Oil companies only listen to their shareholders. That’s why thousands of people just like you have become Green Shareholders in Big Oil through Follow This.
Join us today to cast your vote on the future of the oil industry.
As shareholders, we get to determine what oil companies do by tabling resolutions at their Annual General Meetings for all shareholders to vote on.
The Follow This resolutions give investors a choice that no oil company would ever give them without us: to limit global warming to 1.5C or to carry on with business-as-usual.
Buying a share not only gives you a vote, it also encourages big institutional investors (banks, pensions, insurers, asset managers etc) with millions of votes to follow our lead.
The more members we represent, the easier it becomes to show large investors that people all over the world want the funding of fossil fuels to stop now.
We’re using the system to change the system. The tools we need to transform Big Oil already exist, we just need more and more people to use them.
Add your vote and your weight to a growing movement of retail investors and together we can change the world of oil and finance for good.
“We need all the methods to make change. The money exists, let’s put it to good use.”
“It feels like we’re hacking capitalism and using the system against itself which is something we need to do a lot more of.”
“It’s inspiring and empowering to come together as citizens to make change and put pressure on corporations.”
This video explains how you can help to stop climate change as a green shareholder.
The goal of Follow This is to commit Big Oil to the Paris agreement. We do this by uniting green shareholders and submit climate resolutions to shareholder meetings of big oil companies.
You can make an investment to stop climate change by becoming a green shareholder.
You become co-owner of the energy company of your choice.
With this, you support the mission of Follow This to compel oil and gas companies to stop climate change by putting their brains and billions behind renewable energy.
Thanks to your shares, we are able to file and vote on shareholder resolutions and speak on your behalf at the AGM.
Your share will be bought by Follow This and held in the investment account of Follow This on your behalf. However, the share is assigned to you and can be reclaimed (sold) at any time.
Yes, when you buy a share through Follow This, we will vote in favour of the Follow This climate resolution at the oil company’s AGM on your behalf.
We encourage supporters of Follow This to buy one share, because this makes the biggest impact. As small shareholders, our influence doesn’t necessarily lie in the percentage of the company we own (that will always remain a small percentage), but in how effectively we are able to organise shareholder support for the company to commit to the Paris agreement.
We do this in particular through encouraging large investors to vote for the Follow This climate resolutions. The more shareholders we represent, the more importance Follow This carries as a discussion partner and the more weight is given to our arguments.
This means that, in general, we achieve more impact if many people buy one share than if one person buys many shares.
The price you can find on our website is the opening trading price of today, plus a one time contribution of 5 euros to become a member of the Follow This Association.
This contribution is used to keep the organisation (of mainly volunteers) running.
Thanks to the votes of institutional investors in favour of the Follow This Climate Resolutions, Shell, Equinor, BP, Phillips66, and Chevron have all reluctantly accepted accountability for their product emissions (Scope 3 = emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, not just the emissions created in producing them).
And our resolutions have even stood up in court as evidence that indicated that Shell was far from being Paris-aligned or had any intention to devise a strategy that was.
With 99% of shareholders usually voting as they are told by the board, it’s important to recognise how much impact we’ve already had together. The 2021 Shell AGM saw 30% of votes supporting the Follow This resolution against the advice of the Shell board and we’re only getting started.
In 2015, the founder of Follow This, Mark van Baal, attended the Shell AGM where Ben van Beurden (CEO of Shell) did not take him seriously. The next year, in 2016, the first climate resolution was on the ballot and Mark was speaking on behalf of a hundreds of shareholders. They still did not take him seriously. But this soon changed. In 2016 the resolution got 3% of votes in favour of it, in 2017, it received 6%. That was serious enough for Shell to take action and they became the first oil company to announce Scope 3 targets.
Ben van Beurden even said: “We could see a kernel of truth and relevance in there,”. Although Shell reacted negatively to every climate resolution afterwards, the support for the resolution from investors increased adn in 2021 30% of investors in Shell supported the Follow This resolution. The same pattern is noticeable at all other oil companies. We’ve shown that oil majors start taking it seriously as soon as it gets backed up by investors, which is why we need you to add your name to the votes in favour of our resolution. The more members we have, the more able we are to convince large institutional investors to wake up and use their huge number of votes in support of what more and more people need and want - action on climate change.
Every year, we receive a small amount of dividend per share (Shell’s dividend in 2019, for example, was around €1.44 per year per share). As this is a small amount, we ask shareholders by email whether they would like this dividend to be transferred to them, or if they would like to donate their dividend to Follow This.
We hope that shareholders are willing to donate their dividend, as together, this makes a big difference for us and helps us in our mission.
When the total amount of dividend is less than 1 euro per person, the dividend can be paid the year after when the total amount over two years is higher than 1 euro (due to the administration overload). In 2020, for example, the dividend was cut across a range of oil majors (e.g. to $0.17 per share at Shell, minus 15% dividend tax).
A. You can terminate your membership by sending an email to info@follow-this.org with your request and IBAN number.
B. Your share will be sold and Follow This will credit the opening share price of the next trading day to your bank account.
Through purchasing a share or making a donation, you automatically become a Follow This member.
As a Follow This member, you are subscribed to the newsletter and invited to our yearly membership meeting.