FTSE 100 climate-vote campaign enters its sixth year

The Local Authority Pension Funds Forum (LAPFF), the stewardship body for the Local Government Pension Scheme, and fund manager CCLA are again asking FTSE 100 companies to put climate transition plans to a shareholder vote. The campaign is in its sixth year. Net Zero Investor reports the renewed push. Last year's version drew support from investors managing £3.1trn in assets, including Nordea, Brunel Pension Partnership and the Church Commissioners.

Some progress is visible. About one in five companies in the index now offers a dedicated vote on transition plans. Those that do — Unilever, London Stock Exchange Group, Centrica and Rio Tinto — typically win support from more than 90% of shareholders. Tessa Younger, CCLA's Better Environment Lead, calls the vote a transparency mechanism: investors get 'a clear mechanism' to decide whether a company's decarbonisation pathway is credible.

The holdouts are the big financial and energy companies. BP last put a transition plan to shareholders in 2022 and has since pulled back much of its ambition, according to Net Zero Investor. Barclays and Lloyds have not offered their shareholders a vote on climate strategy. Doug McMurdo, LAPFF chair, ties the campaign to pension beneficiaries: the climate catastrophe is 'real and now,' and its costs will land on the companies in which people's savings are invested.

The scale of last year's backing has turned the vote into a standard expectation, not a novel request. The campaign has already moved a fifth of the index. Whether the holdouts follow now rests with their own investors and the standard they apply.