CBIS Kickstarts Global Campaign for Engaging Top Carbon Emitters with Progress at ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell

CBIS joins 225 institutional investors with over $26.3 trillion in assets under management today to launch the Climate Action 100+, a new initiative focused on increasing investor engagement on climate change in order to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and associated climate risk. The Initiative identified an initial focus list of 100 companies that are responsible for 85% of global emissions, based on data from the CDP.

The five-year Initiative commits investor signatories to engage directly with one or more focus companies to achieve three primary goals:

  • Implement a strong governance framework at the company that clearly articulates the Board’s accountability for and oversight of climate change risk.
  • Take corporate action to reduce GHG emissions across the value chain, consistent with the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature increase to well below 2o C.
  • Provide enhanced corporate disclosure that enables investors to assess corporate business plans against a range of climate scenarios and improve investment decision-making.

In keeping with these goals, CBIS is pleased to announce that ExxonMobil Corp.—one of our long-term engagements on climate change and a target on the Initiative focus list—announced this week that it is committed to providing an analysis of business risks in a 2o C business environment. The analysis is in response to a shareholder resolution co-filed by CBIS in 2017, which received 62% support.

“While ExxonMobil could improve its shareholder engagement on business risks, and it took the company many months to move forward with a commitment, we expected no less and are committed to working with the company to improve their reporting over time. The reporting is critical to ExxonMobil’s understanding of how policy and market disruption stemming from climate change will impact its future success,” notes Tracey Rembert, Assistant Director of Catholic Responsible Investing at CBIS.

Another long-term CBIS engagement, Royal Dutch Shell, also announced on November 29 that it will move forward with climate disclosure requested by CBIS. After being pressed by Director of Catholic Responsible Investing Julie Tanner at a recent management day, CEO Ben van Beurden announced that Shell expects to release its own 2o C Scenario report to investors in 1Q 2018.

The Climate Action 100+ Initiative was launched at the One Planet Summit this week, on the heels of a push by 54 large companies for governments to do more on climate policy. CBIS continues to see momentum in the industry toward improved management of and disclosure on climate change risk, and we expect continued progress with our engagements.

For updates on CBIS’s engagements and policy initiatives, please see our quarterly Impact and Justice newsletters under Literature/Active Ownership on our website.