When the Church Commissioners for England committed to divest fully from oil and gas companies last year, becoming one of the first asset owners to do so, it marked an important signalling moment in the transition to net zero.

That is according to Sofia Bartholdy, director of responsible investment integration at the Church Commissioners for England, who was chosen by EF Sustainable Investment Awards judges as 2024’s Personality of the year.

Bartholdy, who joined from Tesco Pension Investment in 2022 to become the Church Commissioners’ net zero lead, said her biggest professional achievement in the Awards judging period included work to assess the Paris alignment of oil and gas majors including BP, ExxonMobil, Shell and Total, which ultimately led to the decision to restrict the investments.

While its holdings in oil and gas companies before the divestment represented less than 1% of the £10.3 billion ($13 billion) endowment fund the Church Commissioners is responsible for, “the impact was in the messaging rather than the actual divestment,” Bartholdy tells Environmental Finance.

The move fulfilled a motion passed in General Synod (the Church of England’s governing body) in 2018 according to which each of the Church of England’s National Investing Bodies – including the Church Commissioners, the Church of England Pensions Board and the CBF Church of England Funds, managed by CCLA – committed to disinvesting from fossil fuel companies “not aligned with the short-, medium-, and long-term goals of the Paris Climate Agreement”.

Using the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) tool to determine that none of the oil majors were on a credible path to reach net zero in line with the investor’s goals, “we came to the conclusion that, in the long term, we don’t see oil and gas as a sustainable business model,” Bartholdy says. She is also a member of the board of the TPI.

“The approach to fossil fuel companies is basically that, as a default, they’re restricted because we assume they’re not aligned with our net-zero goal. But, if we can find companies that really are aligned, we might de-restrict.”

This move complemented the Church Commissioners’ updated climate action plan, which it published last year and Bartholdy was integral to. It sets out an updated strategy for reaching net zero by 2050 and identifies “the levers we can use to act”, including engagement, Bartholdy says.

Around the same time, the Church Commissioners published its first sustainability bond impact report, following the issuance of its first sustainability bond in 2022.

Asked how much work it was to gather accurate data for this report, Bartholdy responds: “A lot!”

“Most of the proceeds [of the bond] are invested in funds, so much of the work was getting the information on the underlying companies and the outcomes data from our asset managers and assessing that,” she adds.

On the same subject, Bartholdy agrees with common criticisms that sustainability data “isn’t perfect … but also there’s a challenge in getting the data in and building in the systems you need to consume the data.”.

‘Translating’ data linked to listed equities so it can be applied to analysis of fixed income assets is a time-consuming process, she says, while the Church Commissioners is also working with its asset managers to improve the data it gets for private markets.

This will form part of Bartholdy’s work in coming months, alongside preparing its second sustainability bond impact report and updating the Church Commissioners’ interim net-zero targets for 2030 to fulfil its obligations as a member of the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance.

Bartholdy says she faces many competing demands on her time that contribute to a busy schedule – a challenge that is shared by many professionals working in the field of sustainable investment.

However, unpicking the complexity of the net-zero challenge is among aspects that most excites Bartholdy about her work, she says.

“The biggest frustration is that I don’t have enough time to do everything that I would like to do,” she explains.

“There are so many topics and angles that you need to accommodate, and the to-do list is endless!”

She says that increasing pushback against sustainable investment in recent years – notably with the US anti-ESG political movement but also criticism of sustainable finance regulation in Europe – is “a sign of the field maturing.”

“Getting to a point where we can properly debate and disagree on how we do things is healthy for the field – you should have different strategies of achieving these goals.”

Asked what she would change, Bartholdy responds: “If work is challenged it’s sometimes seen as a fundamental criticism of its existence… I don’t think that's the case.

“We should encourage more critical thinking, more common sense and intellectual curiosity in this space,” she concludes.

“That’s how you get the really interesting work.”