Analysis: "Want to be associated with saving the climate without taking steps in the right direction"

Climate change is increasingly on the agenda of business leaders and so is Davos this year.

Last year's edition may have been an Olympic game in self-aggrandizement when the richest and most powerful in the world met Greta Thunberg's climate wrath, and historian Rutger Bregman's thinking that the rich would be taxed higher.

At weflive.com you can follow Davos news and social media feeds. Within the subject group "How to save the planet", the world's largest asset manager, Blackrock Inc. is mentioned most. Its CEO, Larry Fink, made a well-timed play when they stated before the summit that they wanted to reduce their exposure to coal.

Blackrock is perhaps unknown to many, but is one of the Stockholm Stock Exchange's largest owners. In the Nordic region alone, the company manages SEK 500 billion. To understand how much money Blackrock Inc has power over, it may be worth trying to visualize seven thousand billion dollars. If you count $ 1000 billion and count 60 bills per minute, it will take you 31709 years - back to the Swedish ice age approximately. So counting all Blackrock's money would take 221,963 years.

Misunderstand me right. Blackrock's play is of great importance and may force other US fund giants to try to reduce their climate impact. But sustainability veterans raise a warning about what they see as so-called "greenwashing" - to make people believe that your business does more for the environment than they really do. Upon closer examination, Blackrock's decision only affects the investments that Blackrock actively manages - and in addition only companies that have more than 25 percent of their income linked to coal. The new green requirements therefore apply to "only" $ 500 billion of the $ 7,000 billion the company invests, according to a calculation by the Financial Times. Most of the manager's money is in index funds and this means that the company is a major owner of several large fossil giants such as Exxon, Chevron and Glencore.

The same Blackrock also bought corporate bonds in Saudi oil giant Saudi Aramco in April last year and CEO Larry Fink then wished they could buy more. And at the same time that the Saudi royal house was directly implicated in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It cannot directly be described as being at the forefront of sustainable investment.

But Blackrock is not alone in wanting to see himself as a climate knight. Other asset managers, such as insurance giant Zurich International, have recently made similar statements.

These statements not only come from nothing but are about pension funds, companies and individuals starting to press for fund companies to invest more sustainably.

So while we see more and more significant financial players preaching the climate's praise and taking the step towards more sustainable investment, we also, especially during the days in Davos, are learning more and more who want to strengthen their company's image and are closely associated with wanting to save the climate without actually taking some are always moving in the right direction. It's called greenwashing.