A new shareholder advocacy group pulled off rare corporate ballot wins at Jack in the Box and Wingstop this year with proposals pushing the restaurant chains to set greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets for the first time.
Shareholder activists have pursued a wide range of climate proposals that have evolved over the past several years. Investors started out by pressing companies to provide emissions estimates, but later bids focused more on what targets companies are setting and then on specific plans to reduce their carbon output, said Witold Henisz, vice dean and faculty director of the ESG initiative at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
“You can’t really put them all together,” he said, noting that investors might disagree on whether businesses should have a net zero emissions target by 2040 or 2050, for example.
The new proposals from the Accountability Board asked companies to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions as well as goals for reducing emissions.
