In February, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, a Canadian pension plan with C$270 billion ($197 billion; €167 billion) in assets, unveiled a revised climate strategy, with new targets and new ways to measure progress.

In this episode, Anna Murray, senior managing director and global head of sustainable investing, takes us behind the changes, explaining why the pension has moved away from emissions intensity as a primary way of measuring climate progress and how the new strategy shifts towards “real world impact”.

“While the direction of travel is clear for the energy transition, it’s not necessarily linear, so it’s going to move all over the place depending on what geographies we’re in, depending on what sectors we’re talking about,” says Murray. “So the idea [is that the new climate strategy] takes into account this nuance, while understanding that the direction of travel is clear.”

Murray, who was listed among our sustainable private markets influencers in 2024, also gives her views on the evolution of sustainability within the context of institutional investment: “It is reasonable to see retrenchment from heavy-handed virtue signalling, and it is in fact quite inspiring and exciting that we are now in era of pragmatism and getting to work.”