Divestment and greenhouse gas emissions: an event-study analysis of university fossil fuel divestment announcements

ABSTRACT An event-study analysis of U.S. university fossil fuel divestment announcements on public fossil fuel companies’ abnormal returns (AR) is used to estimate divestment’s impact on fossil fuel companies’ greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These ARs could affect the companies’ capital development, and subsequent GHG emissions. The event-study is paired with a probit regression analysis of annual fossil fuel companies’ Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, to ascertain whether divestment is viewed as a material risk to capital expansion. This analysis finds a statistically significant negative average AR for divestment announcements on event day negative one and a statistically insignificant three-day cumulative average AR. Furthermore, this study finds that a 1% decrease in the average or cumulative average AR is associated with a statistically significant increase in the probability that firms disclose divestment. Therefore, while the overall change in GHG emissions is still ambiguous, there may be evidence for divestment’s efficacy.