Liam Denning, Columnist

Are Exxon’s New Emissions Targets Enough for BlackRock?

Meaningful change will only happen if big investors apply pressure.

December 14, 2020 at 6:01 PM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Laurence "Larry" Fink, chief executive of BlackRock Inc.
Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This article is for subscribers only.

It is possible, of course, that Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Monday-morning announcement of new emissions targets has nothing to do with the recent arrival of an activist shareholder calling for a more sustainable strategy at the oil major. Exxon took the trouble to say “the plan is the result of several months of detailed analysis,” and, with 2020 targets about to be yesterday’s news, an update of some sort was due in the near future.

Still, it’s fair to assume the calls from Engine No. 1 LLC and D.E. Shaw & Co. didn’t exactly delay Exxon’s PR department on getting this out.