Shell CEO stays, climate proposal flops

Follow This receives just 13% support for climate disclosure proposal.

Shell shareholders voted against a climate activist proposal at the oil and gas giant's Tuesday annual meeting, with overwhelming support for CEO Wael Sawan and Chairman Andrew Mackenzie.

According to a Tuesday statement, Sawan's proposed reelection to the board was supported by 98.9% of the votes cast by shareholders at the meeting, with Mackenzie also winning 94.1% support.

In contrast, the shareholder proposal, forwarded by Dutch climate activist shareholder group Follow This and 21 other institutional investors representing $1.2 trillion in assets, only received 13% support, a far cry from the necessary 75% support to pass.

If successful, the proposal would have required Shell to disclose how its strategy would perform under scenarios of declining demand for oil and gas.

"Many trusted analysts increasingly predict that the world will soon enter a structural decline in oil and gas demand," the proposal reads. "Failing to plan for these potentialities risks significant shareholder value loss due to impaired assets, lower margins, and reduced dividends."

Ahead of the meeting, Shell urged shareholders to reject the proposal, arguing that the activist's questions are already covered by it's existing climate disclosures "which enable shareholders to model the financial resilience of the company in any price scenario of their choosing."

Sawan also stated in a speech that the Middle East conflict has shown that meeting oil demand will be essential for decades to come.

A similar proposal from Follow This faced similarly low support at Equinor's annual meeting, at just 21%. Elsewhere, BP's board decided not to include the proposal on its meeting agenda at all.

In the 2025 proxy season, none of the 110 environmental proposals put to a vote were successful, for the first time in six years. The number of successful such proposals peaked at 14 in 2022.

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