On Friday, pressure mounted on oil majors as Norway's giant sovereign wealth fund said it would vote against CEOs at Chevron and Exxon and French police responded to protesters at Tolentino's shareholders' meeting.
The companies, together with peers BP and Shell, face a vocal minority of investors seeking faster emissions cuts as a majority of shareholders support management in reaping the benefits of record profits from oil and gas.
Norway's wealth fund, the world's single largest stock market investor, said Friday it would vote against CEOs at Chevron and ExxonMobil and against management on emissions-related proposals at their meetings on May 31.
The fund, which owned a 0.86% of Chevron and 1.13% of Exxon as of the end of 2022, has previously voted against the reappointments of directors and said it would, as in previous years, support the Follow This climate activist resolution asking for faster emissions cuts at the U.S. firms.
It will vote against Follow This at the shareholders meeting of TotalEnergies on Friday, where French riot police clashed with protesters trying to block entry to the French company's annual general meeting AGM. The last time Following This proposed a resolution to the French organization in 2020, it received 17% support.
This echoes its results at BP, where a similar resolution in April received slightly more support than last year, at around 17% and Shell, where support this month held steady at around 20%.
This requires companies to match their targets to the U.N. Paris Climate Agreement's goal of preserving global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius 3.6 Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.
Scientists say the world must cut greenhouse gas emissions by about 43% from 2019 levels by 2030 to meet the goal of meeting that goal.
So far, the world's biggest fossil fuel companies have come up with targets that campaigners say go nowhere near far enough.
In contrast to the negative recommendations for the resolutions at Shell and BP, influential shareholder advisory ISS recommended voting in favor of Follow This at totalEnergies' AGM.