INVESTOR BRIEFING regarding climate resolutions 20 and 21 at Shell
As ‘Big Oil Sees Climate Pressure Ease Off’ (Bloomberg), the new CA100+ lead investors at Shell (PGGM and MN) have called on fellow investors to vote FOR shareholder climate resolutions and AGAINST inhouse climate resolutions at Big Oil (in a statement, published in April).
We hope you will follow their leadership at Shell’s upcoming AGM and cast your vote FOR resolution 21 (Paris-consistent emissions reduction targets), filed by Follow This and ACCR, and AGAINST resolution 20, Shell’s in-house resolution; according to the CA100+ benchmark, Shell’s targets and investments are not Paris-aligned yet.
2022 AGM Investor Briefing | Voting overviews and details Climate Targets Resolutions
Your votes would strengthen the leverage of the lead investors to achieve the goal of the CA100+ “to ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take necessary action on climate change”; and therefore to compel Shell to advance its targets to Paris-alignment.
Without your votes, Shell will continue to claim there are “broad indications of support for Shell’s strategy” (response to 2021 voting results), a strategy that will see their emissions increase in the coming decade.
To counter the bias created by Shell: since 2017, the Follow This climate resolution consistently requests Shell to set Paris-consistent emissions reduction targets. In 2017, Shell called this request “unreasonable”; in 2018, 2020, and 2021“unnecessary”; and in 2022 “unrealistic”. Please find our rebuttal to Shell’s arguments for its negative voting recommendation, presented at their ESG day on May 10, attached.
Since May 2021, when the climate resolution received 30% of the votes, the evidence that Shell is not Paris-aligned has accumulated (court ruling, IEA report, IPCC reports, and new CA100+ leads); however, there have been no changes to the Follow This climate resolution, nor to Shell’s Scope 3 targets.
Recently, the law firm that won the Shell case warned that not aligning with the Paris Accord presents liability risks for the directors and institutional investors of oil and gas majors, as seen in the attached letter to the board and large investors.
Without an increase in votes, another year of the “brief and rapidly closing window” (IPCC) will be lost for Shell and the world.
Read our 2022 climate resolutions here
Invest super profits in sustainable energy or give in to shareholders eager for short-term profits?
In the blog Profits from oil and gas industry offers scope for climate investments Andres van der Linden and Piet Klop of PGGM write: “In the boardrooms of these companies, the question needs to be asked: do we invest the current super profits, which are the immediate result of the geopolitical situation, in sustainable energy like green hydrogen or battery technology, or do we give in to shareholders eager for short-term profits from oil and gas?” concluding with “The security of our energy supply may now be attracting a lot of attention, but the climate problem remains – and its urgency is increasing by the day.
