The Oregon State Treasury is expanding its capacity to engage businesses across the globe on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. In addition, Treasury is strengthening its ability to collect and analyze comprehensive greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) data to implement the Climate Resilience Investment Act (CRIA). Treasurer Steiner discussed Treasury’s engagement strategy during a panel at the Council of Institutional Investors annual conference on Thursday October 1, 2026.
The Climate Resilience Investment Act directs Treasury to track progress in climate-positive investments, safeguard the long-term value of the state public employee retirement fund, and produce regular reports to the legislature. The law was developed by the Treasury and then passed in 2025 with bipartisan support.
Under Treasurer Steiner’s leadership, Treasury is committed to reporting on the emissions of the entire Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund (OPERF) and engaging investment fund managers and companies to identify opportunities for climate positive investments. To accomplish this task Treasury is:
- Improving direct GHG emissions data collection, including data from private funds, to enhance our progress reports.
- Engaging companies on their transition strategies, as well as gathering information from generalist managers with experience in sustainability-focused investments.
- Facilitating collaboration with other institutional investors to address carbon accounting issues large complex portfolios face.
Oregon State Treasurer Elizabeth Steiner said, “Climate risks and opportunities as well as other social and governance issues are material to our investments. Managing these risks and opportunities is vital to growing the pension fund. Evidence shows that companies that are paying attention to these risks and opportunities will have better bottom line results over the long-term.”
In the past year Treasury has restructured to expand its internal team of ESG experts and is hiring an additional engagement expert to lead targeted engagement opportunities to enhance the value of the state’s investment funds.
In addition, Treasury has contracted with EOS at Federated Hermes Limited to provide broad portfolio engagement services.
Treasury also has contracted with Oakledge Advisors to convene institutional investors that have highly diversified portfolios to identify and promote solutions to issues in carbon accounting unique to investors with large complex portfolios. The goal is to provide more consistent, comprehensive, comparable, and useful GHG emissions data. In January 2026, Treasury released Tracking Net Zero and Climate Positive Investment Strategies, a report on Treasury’s progress to achieve net zero GHG emissions in the OPERF portfolio by 2050. Treasury will release the first CRIA implementation report in January 2027.