P8 and P80 pension groups co-ordinator, Aled Jones, departs from Prince Charles-backed initiative

Dr Aled Jones, Facilitator for the HRH Prince of Wales, Prince Charles-backed P8 group of some of the world’s biggest pension funds with over $3 trillion dollars in assets, is leaving the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL), which launched it. Jones was instrumental in convening strategy meetings of the P8, which comprises three pension funds from Europe, three from Asia, three from the US and one from Australia including the Universities Superannuation Scheme in the UK, ABP, the giant pension plan for Dutch civil servants, as well as CalPERS and CalSTRS, the two largest US pension funds. The P8 group was brought together by Prince Charles to look at how to mobilise capital for environmental solutions. The P8 members say their investment scale and long-term investment horizon exposes them to the economic and human health consequences of climate change.CPSL also helped set up the P80 sister group of Asian pension funds, which held its first summit last year hosted by the National Pension Service of Korea and supported by the Asian Development Bank.
Jones is leaving for a post at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge to head up research on sustainability and finance with an emphasis on looking at what works and what doesn’t in terms of capital deployed for sustainability themes.
Co-ordination of the P8 group will switch to CPSL’s Brussels office, which was opened in 2009 and is led by Sandrine Dixson-Decleve. The Brussel’s office already runs the Prince of Wales’s European Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change, which brings together EU and international businesses who believe there is an urgent need to develop new and longer-term policies for tackling climate change.
Link to story: Breakfast with Barroso: what the giant P8 pension funds talked about in Brussels