In September 2024, as part of NYC Climate Week, InfluenceMap and We Mean Business gathered corporate climate leaders in a private meeting to discuss how to ramp up corporate support for government policy on climate change. Bringing this debate into the public domain is important—this briefing highlights remarks from key global companies on their Responsible Policy Engagement (RPE) strategy on climate in this ongoing process. Remarks from Norges Bank Investment Management, Enel, INGKA, Maersk, Nestlé, Salesforce, Schneider Electric, Trane Technologies, and Unilever follow.
In 2025, nations are due to submit updated Nationally Determined Contributions (the “NDCs 3.0”) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), whose Executive Secretary Simon Stiell "will determine how well countries can protect their people, economies, and budgets from the worsening effects of climate change." The gap between where NDCs and national binding climate policy are now and where they need to be to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement remains large, according to the Climate Action Tracker policy analysis platform and the UN Environment Program.
Opposition from vested interests remains a key driver behind this policy gap, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and demonstrated by InfluenceMap's LobbyMap platform’s ongoing tracking of 750 of the world's leading companies and 300 industry associations. To remedy this, there has been a positive trend over the last five years in strategic support for governments globally to craft and implement science-aligned policy and regulations—both to support their own decarbonization plans and to add a tailwind to growing markets for low-carbon products and services. Sectors like tech, retail, consumer goods, and industrial equipment are now joining the renewable energy industry in championing the business case for ambitious, binding rules to drive the energy transition. This is demonstrated in InfluenceMap's September release, Corporate Climate Policy Engagement Leaders, 2024, which identified 41 of the 750 companies in LobbyMap’s database for meeting three minimum criteria in leadership: (a) advocating in line with scientific recommendations, (b) prioritizing climate in their global advocacy programs, and (c) addressing industry association engagement. From this list of 41, InfluenceMap named eight corporate leaders in key regions for their strong performance in one of the three categories.
Yet barriers to progress remain. First, many of the powerful companies leading on corporate climate policy engagement are in disparate industrial sectors that may not naturally collaborate, or sectors in which competition issues may hinder collaboration. Second, technical issues lie at the heart of many meaningful climate and energy policies, and the details of these policies—such as grid reform or emissions regulations—determine their effectiveness. However, demand side companies with ambitious net zero targets do not naturally have deep expertise in these areas. The third, and perhaps most significant, barrier to progress is the lack of awareness of the strategic scale of the fossil fuel industry’s collaborative negative influencing apparatus. The sector uses public relations, narratives, funded research, networks of influencers, political contributions, direct regulatory lobbying, and lobbying via powerful trade groups to saturate media, government, and public conversations with its own strategic narratives to preserve the status quo. Thus, despite being a relatively small part of the economy (less than 8% of capital markets), the fossil fuel sector holds disproportionately large sway.
Civil society groups are now active in challenging and supporting non-fossil fuel companies and sectors to step up on policy engagement. To this end, the We Mean Business Coalition established a Responsible Policy Engagement (RPE) framework in 2023, which provides companies with the best available tools, guides, resources, and examples of best practice to raise standards in corporate climate advocacy. The framework covers the drivers of RPE, from investor pressure to new standards, and the business benefits of engaging in policy advocacy. InfluenceMap’s LobbyMap platform provides a vital open-source road map for companies to benchmark their performance against, track trade group misalignments, and identify collaboration opportunities. We Mean Business and InfluenceMap have entered into a strategic partnership to empower the implementation of RPE with real world data. As part of this partnership, InfluenceMap and We Mean Business co-hosted a private event during New York City Climate Week on September 25th, during which a cohort of climate policy engagement leaders offered remarks on elements of their climate RPE challenges and opportunities.
Remarks from some of these companies on a range of topics follow, along with a shareholder perspective on the topic from one of the world's largest institutional asset owners, Norges Bank Investment Management.
"As an energy company that operates in 28 countries, we recognize the significant role public policy plays in the clean energy transition. In this landscape, corporate climate advocacy will be key to ushering in this transition.
