By Simon Jessop and Gwladys Fouche
LONDON/OSLO (Reuters) – One of the asset managers co-leading climate talks with Equinor on behalf of more than 600 investors said it has sold its stock because the oil major’s board failed to align its strategy with the world’s goal of limiting global warming.
After first investing in Equinor in 2021, Britain’s Sarasin & Partners helped lead talks with the company as part of the Climate Action 100+ initiative, whose members push the world’s largest listed corporate polluters to cut emissions.
Despite originally seeing Equinor as a “potential leader in the energy transition” that would “set a standard for the industry”, a March 14 letter to the company seen by Reuters said it had failed to align its strategy with the Paris Agreement.
That landmark deal, agreed by countries including Equinor’s majority owner Norway, seeks to limit the global average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average by mid-century, and ideally 1.5 degrees.
Despite making statements supporting such a pathway, “Equinor has not revised its strategy to deliver on these”, the letter to Equinor Chairman Jon Erik Reinhardsen said.
“Instead of leading the transition, Equinor has followed other oil and gas majors in rolling back its efforts,” it said, including by lobbying to expand oil and gas production, and cutting its renewable energy target in February.
Sarasin co-filed a shareholder resolution in 2024 asking Europe’s biggest supplier of natural gas to align with a 1.5-degree pathway, yet it was successfully opposed by the board.
The asset manager said in its letter that it was particularly troubled by Equinor’s view that it was already aligned with the 1.5 degrees Celsius climate goal, calling the claims “not credible”.
“It is clear from public statements that Equinor assumes it could become aligned if the world transitions more quickly, but this is a fundamentally different position from actually supporting such a pathway today,” it said.
Sarasin’s holding peaked at around 9.5 million shares in March 2024, making it among the company’s 20-biggest investors, before it began reducing its position in May. When it sold out in January, it had around 3 million shares.
(Reporting by Simon Jessop in London and Gwladys Fouche in Oslo; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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