The top investment officer of the nation’s largest teachers’ pension fund actively dissuaded state workers from divesting from underperforming and ecologically devastating fossil fuel investments — then went on to buy and sell more than $1 million in oil and gas stocks, state records obtained by The Lever show. 

Scott Chan, the chief investment officer for the 1 million-member, $390 billion California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), began trading fossil fuel stocks in 2023 — the year after he told the teachers that divesting from the sector could potentially result in a $20 billion loss for the fund. 

CalSTRS, and the larger state workers’ pension fund, often acts as a bellwether for other state pension funds. If the teachers’ fund had divested from fossil fuels, it could have signaled that the sector is not a reliable investment — and affected the stocks Chan subsequently invested in. 

It’s why critics accuse Chan of prioritizing his own self-interest over workers’ retirement or the environment. In addition to fueling climate change, fossil fuel stocks have been found to routinely underperform other sectors — so much so that a 2023 study found that CalSTRS divesting from the energy sector could have resulted in more money for its members. 

Chan’s stock trading is “disappointing to say the least,” said Deborah Silvey, a retired community college instructor and cofounder of Fossil Free California, a group of California pension fund members pushing both CalSTRS and the larger California Public Employees’ Retirement System to divest from fossil fuel companies. 

“We’ve been working on [divestment] for over a decade, and what we’ve seen is climate chaos is more real than ever,” Silvey told The Lever. “We need to put our money where it should go and not in climate-damaging fuels.”

But Chan isn’t the only CalSTRS employee trading fossil fuel stocks. 

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