IF at first you don’t succeed…knock on every door you can. That seems to be the mantra that Baroness Jones and the Green Party are undertaking in attempts to rid the country’s public pension funds of fossil fuel investments.

Despite the Greens taking credit for “leading the way” in getting City Hall’s pension fund out of fossil fuels, both Mayor Boris Johnson and the London Pension Fund Authority (LPFA) said an emphatic ‘no’ to the motion, instead favouring direct engagement with energy companies and taking advantage of a full suite of portfolio options.

If a Baroness wasn’t enough, former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas took the debate to Prime Minister’s Questions in June, where George Osborne confessed that divestment decisions were “above his pay grade” – and likely off his radar.

Seeing no chance of movement, the Greens have now moved on to the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG), following reports on individual council investments in the sector. The Baroness asked the DCLG if they are proactively giving “urgent advice to local authorities” about the case for divestment. The response? “We have no plans to.”

Of course, at the outer extremes of the political world there have been pockets of light for the movement beyond any efforts made by the Greens. Labour helped drive the divestment of the Council's fund in Cambridge – a decision which has the potential to leave retiring public sector workers with less in their pockets in exchange for more self-righteous rhetoric for Labourites.

Simply put, the facts are simply not with the Green Party, as they choose to sneer at those who keep the power running rather than make rational arguments for the sake of its constituents’ futures.

In a recent announcement, the Party urges local councils to divest because, in the words of mayoral candidate Sian Berry, “pensions are all about the future and fossil fuels are an incredibly short-sighted investment.” But according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the global demand for natural gas in 2040 is expected to grow by more than half, and for good reason. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found, greenhouse gas emissions “can be reduced significantly” by increasing the use of gas-fired power plants in high-emitting countries such as China.

Further, the IEA projects that the world’s energy supply mix will be made of “four almost-equal parts: oil, gas, coal and low-carbon sources” by 2040. So in 25 years’ time, three quarters of the global energy portfolio will still be supplied by fossil fuels. Renewables are of course an integral part of the mix, but the Party’s current position is absurd and denies the simple fact that we need fossil fuels to keep our economy going.

The potential loss for pensioners under a divestment scenario is the most immediate concern to consider as the Green Party continues to drag on with the issue, and the LPFA’s decision not to divest was clearly made with its fiduciary duty in mind. According to a recent Europe Economics report, investors following a fossil fuel divestment strategy could sacrifice as many as 68 basis points, or be forced to take on 20 per cent extra risk to make up for the significant risk profile that fossil fuel stocks provide. Some people may be in the fortunate position of not worrying about the value of their pensions, but most of us aren’t, leaving us to lower the investment pots that support retired civil servants as one of the few practical solutions to what is could be a self-inflicted problem.

Climate change and the role fossil fuels play is a legitimate and important debate that will take place on the largest stage in Paris in December, but to harm the finances of our pensioners for the sake of winning a perceived moral argument is misguided. Baroness Jones’ last-ditch attempt to persuade the DCLG to follow a plan, which has thankfully thus far failed on a local level, is a sign of desperation to support a fight that seeks to turn off the lights, but is rather light on facts. So what will the Green Party think of banning next?

Lord Callanan is a British Conservative Party politician and life peer in the House of Lords. He was a Member of the European Parliament for North East England from1999 to 2014 and served as Chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists group.