We have shown that shareholder action can steer oil giants toward a sustainable, green future. We’ve successfully pushed oil giants to set emission targets and invest in renewables, driving real change from within.
In 2015, Follow This challenged Shell’s lack of clean energy investment. A decade later, we’re a leading shareholder force.
Our climate resolutions have pushed oil giants like Shell, BP, and Chevron to address product emissions and boost clean energy investments.
Here are some of our achievements.
Year after year, Follow This submitted climate resolutions to get institutional investors and oil companies moving:
Our approach has established Follow This as a recognized authority on Big Oil’s strategy. International media frequently seek our perspective, acknowledging our research’s significance.
By analyzing Big Oil’s strategies and issuing well-researched press releases, Follow This consistently garners global attention, maintaining an influential voice in the media.
In 2025, Follow This campaigned to vote against the re-election of BP’s chairman. The reason was BP’s decision to roll back its climate targets. The campaign resonated: 24% of investors voted against the re-election of Helge Lund – the highest percentage of votes against that we have ever received at BP.
This historic vote sends a clear message to the entire board of directors and the sector as a whole: a large proportion of shareholders are in favor of climate action, good corporate governance, and against the influence of short-term shareholders who demand a complete focus on oil and gas.
Follow This has grown into a prominent counter-voice to the fossil industry’s PR and challenges their stories where necessary.
Our research makes the voting behavior of large investors transparent. It exposes the inconsistencies between investors’ sustainable image in the media and their actual support for climate resolutions.
The publication of these inconsistencies by Follow This reveals which investors are taking concrete steps for the climate and who are limited to greenwashing.
Thanks to the media attention our research receives, investors have to explain the contradiction between their communication for climate action and their votes against climate resolutions. This makes it clear to the general public to what extent pension funds vote for climate action at major oil companies.
Follow This demonstrates Big Oil’s resistance to climate action. The evidence has been used in legal cases and a US hearing.
Shell’s advice to vote against our climate resolutions was used by Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands) as ‘hard and formal’ evidence in the lawsuit against Shell.
Follow This was asked to testify during hearings in the US Congress with the question: are oil and gas companies part of the solution as they claim? In doing so, we pointed out that the oil and gas industry is not cooperating to achieve the Paris Climate Agreement.
In 2024 ExxonMobil sued Follow This to prevent a shareholder resolution from reaching a vote. This resolution pressed ExxonMobil to set Scope 3 emission targets (emissions from the use of products). ExxonMobil, unlike its major Western competitors, had not adopted such targets. CEO Darren Woods stated the company was not responsible for these third-party emissions.
Follow This withdrew its proposal to avoid a costly legal battle. Nevertheless, ExxonMobil continued the lawsuit. The company sought to establish a legal precedent against future climate-related proposals.
In May 2024, a Texas court dismissed the case against Follow This, citing a lack of jurisdiction over the Dutch organization.
This lawsuit validates our approach: climate resolutions are effective tools for demanding change and accelerating the shift to clean energy.
