Shell shareholders should oust chair, says influential adviser

theguardian.com:

An influential investment adviser has added its weight to a move to oust the Shell chair, Sir Andrew Mackenzie, at next week’s annual shareholder meeting as a row over the energy company’s climate goals intensifies.

Pirc, which advises shareholders on how to vote at annual meetings, has recommended that investors vote against Mackenzie’s re-election and oppose its annual report to “hold board members to account”.

The Church of England has also said it plans to vote to oust Mackenzie, as well as recently appointed chief executive Wael Sawan, at the event at the ExCeL centre in London on 23 May.

Shell has faced repeated criticism from green campaigners who claim its climate goals are not ambitious enough and are not aligned with the target of limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees over industrial levels.

In a report to investors, Pirc said that “while Shell has short and medium-term targets, there is specific concern that these targets are not aligned to a 1.5 degree pathway which is not heavily reliant on carbon offsetting”.

Pirc also advised shareholders to vote against Shell’s “energy transition” resolution, citing concerns that it has not set “absolute emission reduction targets” for “scope 3” emissions, which occur indirectly in companies’ supply chains. Instead, Pirc wants investors to back a resolution filed by the green shareholder group Follow This, which has been pressing companies to align their scope 3 reduction targets with the goals of the Paris climate agreement.

The meeting will follow a series of fiery shareholder meetings, with climate protests interrupting proceedings at BP, Barclays and Drax in recent weeks. Last year a large number of protesters sang and chanted outside and inside Shell’s AGM, forcing