Dirty, dangerous and divisive. Coal, your time is over.

Last year saw a number of major investors and institutions report that they would be divesting from coal. One of the reasons is because of the “keep it in the ground” argument which states that if existing reserves of fossil fuels are burnt then the result will be an increase in global warming that will result in catastrophic changes for humankind itself.

As a result there is intense pressure to force corporations to avoid mining/extracting our coal and oil as this will both prevent the resulting carbon from being released into the atmosphere and will force governments to push energy consumption to originate in renewable sources.

In March 2016 one of the charities that managed part of the assets amassed by John Rockefeller announced that it would be withdrawing from investments in fossil fuels, stating that there is “no sane rationale” for companies to focus their efforts on exploring for new sources of hydrocarbons.

The fund in question was the Rockefeller Family Fund, which has circa $130m of assets. It itself was following in the footsteps of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which manages the comparatively paltry $45m. However the big boy of the Rockefeller tree – the $4bn Rockefeller foundation – is yet to announce divestment from fossil fuels.

In April of last year the sovereign wealth fund of oil superpower Norway announced a similar move. In 2015 it reported that it would be excluding investments from coal companies and in 2016 the measures took effect. It had a particularly powerful impact as the fund is the world’s largest pension fund.