The California Public Employees’ Retirement
System plans to be active in 17 proxy efforts on climate change
directed at energy companies this proxy season, the pension
fund’s Chief Investment Officer Ted Eliopoulos said on Monday.
CalPERS’ effort will build on its actions over the past
year, when it was active in 12 proxy efforts, to increase the
percentage of votes in favor of climate change strategy
disclosures.
Eliopoulos said during an investment committee board meeting
that CalPERS would ask energy companies over the next three
months for “disclosure of their climate change strategy, among
other topics.”
In order to “drive the votes at those companies, we are
building on our networks of peer engagement,” said Eliopoulos.
The nation’s largest public pension fund joined New York
City pension chiefs last year to urge Exxon Mobil
shareholders to back a measure that would force the company to
detail how its business would be impacted as governments move to
tackle climate change.
CalPERS and New York City vowed to engage other shareholders
to push the world’s largest publicly traded oil company to say
more about how its revenues, reserves and operations could be
hurt by the 2015 Paris Agreement backed by 195 countries to
limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.
Following the proxy access proposal, Exxon appointed its
first climate scientist to its board, Dr. Susan Avery, the
former head of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and a
former professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
“This is an extremely encouraging response in recognition
that Exxon needs to bolster its capacity on climate change,”
Eliopoulos said on Monday.
