In early 2021, Engine No. 1, a six-month-old hedge fund that managed around $250 million in assets owned a slight sliver of 0.02% of ExxonMobil, the oil and gas giant that’s worth $250 billion. Engine No. 1 mounted a shareholder activist challenge to turn ExxonMobil away from fossil fuels and managed to get three of its nominees elected to the ExxonMobil’s board. The hedge fund stressed in its letter to the shareholders that there was an urgent need for “fresh direction in a rapidly decarbonizing world”, sticking to oil and gas, and not exploring clean energy alternatives, was an “existential risk” and that it was time for shareholders to ‘weigh in’.
In 2019, in what is referred to as the Urgenda case, an injunction was sought to compel the Dutch government to reduce its emissions and the Dutch govt conceded to finally to reduce the capacity of its remaining coal-fired power stations by 75 per cent and implement a €3 billion package of measures to reduce Dutch emissions by 2020.
Please click here to read the full article by Aarthi Sivanandh published in The Economic Times.
