Lothian Pension Fund has a policy of engagement with companies and policymakers rather than a policy of exclusion or divestment. By engaging with the companies in which we own shares, we strive to improve the sustainability of corporate strategy to the benefit of shareholders, and to the benefit of wider society. We believe that a policy of divestment potentially passes shares to less responsible or less active share owners, who are less likely to hold the company's managers to account on planning for and managing significant transitions in their businesses over the next decades. In our view, this achieves nothing in terms of real-world sustainability.
For today’s Shell AGM (21 May 2024) we have pre-declared our intention to vote in favour of the shareholder resolution, in which shareholders support the company, by an advisory vote, to align its medium-term emissions reduction targets covering the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the use of its energy products (Scope 3) with the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement: to limit global warming to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. This vote is warranted due to the perceived lack of indicators regarding the alignment of the company's strategy to the Paris Agreement goals, and the benefits of further analysis and disclosures to demonstrate this.