The change came after a public consultation with organizations include the British Airways Pensions, the BT Pension Scheme, the London Stock Exchange... 

"The changes focus on the responsibility of trust-based pension funds—currently the majority of schemes in the UK—to understand the financial implications of ESG issues, and not view them exclusively as matters of personal ethics, or optional extras,” the website reports.

“This is about the hard-headed fact that [...] broader considerations are likely to present long-term financial risks and opportunities to the solvency of [defined benefit] schemes and the value of members’ [defined contribution] pensions,” [...] the U.K. minister for pensions and financial inclusion [said].

By contrast, the U.S. Department of Labor in April advised retirement plans “not too readily [to] treat ESG factors as economically relevant to the particular investment choices at issue when making a decision.”