Engine No. 1 Shows Activist Hedge Funds Can Be Allies In Climate Activism Fight AOC Sustainability

By Mark DesJardine, Assistant Professor of Strategy and Sustainability, Penn State; and Tima Bansal, Canada Research Chair in Business Sustainability, Western University. First published on The Conversation.

One of the most expensive Wall Street shareholder battles on record could signal a big shift in how hedge funds and other investors view sustainability.

Exxon Mobil Corp. has been fending off a so-called proxy fight from a hedge fund known as Engine No. 1, which blames the energy giant’s poor performance in recent years on its failure to transition to a “decarbonizing world.” In a May 26, 2021 vote, Exxon shareholders approved at least two of the four board members Engine No. 1 nominated, dealing a major blow to the oil company. The vote is ongoing, and more of the hedge fund’s nominees may also soon be appointed.

While its focus has been on shareholder value, Engine No. 1 says it was also doing this to save the planet from the ravages of climate change. It has been pushing for a commitment from Exxon to carbon neutrality by 2050.

As business sustainability scholars, we can’t recall another time that an energy company’s shareholder – particularly a hedge fund – has been so effective and forceful in showing how a company’s failure to take on climate change has eroded shareholder value. That’s why we believe this vote marks a turning point for investors, who are well placed to nudge companies toward more sustainable business practices.

Update June 2, 2021: Exxon Board to Get a Third Activist Pushing Cleaner Energy

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I'm sharing this superb WSJ Magazine interview w/Bill Gates on his new book 'How To Avoid a Climate Disaster' (Amazon.) I understand you can't read it as WSJ has no free reads, but they do have a $4/mo subscription going on.

Some people say that AOC spends too much time defending billionaires. We honestly don’t mean to do that; and we find the global economic system fundamentally unjust. However, I do believe in sorting through billionaires, because they aren't all created equal.

Global Energy Poverty

Bill Gates' work on the environment has gone largely unnoticed, but Gates writes that in 2006, he became aware of energy poverty while traveling at night in Lagos and seeing the city in relative darkness. Conversely, I remember my first flight into Seoul, South Korea from Hong Kong in the early ‘90s.

Expecting relative night darkness as Gates saw in Lagos, I was shocked as we dropped into sight of the city, and light was everywhere. The reality of fully-lit Seoul with a towering cityscape defied every expectation that I had of my destination.

It was at that moment that I realized that US citizens were clueless about the emerging might of the Asian economies. America’s combination of ignorance and hubris would cost us a national fortune in the coming years, and none of those costs came as a surprise to me. The future unfolded before my eyes in the night sky over Seoul. In Hong Kong, I expected its legendary entrepreneurial hustle. Seoul stunned me.

Bill Gates Has Talked Environment Since 2010

The connection between the wellbeing of a society and energy consumption has informed much of Bill Gates’ thinking ever since. In 2010, Gates gave a TED talk housed in AOC that hit the coming environmental crisis head-on. “It’s hard to be productive if you don’t have lights to read by,” Gates writes in How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.

What intigues me in the WSJ story is that the reality that Gates has lost $2 billion on green energy advancement -- which he thinks is no big deal. He's prepared to lose another $2 billion in the next five years. MIT estimates that venture investors lost more than half their money on Cleantech 1.0. “I’m only going to lose money on this stuff,” Gates says, shrugging. “But that’s not in short supply.”

The story you never hear on progressive media is that Gates formed an investment group called Breakthrough Energy. He went to other billionaires including Jack Ma, Jeff Bezos, Vinod Khosla and Prince al-Waleed bin Talal. Then he dropped down to Michael Bloomberg, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and a host of other guys, saying you are going to lose money.

It's your DUTY to Human Civilization to Lose this Money.

Gates’s team established unusual criteria for the fund. Any venture must feasibly eliminate a minimum of 500 million tons of greenhouse gases annually, with an investment horizon of at least 20 years, rather than the standard 10.

That meant older participants might not live to see a payout.

“In another 20 years, you’re not going to be wondering if you got a return,” says Larry Cohen. “You’re wondering if there’s going to be a planet left for your great-grandchildren.”

Breakthrough Energy Ventures spurned institutional investors. “It’s easier to make these decisions when you don’t have to justify your lower investment returns to your boss,” says John Arnold, a Houston-based billionaire and former energy trader who invested in the fund and joined as co-chair.

In total 28 billionaires have opted into the fund and 20 countries. I doubt the US under Trump because Gates had to revise the book, pulling out sections that allowed for dire emergency measures if Trump had been re-elected.

I wish we heard more about these stories -- not because they change the fundamentals of good guys and bad guys -- but because they advance the discussion. I feel the situation is so dire on so many fronts that we need to know about stories like this one -- that there are people with a whole lot of money trying to do something productive for human civilization.

It doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a tax hike. Gates and his buddy Warren Buffett have said for decades that they should pay higher taxes. Now Jeff Bezos might not agree, but his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott agrees. Not all billionaires are creates equal.

Bill Gates has informed them that 1) it is their responsibility to try to save the planet and 2) the probability that they will die before success is obtained is irrelevant to their obligation to invest. 3) No building will be named after them. The world has been very kind to them creating scenarios where they have become wealthy beyond belief. Gates says "That's humanity's money. It's not all yours. And I want you to part with some serious cash here, or climate change will end the world as we know it."

On this single topic for sure, AOC and Bill Gates agree. So why can't we find a way to create two topics on which they agree - and then broadcast the fact that they agree on this one, informing people and what Gates and other billionaires are doing about it. It's not some form of self-sabotage to agree that Bill Gates is doing something positive for the world.