New York City's chief financial officer has called on three large U.S. utilities to institute an independent board chair in a move intended to help them navigate a stransition to a low-carbon economy.

Comptroller Scott Stringer filed this week three shareholder resolutions at Southern Co., Duke Energy Corp. and Dominion Energy Inc. that ask each utility for a shareholder vote on the proposals at each company's next annual meeting. Independent board leadership would help each utility move from "the country's biggest contributors to devastating climate change" to "net-zero power producers," Stringer's office said. New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

"This is about ensuring sustainable growth for these companies and for our pension system," Stringer said in a statement announcing the proposals. "An independent board chair means stronger oversight that can spur the transformational decarbonization process these companies desperately need."

The comptroller's letters to utilities regarding the resolution filings were dated Oct. 29 and Nov. 13. All three utilities said they were reviewing the proposals.

"We regularly engage with our shareholders and look forward to having a dialogue regarding these matters," said Schuyler Baehman, a spokesperson for Southern.

Baehman referenced company materials that say the utility has set long-term goals of low to no carbon operations by 2050.

Dave Scanzoni, a Duke Energy spokesman, said the company announced its intention in September to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and that historically its annual shareholder meeting has happened in May (Energywire, Sept. 18).

Ryan Frazier, a Dominion spokesman, said in March the company established a companywide target to reduce carbon emissions in its power generating fleet by 80% between 2005 and 2050. The utility "routinely" evaluates such targets in consideration of evolving technologies, public policy and stakeholder attitudes, among other factors, he said.

"We support all shareholders' rights to submit resolutions for inclusion in our Proxy Statement and approval at our Annual Meeting of Shareholders so long as they follow guidelines established by the company and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission," Frazier said via email.

Dan Bakal, senior director of energy power at Ceres, a sustainable investment advocacy group, said there has been a recent trend toward increased shareholder advocacy on climate change.

Lila Holzman, energy program manager at shareholder group As You Sow, added that shareholder resolutions show that investors are concerned about utility governance and want to ensure that the right systems are in place to address climate change in a meaningful way. One way to do that is by securing independence between a utility's board and its CEO, which is considered an industry best practice, she said. Resolutions are a shareholder's right to raise an issue, and if a majority vote is achieved and the company does not act, that would show that a company is not taking the concerns of its shareholders seriously, she said.

"Investors are, across the board, increasingly concerned with climate change, and there's a real recognition that the power sector has a critical role to play in decarbonizing," Holzman said.

"While utilities have set carbon emission targets, there's still some disconnect between targets and the build-out of things such as natural gas infrastructure," she said. Eli Kasargod-Staub, executive director at Majority Action - a corporate watchdog nonprofit - said utilities need to fundamentally reexamine the way they have been operating so they can get on the fastest trajectory to net-zero carbon emissions.

Companies cannot continue to simply name climate targets and then continue business as usual, Kasargod-Staub said. Neither Dominion nor Southern has set a net-zero target, he added.

"A credible plan is not one that envisions building out massive amounts of fossil fuel infrastructure for the next 20 years and then hoping that at some point in the future they'll be able to put carbon capture and storage on all of that," he said.

Ceres' Bakal said the resolutions urge proper oversight of the question of whether or not utilities are moving away from coal-fired power plants quickly enough and how natural gas factors into their stated decarbonization plans. In his announcement, Stringer called climate change "the fight of our lives" and said it's time to "turn the page" on the fossil fuel infrastructure of the past. "That's why our country's power utilities must commit to decarbonize now, and independence on the board will put us on a path to get there," Stringer said.

Source :: https://www.eenews.net/energywire/2019/11/22/stories/1061612699