Category Archives: Corporate sustainability

Air pollution, Chevron Refinery, Climate action, Climate Change, Corporate sustainability, ExxonMobil, Shareholder resolutions, Socially responsible investment

AP: Exxon, Chevron Shareholders Reject Climate Resolutions

Repost from ABC News

Exxon, Chevron Shareholders Reject Climate Resolutions

By DAVID KOENIG, AP BUSINESS WRITER, DALLAS — May 25, 2016, 4:17 PM ET

Shareholders at Exxon Mobil and Chevron rejected resolutions backed by environmentalists that would have pushed the companies to take stronger stands in favor of limiting climate change.

Environmentalists took solace, however, that some of their ideas gained considerable support.

At Chevron Corp., a resolution asking for an annual report each year on how climate-change policies will affect the company received 41 percent of the vote. A similar resolution at Exxon got 38 percent.

Also, Exxon Mobil Corp. shareholders voted to ask directors to adopt a proxy-access rule, which would make it easier for shareholders to propose their own board candidates. Backers including the New York City comptroller said it could result in the election of independent directors who could help the company address risks like climate change.

The meetings Wednesday — Exxon’s in Dallas, Chevron’s in San Ramon, California — came as the companies are trying to dig out from the collapse in crude prices that began in mid-2014. Exxon earned $16.15 billion last year, its smallest profit since 2002. Chevron’s annual profit plunged 76 percent to $4.59 billion and included the company’s first money-losing quarter since 2002.

Crude prices have rebounded since February, boosting the shares of the top two U.S. oil companies, but they remain about half of what they were at their last peak.

Exxon is also dealing with investigations by officials in several states into what the company knew and allegedly didn’t disclose about oil’s role in climate change.

The company’s shareholders rejected resolutions to put a climate expert on the board and support the goal of a UN meeting in Paris last year to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Patricia Daley, a Dominican sister from New Jersey and sponsor of one of the resolutions, said Exxon lacked “moral leadership.”

“Our company has chosen to disregard the consensus of the scientific community, the will of the 195 nations that signed the Paris agreement,” religious leaders and even other oil companies, Daley said.

Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson said his company has long recognized that climate change is a serious risk and might require action. But, he said, any policies should be implemented evenly across the world, allow market prices to pick solutions, and be flexible enough to respond to economic ups and downs and “breakthroughs in climate science.”

Exxon forecasts that oil and gas will make up 60 percent of the world’s energy supply in 2040 — about the same share it holds today. Its CEO said the company was balancing the need to produce more energy for growing world demand with environmental considerations.

Tillerson said there is no alternative source that can replace the ubiquity of fossil fuels. He expressed confidence that technology will provide the key to limiting carbon emissions.

“We’ve got to have some technological breakthroughs,” he said, “but until we achieve those, to just say turn the taps off is not acceptable to humanity,” he said.

The shareholders responded with robust applause.

Across the street from the meeting hall, about 60 protesters gathered and urged large shareholders such as pension funds to divest their shares. Many held signs with slogans such as “Exxon Liar Liar Earth on Fire.” The mood was sedate, however, perhaps owing to the warm, muggy weather.

Exxon shares rose 59 cents to $90.26, and Chevron shares gained $1.60 to $101.79.

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This story has been corrected to note that the climate-change resolution won 38 percent support, instead of a maximum of 25 percent support.

Carbon pricing systems, Corporate sustainability, Divestment in fossil-fuels, Socially responsible investment, Sustainability investments

Investing in socially responsible companies makes sense

Repost from the San Francisco Chronicle
[Editor:  Significant quote: “Studying the performance of over 2,000 companies in six sectors, the researchers discovered the stock price of companies that invested to improve sustainability in ways that were material to their businesses outperformed companies that did not.”  – RS]

Investing in socially responsible companies makes sense

By Tom Kiely, Lenny Mendonca and Steve Westly, September 17, 2015

What do CalPERS, and many of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds from Scandinavia to the Mideast have in common? They’re betting big on sustainability.

In May, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, a $307 billion retirement fund, said it will require its asset managers to factor environmental and social risks into their investment decisions. Norway’s giant national sovereign wealth fund, with $890 billion in assets built off its oil and gas reserves, is divesting from companies that mine or burn coal. A majority of the world’s largest institutional investors — pension funds, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds — incorporate considerations about a business’s environmental and social track record into their investment decisions.

However, too many company managers are still under the spell of the myth that shareholders are the only stakeholders who count. For decades, neo-classical economists suggested — and business schools taught — that sustainability investments unnecessarily raise a firm’s costs, creating a competitive disadvantage. Invest in anything but the bottom line, and you risk your survival we’ve been told endlessly.

Shareholder idolatry holds executives back from making the investments they should to benefit the planet and their businesses in the long-term. For every corporate leader there is a regiment of laggards.

Sure, most of the Standard & Poor’s 500 companies issue sustainability or social responsibility reports each year, but try reading those reports — they are a catalog of the tepid. Few companies integrate social and environmental factors deeply into their business strategies. U.S business organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce, have opposed government-led efforts to reduce climate risk as overly bureaucratic and costly for business, while doing little to further business-led initiatives to improve corporate sustainability.

That’s a big mistake. For instance, in one recent study, three Harvard Business School professors showed how “firms with good performance on material (our emphasis) sustainability issues significantly outperform firms with poor performance on these issues.”

When it comes to these investments, the materiality test is crucial. Companies make all kinds of investments in sustainability and in corporate social responsibility programs. But only some of these things have a material impact on performance. The researchers looked at a set of environmental, social, and governance measures that both companies and their investors deemed material and measured their impact on stock prices.

What did they find? Studying the performance of over 2,000 companies in six sectors, the researchers discovered the stock price of companies that invested to improve sustainability in ways that were material to their businesses outperformed companies that did not.

This makes sense to a growing number of investors. Smart sustainability investments allow companies to attract better employees, improve their brands to sell more or sustain a price premium.

What should be done? Companies must do a better job of compiling non-financial data on their environmental and social performance and report it to investors and other stakeholders. Fifty percent of institutional investors surveyed by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2014 said they were dissatisfied with the environmental-social-governance information companies provided.

Business leaders need to step up and champion these efforts.

Also, executives should act like leaders in policy debates. In early June, 80 companies, including U.S.-based Coca-Cola and Mars, pressed the British government to fight for strong action against climate change in international talks, and to aggressively push for a long-term low-carbon plan for the United Kingdom.

Where are U.S. business leaders on this?

Business leaders should propose a concrete plan for pricing carbon, for instance. After all, more than 150 companies already factor a carbon price into their business planning decisions, according to a recent study by CDP, a sustainability measurement organization. Executives have the public clout to elevate the debate on carbon pricing, and the experience to propose pragmatic frameworks for getting this done.

Corporate executives need to stop thinking of sustainability as a political discussion, and see it for what it is: good business.

Tom Kiely is a member of the Standards Council of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. Lenny Mendonca is a consultant to leaders in the public and social sectors. Steve Westly, a former state controller, is managing director of the venture capital firm the Westly Group.