Futures for the uncommitted? Translating net-zero to pension savers

Abstract

This study explores the ambivalent futures inherent in pension savings. Pension funds aim to create safe economic futures for an ageing population, at the same time as the funds still contain assets in oil and other fossil fuels. The focus in this paper is on how commitments to net-zero emission targets are translated by pension and insurance companies to the public and individual pension savers. The theoretical approach relies on the insights in studies of anticipation that anticipatory practices need to be materialized, for example, in practices, attachments and identities. These insights are brought into the framework of technologies of engagement. The context for the study is the pension system in Sweden, and an analysis is made of what modality of the future is enacted in the tools and practices that are made available for pension savers. A conclusion is that through comforting messages that pension savers neither need to worry about their economic safety, nor that their investments are not contributing to sustainable futures. Together with limited amount of information and insufficient tools for making well-informed investment choices, it is a rather passive pension saver that is assumed and enacted; a pension saver that is committed by default by being embedded in a financial system, but who presumably remains uncommitted to net-zero goals.