At Enel, we believe that public climate policy advocacy requires an integrated approach that fully leverages synergies across the full set of energy transition policy areas. A clear example is that of electrification of transportation and buildings, which deliver benefits that go beyond climate change and include energy and resource efficiency, local air quality improvement, and enhanced energy security. Our approach of going beyond our own operations extends to our customers, our engagement of community groups about renewable energy development, and our supply chain engagement."
"We began our climate advocacy journey in 2010, and following the Paris Agreement, we ramped up our global public affairs efforts. At the beginning, we lacked public affairs functions in local markets. Now, we operate in 31 markets, focusing on climate policy, electrification, renewable energy, and electric vehicles. We align our advocacy efforts with our 10 public policy positions, emphasizing the importance of climate policy while navigating the complexities of ensuring regulations are effective and appropriate.
We are a founding partner and funder of the We Mean Business Coalition and many other corporate climate initiatives. We value collaborative corporate climate action and seek to encourage climate action across our value chains and influence channels.
We are mindful of our relationships within trade groups, carefully considering both our own affiliations and the affiliations of the companies with which we work. This strategy emerges from our dedication to advancing our climate agenda while also fostering a responsible and cohesive corporate landscape focused on sustainability. Through these efforts, we aim to lead by example in the global movement toward a more sustainable future."
"We see climate policy engagement as a key part of Maersk’s roadmap to meet net zero. In our policy engagement, we have focused primarily on advocating for the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to secure an agreement for a global market-based emissions mechanism. We are seeking agreement with the rest of the sector on a mechanism to level the playing field and support the transition away from fossil fuels and toward green fuels. This is a critical enabler to derisk the investment needed to lower the costs of the technologies needed to transition the sector.
Policy engagement will play a critical role in delivering the transition for the wider maritime sector. As a leader in the sector, we often advocate on our own. But to drive change, we must work collaboratively with suppliers, customers, and competitors. We see ourselves playing a key role in helping other companies, especially our customers who are major importers and exporters, decarbonize their supply chains.
Trade groups play into our collaborative efforts, as they have a key role in engaging policymakers. Because trade groups represent companies across entire sectors, they can sometimes be conservative by nature. All of our climate policy outreach is conducted in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, which makes it important that we regularly review whether our trade group associations are aligned with our commitments and make decisions on engagement based on these reviews."
"Climate advocacy is a crucial component of our climate and nature strategy, which we launched five years ago. In our experience, corporate policy engagement has the most impact when it leans on its strengths. In our case, this entails engaging policymakers in Brussels, where we have significant operations and are a major employer, with 70 manufacturing sites and a vast supply chain of farmers.
We have seen notable successes in our policy engagement efforts, and our commitment to climate action extends across different regions. In Europe, we contributed to the EU farming strategy and promoted regenerative farming. In Vietnam, we have engaged in initiatives to encourage best practices in coffee cultivation, focusing on reducing fertilizer use, managing costs, and lowering emissions. We have actively engaged on the development of Brazil’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and undertaken similar efforts in other regions.
Despite these successes, we have faced challenges. Public affairs teams tend to focus on packaging regulations and trade rules over climate policy engagement, with environmental issues tending to be longer term plays. There is a need for greater understanding of climate policy and how to effectively advocate for it, particularly regarding NDCs and other relevant policies. Addressing these challenges will be crucial for Nestlé to enhance our climate advocacy and align our operations with our sustainability goals over the medium to long term."
"Our voice and influence are powerful tools to drive the urgent change our planet needs. That’s why Salesforce is committed to advancing science-based climate policies for a just, equitable future. Guided by our Global Climate Policy Principles, we advocate for policies that promote bold climate solutions. But we know our voice alone isn’t enough. That's why we collaborate with partners and coalitions to push for stronger climate action across industries. Together we've made great strides, but our work is far from finished."
"We are a corporate climate advocate and proud of the efforts we have undertaken to date, including some notable successes. In the EU, we pushed for an ambitious Green Deal and for key implementing policies like the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. Our global efforts have focused on promoting electrification, digitization, and energy efficiency to make buildings, infrastructure, data centers, and homes smarter and greener. A key milestone for these efforts was when world leaders agreed to triple global renewable energy capacity and double energy efficiency by 2030 in the Global Stocktake at COP28, setting a foundation for future discussions.
