Empower Retirement – Dena Weinstein – 2022
Goals
Empower Retirement, the second largest retirement plan provider in the United States, enlisted their first EDF Climate Corps fellow, Dena Weinstein, to support its new roadmap to net zero strategy. Empower was interested in understanding the current level of its investees’ net zero alignment and developing an engagement prioritization strategy.
Solutions
Dena focused her efforts on supporting the financed emissions baseline as well as assessing the net zero alignment maturity of the portfolio’s holdings.
In order accomplish this, Dena did the following:
- Developed a threshold for Empower to follow when evaluating ESG engagement for future holdings in line with industry best practice standards
- Analyzed Empower’s holdings for ongoing revenue from coal involvement to assess coal exit strategies including decommissioning and energy transition efforts
- Identified key investees for engagement from which Empower can now focus its potential future engagements
Potential Impact
Dena’s work enables Empower to engage with its portfolio investments more effectively through greater transparency into the ESG maturity of its holdings. Dena clearly identified the areas of greatest engagement priority and developed a go-forward analysis framework for assessing net-zero alignment for future investments.
Dena’s work enables Empower to focus its time on engaging and supporting the holdings where engagement will go the furthest in achieving a net zero future.
