Will New York City Drop BlackRock Over Climate?

Update: December 18, 2025 — At their December 17 meeting, New York pension fund trustees tabled Comptroller Brad Lander’s proposal to rebid a contract with BlackRock, leaving the potential $42 billion move up to his successor.

Climate groups have for years been calling on Lander to cut ties with Blackrock unless it cleans up its portfolio, charging that it is one of the largest investors in fossil fuel infrastructure in the world. The company announced ambitious climate plans in 2020 and 2021, but has since downplayed its ability to force corporate action and this year left a major net zero finance group after blowback from US Republican officials.

“The systemic risk of the climate crisis threatens the long-term value of New York City’s pension funds,” Lander said in a statement accompanying the November proposal.

Lander’s proposal would be an ambitious step toward aligning the city’s pension investments with its climate goals — if the pension boards approve it. The funds’ last board meeting of the year, and of Lander’s tenure, is scheduled for Wednesday, December 17. None of the trustees have publicly committed to a vote.

The comptroller’s office says he supports an immediate vote, after initially suggesting he was ready to pass the baton on the issue. Some climate activists are pushing hard to make it happen.

Lander “has made a huge and great proposal to clean the pension funds and give money from dirty money managers to cleaner money managers,” said Pete Sikora, who leads climate campaigns at the advocacy group New York Communities for Change, or NYCC. “He has to assemble the votes to pass that proposal in December as he goes out the door. Otherwise, it’s just more hot air.”

NYCC has pressed Lander to divest from BlackRock for years, at times cheering him and at others hounding him at public events with chants of “BlackRock Brad.”

The firm, meanwhile, has bemoaned Lander’s recent proposal as “another instance of the politicization of public pension funds, which undermines the retirement security of hardworking New Yorkers.”

So what exactly is Lander proposing, why does it matter, and what could happen next?

New York City’s pension power

New York City has one of the largest pension systems in the world, rivaling those of entire countries. Its five funds — pooling the retirements of current and former teachers, police, firefighters, and countless other city employees — together hold more than $300 billion.

The city comptroller and the trustees are charged with investing that money to guarantee steady returns for pension holders. The comptroller, specifically, oversees the full pension system and serves on each fund’s board, guiding them on major investment and policy decisions. That includes contracting with asset management firms, who steward the pension money day to day.

As a major investor, the city can exert pressure on the world’s largest corporations, directly or indirectly, by moving its money or voting as a shareholder.

Almost five years ago, under former Mayor Bill de Blasio and Comptroller Scott Stringer, the city dropped $4 billion worth of the pension funds’ investments in fossil fuel companies, arguing that it was in the city’s financial interest to protect itself from climate change. In 2023, under Lander, three of the five city pension funds — excluding police and firefighters — adopted plans to zero out all emissions from their portfolios by 2040.

Blackrock’s climate record

Climate hawks said the only way to achieve a net-zero emissions portfolio would be to put pressure on the outside firms managing the funds’ investments. The largest share — more than $50 billion — is managed by BlackRock.

This year, Lander reviewed each of the city’s money managers for their compliance with the funds’ net-zero plans. In November, he found that BlackRock and two other firms were falling short. (The other two firms, Fidelity and PanAgora, manage a much smaller share of the city funds, around $400 million each. They have not responded publicly to Lander’s letter.)

BlackRock owns a 5 percent or larger stake in some 2,800 companies, by Lander’s count. They include some of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies, such as ExxonMobil and Chevron, as well as utilities and other polluting businesses. As a major stakeholder, the firm has massive financial leverage to press big corporations to cut pollution; climate groups and the comptroller say the firm has failed to do so, despite its promises five years ago.

BlackRock has disputed this characterization. “Setting, executing, and overseeing strategy are the responsibility of management and [a company’s] board,” the firm said in a report this year. “As one of many minority shareholders on behalf of our clients, BlackRock does not direct a company’s strategy or its implementation.” The firm has called the clean energy transition a “mega force” shaping the global economy, and says it provides sustainable investment options to all of its clients.

Brad Lander’s proposal

Lander proposed rebidding the pension funds’ core BlackRock investments — $42 billion worth — meaning the city would decline to renew BlackRock’s contract and instead start a process where any firm could vie for it. That would give the firm a chance to prove it can go green, or open the door to one of its competitors.

In his November letter, Lander wrote that the firm has decided that it will not exercise its full shareholder voting powers because of a “conservative interpretation” of rules issued by President Donald Trump’s administration early this year.

Those rules aimed to crack down on sustainable or “ESG” — or, as Republicans have called it, “woke” — investing. Red states pulled several billion dollars from BlackRock in 2022 on the grounds that the firm was being too proactive on climate and other issues, and more recently a group of Republican state attorneys general sued the firm for similar reasons.

In late November, BlackRock called Lander’s divestment proposal part of the same politicization. The firm said it could offer an investment program to all of the city’s pension funds that could meet their sustainability standards, and suggested that it would likely seek out a new contract to manage the city funds if the proposal were to advance. (A BlackRock spokesperson declined to comment further.)

Sikora said rebidding the pension holdings could have a huge impact.

“Our goal is to clean up the industry,” Sikora said. “Bumping off $42 billion from BlackRock and then rebidding it would create a competition for who’s the cleanest asset manager.”