We have also demonstrated our commitment to sustainability advocacy through our EV100 commitment with Climate Group and are currently advocating for the electrification of professional fleets in France.
Drawing from these experiences, we have three key learnings to share from our corporate climate policy engagement to date. First, we emphasize the importance of working through coalitions of likeminded companies to advocate, including We Mean Business Coalition and Corporate Leaders Group Europe. Second, early engagement in the legislative process is crucial to influence policy development. Finally, providing policymakers with precise data is essential for data-driven policy implementation."
"At Trane Technologies, we have a goal to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for our customers by a gigatonne by 2030. More than 93% of the emissions in our value chain are Scope 3, customer emissions, largely due to energy use.
Sustainability is integrated into our company’s culture and decision-making. Our leadership is compensated, in part, based on sustainability progress. Every employee is asked to have an annual sustainability goal, and we integrate climate impacts into our business decisions.
We have a very small policy team that is focused on enabling innovative technologies (e.g., removing barriers in building codes), advancing uptake of these sustainable technologies, and defending good policy and transparency. Many of our colleagues support good policy through their annual sustainability goals by advocating for sustainability (e.g., in energy efficiency standards).
Our strategic partnerships play a crucial role in our strategy. There are some trade associations that are unduly influenced by companies that are nascent in their sustainability journey and are unprepared to transition. We are direct in our advocacy to stop negative action.
In contrast, we collaborate with some small, principled, and impactful organizations (e.g., the Business Council for Sustainable Energy) that have clear guardrails that prevent negative influence and align with our sustainability objectives. We believe that one company can change an industry, and one industry can change the world, especially with positive partners that have an outsized impact advancing key global goals (e.g., the energy transition)."
"We support the theory of change behind corporate policy engagement reporting: that for our climate advocacy to be effective, it needs to be supported by other powerful actors that governments will listen to, including industry associations who are aligned with our positions. Crucially, a climate policy engagement review helps us explore which industry bodies are aligned with our policy positions.
We believe it is no longer good enough for industry groups to simply say they are Paris Agreement aligned; words must be matched with action. Our first review helped us understand whose words matched their actions.
Last year, we surveyed the role industry associations play in helping to shape climate policy, with a specific focus on their alignment with Unilever’s own climate advocacy work. Our independent review assessed 27 of the associations we work with, looking at their positions and statements, but also—critically—at their public record of activity in 2022 and 2023.
We know that associations can be strong drivers of change, but some are passive at best, or a hindrance at worse. These associations can and should do better and we want to make sure those we’re working with address this."
Carine Smith Ihenacho
Chief Governance and Compliance Officer
Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM)
"It is great to hear examples of companies meeting investor expectations to align their policy engagement with their climate change strategies. Our mandate establishes as a long-term goal for our responsible management activities that the operations of the companies we invest in are compatible with global net-zero emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement. On this basis, the ambition of our Climate Action Plan is for our portfolio companies to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Climate policy has potentially major impacts on the long-term value of our portfolio, and companies undoubtedly have a role to play in helping to shape those policies. This is equally true in other policy areas. We therefore felt it was important to make a clear statement of our perspective on companies’ roles in the policymaking process. We have also updated our climate change expectations, detailing specific elements we wish to see reflected in companies' transition plans and including climate lobbying. Companies should align their lobbying activities with the objectives of the Paris Agreement and address membership to trade bodies or associations that is or may appear incongruent with the company’s climate change policy.
Our approach to responsible policy engagement involves three main components that guide how we assess shareholder resolutions, including those related to this topic. First, we acknowledge the risks and opportunities associated with corporate policy engagement, emphasizing the need for strong governance and board oversight. Second, we highlight the importance of transparency. Last, working toward alignment is crucial: companies' policy engagement should align with their stated policies, climate targets, and engagement strategies.
We have seen positive trends across our portfolio, though practice is still uneven. We are encouraged by the efforts of InfluenceMap and others to raise the bar in this area."