Swedish pension fund AP7 updated its blacklist on December 8 and added a total of seven new companies, including five Chinese coal-fired power companies, the fund recently announcement.

The AP7 pension fund’s blacklist is updated twice a year, in June and December, and according to the fund, of the seven new companies blacklisted, five are because of the Paris Agreement. The five companies are Chinese and include China Power International Development Ltd, China Shenhua Energy Company Ltd, Huadian Power International Corp Ltd, Shanxi Lu’An Environmental Energy Development Co. Ltd, and TBEA Co. Ltd.

AP7 is part of the Swedish Pensions Authority and currently a total of 93 companies are blacklisted and excluded from the fund’s investments. The purpose of the blacklist is to persuade companies that do not act responsibly to change their behavior.

“AP7 invests in companies that accept in an acceptable manner the requirements of the international conventions that Sweden has signed and which are expressed in the ten principles of the United Nations Global Compact, which describe the corporate responsibility for human rights, working conditions, the environment and anti-corruption. AP7 also blacklists companies involved in the development and production of nuclear weapons. Since the review in December 2016, the Paris Agreement on the United Nations Climate Convention has been one of the standards on which the analysis is based, ”the fund said in the statement.

Since December 2020, companies with a large absolute climate impact in coal have been blacklisted with expansion plans for their fossil fuel operations. The focus is on the coal companies, as research has shown that decommissioning coal as an energy source is the most important measure to combat climate change.

The other two companies which are now on the blacklist are the Finnish company Wärtsilä for its involvement in the production of components for nuclear weapons and Ratch Group Public Co. Ltd.