The government agreed to ban Norway’s $US890 billion ($A1.16 trillion) sovereign wealth fund from investing in either utilities or mining companies which get at least 30% of their business or revenue from coal.

This threshold is big enough to keep the likes of BHP, Glencore and Anglo American in the clear – especially with the weak prices in today’s oversupplied coal markets.

This is welcome relief to these companies considering that sovereign wealth fund manager Norges Bank had previously written letters to them with coal divestment-related themes.

The bank is the fifth largest shareholder of BHP (2.99%), the sixth largest shareholder of Glencore (1.89%) and the seventh largest shareholder of Anglo (2.8%), all on behalf of oil-rich Norway’s sovereign wealth fund.

Analysis of the policy so far has identified that Norwegian divestments could hit the utility companies of RWE (Germany), SSE (UK), Duke Energy (US), AGL (Australia), Reliance Power (India) and major thermal coal miner China Shenhua Energy.

The combined Norwegian sovereign wealth fund holdings in the trio of REW, SSE and Duke amounted to $1.7 billion at the end of 2014.

“The new restrictions, which are planned to be in place by January 1, should allow the fund to stay invested in companies with plans to restrict their coal exposure, according to the draft proposal,”Bloomberg reported.

“Norway’s central bank, which manages the fund, will be tasked with studying how the new criteria should be implemented.”