Shareholders accept management’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, but ShareAction’s proposals do not.
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Barclays shareholders on Thursday adopted management’s proposals to “green” the British bank and its carbon neutrality target by 2050, while rejecting proposals from an activist shareholder association that went even further.
Only 24% of the bank’s investors, meeting in a virtual general meeting due to the COVID-19 pandemic, approved the proposals of the ShareAction group of investors to accelerate Barclays’s energy transition and carbon exit.
However, management’s proposals to “decarbonize” the bank were more than 99% approved.
“Passing the 20% threshold means that the bank will have to respond formally to the shareholders” who supported ShareAction’s proposals, however, the group said in a press release.
Barclays executives say that they want to dialogue with the shareholders who supported ShareAction’s proposal.
The group asked the bank to stop funding fossil fuel companies that do not meet the commitments of the Paris agreement on reducing CO2 emissions.
For Catherine Howarth, director of ShareAction, “today’s vote on the two climate-related resolutions (that of management and that of the shareholder group) sends an unequivocal message to the Barclays board of directors and the whole sector that banks need to do more to get out of fossil fuels, “noting” huge support from investors and society for firm action. “
“If we salute Barclays for having set itself the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, investors have indicated today that they want these commitments to be supported by clear targets for withdrawal” from fossil fuels, adds she.
At the end of March, under pressure from ShareAction, Barclays promised to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and to finance only projects that comply with the Paris agreements to fight global warming.
The bank promised that this initiative would eventually affect all of its loans, but that it will start with the energy sector, considered to be particularly polluting, and ensures that it will reveal precise objectives and show from 2021 how they are respected.
According to ShareAction, which quotes the environmental association Rain Action Network, since the signing of the Paris agreements in 2015, Barclays has funded fossil fuels, particularly in coal, considered to be one of more than £ 100 billion. of the most polluting resources on the planet.
This makes him the worst student in Europe in the banking sector, according to environmentalists.
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