To: The Open University Council

Divest The Open University from fossil fuels

🎉 Victory! 🎉 The UK’s largest university ditches all fossil fuel companies days before COP26!
The Open University has committed to fully divest fossil fuel companies from its £123+ million investment portfolios.

An absolutely huge congratulations to the students and others in Fossil Free OU for their tenacity & commitment to climate justice. Without them this win would not have been possible.

Now students are demanding The Open University aligns its careers services with its green image & excludes oil, gas & mining companies from student recruitment 📢 Add your voice & amplify the call here www.tinyurl.com/OU-FFCareers

Keep us winning 👉 www.peopleandplanet.org/donate

The signatories of this petition applaud the clear academic line followed by The Open University in teaching the science behind climate change, and the consequences of excessive 'greenhouse gas' emissions.

Further to this it seems only appropriate that The OU adapts its wider interaction with society, including financial matters to reflect the science taught by:

1. Immediately freezing any new investments in fossil fuels.
2. Divesting from direct ownership and any commingled funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate bonds within 5 years.

Why is this important?

To support the speediest conversion to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, encourage politicians to get serious themselves, and to be a consistent part of the solution rather than a part of the problem.

How it will be delivered

The petition will be ongoing. This will allow signature numbers to keep increasing, and the publicity pressure of the campaign to remain until such time as the OU publicly divests from fossil fuels.
Please do refer to the petition and current number of signatures when contacting the OU on this issue.

Partner

People & Planet

Links

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Updates

2021-10-27 05:35:50 -0400

Petition is successful with 1,088 signatures

2021-03-12 18:32:35 -0500

1,000 signatures reached

2021-02-22 06:18:55 -0500

Fossil Free OU is back! The movement at the Open University has been quiet for a while, but this week a new group is relaunching the campaign and we have big plans in store! It's pretty shocking that the OU still has investments in fossil fuels at this late stage, but we don't plan to let that be the case for much longer...
Please do take a few minutes to follow us on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/FossilFreeOU
https://twitter.com/GoFossilFreeOU
https://www.instagram.com/fossilfreeou/
Liking and sharing our posts and this petition is a great way you can help to amplify our campaign!
If you would like to be a little more involved, you can get occasional updates on simple, useful things you can do to help out (without loads of spam, we promise!) by joining our whatsapp broadcast chat: https://chat.whatsapp.com/KJYdX9HsVAL8F0nn8Q6g2x

2018-06-04 22:31:14 -0400

500 signatures reached

2018-02-14 17:33:06 -0500

300 signatures reached

2016-06-18 08:58:48 -0400

100 signatures reached

2016-02-03 06:41:46 -0500

50 signatures reached

2015-04-06 11:06:14 -0400

25 signatures reached

2015-03-21 17:15:08 -0400

10 signatures reached