当一家石油公司今天投资一个昂贵的新钻探项目时，它正在赌博。即使新井取得了成功，旨在减缓气候变化的未来政府政策也可能使该项目无利可图或迫使其比计划早年关闭。
When that happens, the well and the oil become what’s known as滞留的资产。这听起来像是石油公司的问题，但该公司并不是唯一冒险的人。
In astudy published May 26, 2022, in the journal Nature Climate Change,我们追踪拥有超过43,000个石油和天然气资产的所有权揭示了谁最终因陷入困境的投资而损失。
It turns out, private individuals own over half the assets at risk, and ordinary people with pensions and savings that are invested in managed funds shoulder a surprisingly large part, which could exceed a quarter of all losses.
More climate regulations are coming
2015年，全球几乎每个国家都签署了巴黎气候协议, committing to try to hold global warming to well under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) compared to pre-industrial averages. Rising global temperatures were already contributing to致命的热浪和野火恶化。研究表明hazards would increaseas greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from fossil fuel use, continue to rise.
It’s clear that meeting the Paris goals willrequire a global energy transition远离化石燃料。许多国家正在制定旨在鼓励转向更清洁能源的气候政策。
但是，石油行业仍在发起新的化石燃料项目，这表明它不会陷入未来的滞留资产的障碍。联合国秘书长安东尼奥·古特雷斯（AntónioGuterres）称recent wave of new oil and gas projects“道德和经济疯狂。”
风险如何从油田流向小型投资者
When an asset becomes stranded, the owner’s anticipated payoff won’t materialize.
For example, say an oil company buys drilling rights, does the exploration work and builds an offshore oil platform. Then it discovers that demand for its product has declined so much because of climate change policies that it would cost more to extract the oil than the oil could be sold for.
The oil company is owned by shareholders. Some of those shareholders are individuals. Others are companies that are in turn owned by their own shareholders. The lost profits are ultimately felt by those remote owners.
在这项研究中，我们模拟了如果政府在最近的减少承诺以及对搁浅的资产意味着什么，对化石燃料的需求如何下降。我们发现$1.4 trillion in oil and gas assetsglobally would be at risk of becoming stranded.
滞留的资产意味着资产所有者的财富损失。We traced the losses from the oil and gas fields, through the extraction companies, on to those companies’ immediate shareholders and fundholders, and again their shareholders and fundholders if the immediate shareholders are companies, and all the way to people and governments that own stock in the companies in this chain of ownership.
这是一个复杂的网络。
在通往最终所有者的途中，大部分损失通过包括养老基金在内的金融公司。在全球范围内，将其成员的储蓄直接投资于其他公司拥有的养老基金相当大的数量of those future stranded assets. In addition, manydefined contribution pensionshave investments through fund managers, such as BlackRock or Vanguard, that invest on their behalf.
我们估计，从一家金融公司的交叉所有权中，全球损失袭击了一家金融公司，从一家金融公司的交叉所有权中，从石油和天然气生产中滞留的资产可能高达681亿美元。其中，基金经理将持有约3710亿美元，其他金融公司的1460亿美元和1640亿美元甚至可能会影响债券持有人，通常会影响养老基金，而养老基金的抵押品会减少。
U.S. owners have by far the largest exposure. Ultimately, we found that losses of up to $362 billion could be distributed through the financial system to U.S. investors.
Some of the assets and companies in an ownership chain are also overseas, which can make the exposure to risk for a fund owner even more difficult to track.
有人会陷入这些资产
我们的估计是基于最近全球股份所有权的快照。目前，有油和气体prices near record highs due to supply chain problems and the Russian war in Ukraine, oil and gas companies are paying splendid dividends. And in principle, every shareholder could sell off their holdings in the near future.
But that does not mean the risk disappears: Someone else buys that stock.
最终，这就像一款音乐椅子。当音乐停止时，有人将留下滞留的资产。而且，由于最富裕的投资者拥有成熟的投资团队，因此他们可能最适合及时离开，留下不那么复杂的投资者，并定义了养老金计划，以加入石油和天然气现场工人为失败者，而石油公司的管理者则不断发展。他们的黄金降落伞。
Alternatively, powerful investors could successfully lobby for compensation, as has happened repeatedly in theU.S.和Germany。One argument would be that they couldn’t have anticipated the stricter climate laws when they invested or they could point to governments asking companies to produce more in the short-term, as happened recently在美国。代替俄罗斯用品。
However, divesting right away or hoping for compensation aren’t the only options. Investors—the owners of the company—can also pressure companies to shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy generation or another choice with growth potential for the future.
Investors not only may have the financial risk, but also the related financial responsibility, and ethical choices may help preserve both the value of their investments and the climate.
Gregor Semieniuk, Assistant Research Professor of Economics,UMass Amherst和Philip Holden，地球系统科学的高级讲师，开放大学
本文从对话在创意共享许可下。阅读original article。
