A coalition of investors led by the shareholder activism organization Follow This plans to file an advisory resolution at TotalEnergies Group’s annual shareholder meeting to “align its reduction targets” for greenhouse gas emissions with the 2030 Paris agreement, it announced Thursday.
“The company’s current intensity target” for 2030 “will not lead to large-scale (net) reductions in emissions” from the company’s entire value chain (scope 3, in carbon accounting), the most comprehensive measure, the coalition wrote in its resolution. “It is in the company’s best interest to seize the opportunities offered by the energy transition,” these 17 investors, who together manage $1.1 trillion (€1.007 trillion) and own 1.5% of the company, also say.
Among them are La Banque Postale AM, Edmond de Rothschild AM, La Financière de l’Echiquier, Mandarine Gestion and Sycomore AM. At the May 26 general meeting, they will ask the group “to align its existing 2030 reduction targets” with those of the 2015 Paris agreement, which aims to limit global warming to below two degrees and if possible to 1.5°C compared to the period 1850-1900.
Follow This had already initiated the first binding climate resolution for the company, tabled in 2020 at the TotalEnergies AGM. It had received 17% approval. In 2022, TotalEnergies refused to allow a similar binding resolution to be put to a vote. Hence the filing of an advisory resolution this year, “which is not binding on the company or its board of directors”, the coalition points out.
The company’s board of directors will vote on the resolutions submitted by shareholders on April 26, TotalEnergies told AFP. It will also submit, as in the last two years, its report on sustainable development and energy transition to a consultative vote at its AGM.
In March, TotalEnergies had announced the strengthening of its short-term objectives to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions related to petroleum products, but for the group as a whole, “the carbon emissions objective in 2030 remains higher than the 2022 emissions,” Bertille Knuckey, manager at Sycomore AM, told AFP.
Among its capital expenditures between now and 2030, TotalEnergies expects “one third in low-carbon energies, about 30% dedicated to the development of new oil and gas projects, and the remainder dedicated to the maintenance of the hydrocarbon portfolio,” according to the company. “The strategy is to grow in natural gas, a stated ambition that is not compatible” with the company’s climate commitments by 2050, according to Knuckey.
In the face of the “increasingly pressing” climate emergency, “it is impossible not to question TotalEnergies on the consequences of its strategy”, she believes.
