A group of 17 mostly Dutch and French institutional investors have filed a resolution for the annual general meeting (AGM) of TotalEnergies, requesting the French energy firm to align its Scope 3 emissions with the Paris Agreement by 2030.
The resolution is similar to one that was refused by the board of TotalEnergies for last year’s AGM.
The investor coalition that filed the resolution, which includes Dutch pension investors PGGM, MN and Achmea Investment Management, is led by activist investor Follow This which has tabled similar resolutions at AGMs of other oil majors including Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and Chevron.
Follow This founder Mark van Baal believes to have found a way to compel TotalEnergies to table the resolution this time around. For the 2022 AGM, TotalEnergies refused to do so because it deemed the resolution too prescriptive and therefore not in accordance with French law.
Consultative resolution
Van Baal said: “To prevent this from happening again, we have added one line to the resolution, namely that it is a consultative resolution. A consultative resolution does not impose anything on the company or its board of directors, but instead allows investors to express their desire that the company aligns its 2030 Scope 3 targets with the goal of the Paris Agreement.”
At this moment, TotalEnergies has no ambition to actually reduce its Scope 3 emissions. To the contrary, its goal to keep emissions under 400 million tonnes by 2030 still allows it to grow emissions compared to 2022 when its Scope 3 emissions hit 389 million tonnes.
The Follow This investor coalition has a combined stake of approximately 1.5% in Total Energies. It’s success is therefore dependent on support from other investors. A similar Follow This resolution filed in 2020 was approved by 17% of shareholders.
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