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BlackRock votes against investor-led climate resolution at Shell

BlackRock Inc., one of the world's largest asset managers, sided with Royal Dutch Shell PLC's board members and voted down a resolution for the company to set more stringent emissions reduction targets.

By a majority vote of 95% at the company's general annual meeting May 22, Shell's shareholders rejected the resolution, which was filed in November 2017 by Follow This, a Dutch-based group of green shareholders in Shell. The Follow This resolution called on Shell to set and publish more aggressive targets that align with the goal of the Paris Agreement on climate change to limit global warming to below 2 degrees C.

In mid-April, Shell's board of directors advised shareholders to vote against the resolution.

"Based on the company's public disclosures, engagements with Shell's management and Board and Follow This, as well as our wider engagement work and analysis we concluded that, at this stage, the proposal was unnecessarily prescriptive and could lead to potentially unintended consequences impacting the long-term value of our clients' assets. We therefore voted with management and did not support the shareholder resolution at the 2018 annual general meeting," BlackRock said in a statement.

Addressing investor concerns regarding its climate change strategy, Shell reiterated in early April plans to reduce the carbon footprint of the energy products it sells by 50% by 2050, reassessing its progress every five years. This includes not only emissions from the production of energy products, but also those from the consumption of Shell's products by its customers, where about 85% of the emissions associated with the company's energy products occur.