BP shareholders rejected the weakening of climate reports
At the Thursday annual meeting of BP shareholders, the shareholders overwhelmingly rejected two proposals put forward by the management itself – including a proposal to eliminate the obligation to disclose certain climate information.
What did BP want to cancel? Two historic shareholder commitments from 2015 and 2019 that require the company to report on operational emissions management, portfolio resilience to climate scenarios, investments in low‑carbon sources, emission targets, carbon intensity of products, and linking targets to management remuneration – i.e., a strategy consistent with the Paris Agreement.
BP's board argued that these commitments had been superseded by new mandatory regulatory frameworks. However, both proposals failed to even secure a simple majority – far short of the required 75%.
In 2020, BP announced a goal to become a net‑zero company with a planned reduction in oil and gas extraction. However, in February 2025 there was a turnaround – the new strategy shifted capital back into oil and gas and reduced the share of low‑carbon energy to less than 5% of total CAPEX.
This very turnaround motivated the activist group Follow This and a number of institutional investors to launch a campaign against the management's proposals. Follow This sought to place its own resolution on the agenda, demanding disclosure of a value‑creation strategy for shareholders in scenarios of declining demand for oil and gas – but BP refused to include it.
What to take away?
BP tried to use the Omnibus/ISSB narrative ("mandatory frameworks have replaced us") to weaken voluntary commitments – and shareholders did not accept it.
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