Tracey Rembert, Director of Catholic Responsible Investments℠ at CBIS proposed the following question before the resolution request, to report on the estimated carbon intensity of BP’s energy products over time, was put to a vote.
Good afternoon Mr. Chairman and Board, fellow shareholders.
My name is Tracey Rembert and I represent Christian Brothers Investment Services, a US-based asset manager for Catholic institutions worldwide that strongly supports and has co-filed Resolution 22. CBIS has been raising environmental, safety, and climate issues with BP since 2002, and we are an active signatory to the Climate Action 100+ Coalition. We also appreciate the engagements we have had with BP over the years. Our own fund investors care deeply about climate change, and what risk it poses to the most vulnerable people and communities among us. Both science and Pope Francis are telling us we are clearly running out of time to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of a steadily warming planet, and most of us in this room know what some of those consequences look like. It is therefore critical that our company does what it can now to significantly reduce emissions across its entire enterprise, and that includes the very difficult work of long-term cuts to Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions—those emissions stemming from the use of Our Company’s fossil fuel products.
In discussions with BP over the past 2 years, there has been considerable hesitancy to address product emissions through setting targets and game plans for their significant reduction. But Mr Chairman, we frankly need to be more ambitious, not less, in how we tackle the largest contributor to climate change that our company makes—its products. CBIS believes that oil majors that seriously tackle their product emissions send a clear signal to the global marketplace that we are out of time to act, and that energy investment needs to pivot. I therefore respectfully ask you Mr. Chairman–will the company commit today to work throughout 2019 to identify short-term and medium-term targets to significantly lower BP’s product emissions?
Thank you.