decarbonize the main industrial carbon-emitting sectors. 
• 4. Complete our exit from oil production by the end of 2022.

As a long-term investor, CDPQ designed this strategy with a distinctive approach that will deliver its depositors the return they need while helping meet the enormous challenges of climate change.

“The climate situation affects everyone, and we can no longer address it with the same methods used a few years ago,” said Charles Emond, President and CEO of CDPQ. “The urgent need to act demands that we do more, faster, and that we innovate. We have to make important decisions on issues such as oil production and decarbonizing sectors that are essential to our economies. With this new strategy, we are demonstrating our leadership as an investor and enter the next stage of climate investing. We believe this is in the interests of our depositors, our portfolio companies and the communities we invest in.”

“Four years after adopting our first climate strategy, we reached and even exceeded our targets. With our new strategy, CDPQ taking action on the climate on several fronts, engaging directly with companies, while investing even more in green assets. Our teams will continue to take concrete steps to accelerate the transition, in Québec and around the world,” added Kim Thomassin, Executive Vice-President and Head of Investments in Québec and Stewardship Investing at CDPQ.

As part of this new strategy, CDPQ is innovating by dedicating a $10-billion transition envelope to decarbonizing the real economy. Leveraging internationally recognized frameworks, CDPQ will support companies in the heaviest emitting sectors by helping them reduce the carbon intensity of their activities at the source.  

CDPQ will also complete its exit from oil production by the end of 2022. It will dispose of its remaining assets in the sector, which make up 1% of its portfolio, and therefore avoid contributing to the growth of the world’s oil supply. 

CDPQ’s new Climate Strategy is available on its website.