The Independent | The Shell board faced heated exchanges with investors and protesters throughout the three-hour event at the InterContinental O2 in London on Tuesday.
A resolution to approve the current strategy saw 21.8% of shareholder votes going against management, Shell said.
Meanwhile, nearly a fifth of the votes (18.6%) backed a resolution from Dutch activist group Follow This, which called on the board to align decarbonisation targets with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
More than a fifth of shareholder votes were cast against Shell’s climate strategy at a tense annual general meeting.
The board faced heated exchanges with investors and protesters throughout the three-hour event at the InterContinental O2 in London on Tuesday.
A resolution to approve the current strategy saw 21.8% of shareholder votes going against management, Shell said.
Meanwhile, nearly a fifth of the votes (18.6%) backed a resolution from Dutch activist group Follow This, which called on the board to align decarbonisation targets with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
But despite a record 27 institutional investors co-filing the resolution, the result came as a drop from 20.2% in 2023.
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As the meeting moved on to shareholder questions, Mark van Baal, founder of Follow This, challenged the board about its environmental impact.
He said: “Dear shareholders, get a load of this. The world has pledged to halve emissions by 2030 and your company has no plans to further reduce emissions this decade.”
He asked the board: “Can you explain how Shell can be Paris-aligned without reducing emissions up to 2030, without using the word ‘believe’?”
In response, Mr Sawan argued Shell is “very much aligned with achieving a 2050 net zero outcome” and said the firm is using the most ambitious scenarios under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report.
The chief executive then urged investors to vote against the resolution, arguing it is “bad for the environment”, “bad for our customers”, “bad for you as shareholders” and “bad for governance”.
Responding to the 18.6% vote for the resolution after the meeting, Mr van Baal said: “Votes for this climate resolution show which investors are committed to Paris and which investors endorse Big Oil’s refusal to take meaningful climate action.”
