BP facing green rebellion at annual shareholder meeting

theguardian.com:

BP faces a green rebellion at its annual shareholder meeting on Thursday as some of Britain’s biggest pension funds prepare to demand the company toughens its plans to reduce its emissions by 2030.

The National Employment Savings Trust (Nest), which represents about 11m individual workplace pensions, plans to back a resolution put forward by climate campaigners at Follow This, which calls for BP to align its emissions reduction plans with the Paris agreement.

The campaign group has also won support from the Universities Superannuation Scheme and the council pensions fund Border to Coast, which have both also agreed to vote for the Follow This resolution.

Oil companies have faced rising dissent from activist shareholders including Follow This in recent years. In 2021, Legal & General Investment Management, one of the oldest fund managers in the City of London, backed a similar resolution put forward by Follow This at Shell’s AGM. The resolution was backed by 30% of Shell’s shareholders.

Mark van Baal, the founder of Follow This, said BP’s existing plans to reduce emissions do not go far enough because they rely on reducing the carbon intensity of the energy BP sells while absolute emissions are expected to keep rising until the end of the decade.

The Paris agreement calls for all countries to limit their emissions in order to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5C above pre-industrialised levels by 2050. The 2020s are considered crucial years to cut carbon in order to remain on track.

Van Baal has written to BP’s shareholders urging them to vote in favour of their resolution, saying it was “the only way to compel BP to reduce emissions this decade”.

BP’s board has urged shareholders to vote against the resolution,