"University of California Springs Divestment Surprise"

"One of the nation’s largest university systems announced it has shed some of its fossil fuel investment from its endowment and pension funds."

"The growing fossil fuel divestment movement snagged what its proponents consider a significant victory as the University of California announced Wednesday that it had successfully purged its $200 million in coal and oil sands holdings.

'This is a huge, huge, huge win,' said Karthik Ganapathy from 350.org, an environmental group that has supported divestment efforts nationwide. This 'adds a lot of momentum to the divestment campaign and right when we need it.'

This news came a week after the California legislature passed a bill mandating that the state's two major public pension funds, worth a combined nearly $500 billion, divest their less than one percent holdings in coal."

Zahra Hirji reports for InsideClimate News September 10, 2015.