for Anglo American the day after Woodside Energy’s climate plan was voted down underlines why companies need to play different roles to reach net zero by 2050.
It represents the next stage of chief executive Mike Henry’s multi-decade corporate transition strategy, which seeks to position “The Big Australian” as a major global producer of the “future-facing” commodities – such as copper, nickel and potash – needed in the low-carbon future.
But Woodside got no social licence credit at last Wednesday’s annual meeting from the California-based pension funds or the Melbourne-based superannuation funds that orchestrated the tactical and non-binding vote against its climate plan. The Victorian Labor government is secretly paying an energy company to keep a coal-fired power plant burning, with the NSW Labor government shortly expected to do the same. Are activist super funds going to threaten these energy companies with divestment?