Resolved clauseShareholders request the Board of Directors charter a new Board Committee on Decarbonization Risk to evaluate ExxonMobil’s strategic vision and responses to calls for ExxonMobil decarbonization on activist-established timelines. The charter should require the committee to engage in formal review and oversight of corporate strategy, above and beyond matters of legal compliance, to assess the company’s responses to demands for such decarbonization schedules, including the potential impacts on the Company from flaws in activists’ climate models, the possibility that the U.S. will not force decarbonization according to such schedules, thus obviating ‘stranded asset’ calculations, the possibility that other countries will not adopt similar targets, thus making Company efforts meaningless, concerns about technological or economic infeasibility, and other relevant considerations.
Supporting statementExxonMobil has repeatedly stated its commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. It does not appear from publicly available information, however, that ExxonMobil has fully considered the risk that decarbonization on activist schedules might entail. Claims about the need for decarbonization at all, but especially by some activist-generated date certain, are based on a long series of assumptions that are either counterfactual or insufficiently examined. For decades, for instance, claims have been made that action must be taken before some date, or it will be too late.1 If those claims were right, it’s too late for decarbonization to matter now, so we should be building up economic resources to deal with climate change. If they are wrong, then the odds are high that current claims are also wrong. ExxonMobil’s decarbonization will be meaningless if other countries do not follow the same decarbonization schedules, and there is abundant evidence that they will not.2 The United States government has never mandated net-zero by statute or authorized regulatory action3, and is unlikely ever to do so; this contravenes the assumptions of ‘stranded asset’ analysis. If decarbonization is neither required nor technologically feasible, ExxonMobil will lose significant markets and revenues to private equity firms and (less clean-producing) state actors, thus harming shareholdSupporting Statement:
ExxonMobil has repeatedly stated its commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. It does not appear from publicly available information, however, that ExxonMobil has fully considered the risk that decarbonization on activist schedules might entail. Claims about the need for decarbonization at all, but especially by some activist-generated date certain, are based on a long series of assumptions that are either counterfactual or insufficiently examined. For decades, for instance, claims have been made that action must be taken before some date, or it will be too late.1 If those claims were right, it’s too late for decarbonization to matter now, so we should be building up economic resources to deal with climate change. If they are wrong, then the odds are high that current claims are also wrong. ExxonMobil’s decarbonization will be meaningless if other countries do not follow the same decarbonization schedules, and there is abundant evidence that they will not.2 The United States government has never mandated net-zero by statute or authorized regulatory action3, and is unlikely ever to do so; this contravenes the assumptions of ‘stranded asset’ analysis. If decarbonization is neither required nor technologically feasible, ExxonMobil will lose significant markets and revenues to private equity firms and (less clean-producing) state actors, thus harming shareholders while also harming the environment. These and all relevant considerations should be fully and objectively examined.