BALTIMORE – Johns Hopkins University will stop buying stocks and bonds of companies that produce coal for electric power as a major part of their business.
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The university’s board of trustees voted last week to divest the university from separately managed investments in thermal coal.
The board voted for the divestment due to concerns related to the environmental and public health effects of climate change.
The university in Baltimore says it’s only the third time in Johns Hopkins’ history that the board has barred a particular type of investment because of broad social concerns. In the 1980s, Johns Hopkins divested from companies that did business in the then-apartheid state of South Africa. In 1991, the board ended all direct investment in tobacco company stocks and bonds.
