BURN MORE COAL attended the Exelon annual meeting today to present it shareholder proposal calling for a greenwashing audit. Here is our report.

Just as the meeting began and before Chairman Mayo Shattuck could really get a word in edgewise, two green activist shareholders popped up (out of order) and harangued Exelon subsidiary PECO (formerly the Philadelphia Electric Company) for impeding residential solar in Philadelphia and otherwise failing the climate crisis.

When it came time for comments on the board of directors, another green popped up saying she wouldn’t vote for any board member because… Exelon wasn’t doing enough to get more residential solar in Philadelphia.

When it was BURN MORE COAL’s turn to speak, Steve Milloy delivered the following presentation:

Good morning fellow shareholders. I am Steve Milloy. Here is my proposal.

The purpose of Exelon is to sell affordable and reliable electricity while obeying the law.

As a publicly-owned company, Exelon must tell the truth.

I am concerned that management is failing on both counts.

Not only has Exelon quit burning coal — a clean and low-cost way to generate electricity – but Exelon has embraced wind and solar — expensive and unreliable ways to generate electricity.

On top of this, Exelon is failing to advance nuclear power.

What’s the problem?

You need look no further than management itself.

Exelon’s web site ridiculously proclaims: “We need the Earth. Today, it needs us.”

That would be a great slogan for running a mindless environmental group like Greenpeace, but it hardly befits the much more serious business of selling electricity.

In management’s bid to save the planet, Exelon plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 15 million tons per year by 2020.

No law requires these cuts.

So why do them?

Well, management hopes to somehow alter whatever imperceptible global climate change may or may not be occurring.

My proposal is intended to help shareholders monitor whether Exelon’s expensive voluntary activities related to the climate are actually producing meaningful benefits to customers, shareholders and the environment.

Corporate managements sometimes engage in what I call “greenwashing.”

They spend shareholder money on schemes ostensibly related to the environment, but which are really undertaken merely for the purpose of polishing management’s public image.

Greenwashing harms shareholders by distracting management, wasting corporate assets, ripping off customers and deceiving shareholders and the public.

I believe that management is greenwashing by pretending that there are actual benefits from cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

The emphasis, here, is on actual — not hypothetical, pretend or imaginary benefits.

Regardless of what you think about climate science, Exelon’s unilateral emissions cuts are NOT an obvious benefit to anyone or anything.
Global carbon dioxide emissions are higher now than ever… and increasing… with no end in sight.

China plans to double the size of its already immense coal fleet by 2030. Around the world, there are 1,100 coal plants being planned.
While Exelon wants to reduce emissions by 15 MILLION tons per year, global emissions are already at 53 BILLION tons per year… and growing. Exelon’s planned cuts are meaningless.

By how much, in what way, and when… will Exelon’s emissions cuts alter climate change?

They won’t. The math is simple.

Cutting emissions for the sake of cutting emissions is all pain and no gain for all concerned… except, of course, for our greenwashing management… hoping to get patted on the back for political correctness.

Customers will pay higher rates for no purpose.

Customers, regulators and investors are right now being deceived about the import of the emissions cuts.

And of course, by wasting its time on nonsensical emissions cuts, management is failing to defend and advance the nuclear power that is 60% of Exelon’s generation portfolio.

This is bad business. It is dishonest business. I believe it violates the securities laws.

And so far the lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission have agreed with me. That’s why this proposal is in the proxy statement.

If management disagrees, let’s see the math.

Until they do, they are greenwashing. Nothing good will come from this. Thank you for your attention and vote.

After I spoke, yet another green popped up to the microphone and said that he didn’t understand how I could have made my statement because [ha-ha] recreational marijuana was illegal in Delaware (where the meeting was held).

Exelon CEO Chris Crane then “responded” to my statement with some low-carbon corporate-speak babble, boasting that his institutional investors opposed the BURN MORE COAL proposal. Crane never came close to addressing my allegation that Exelon is lying about the impacts of its carbon cuts.

While the proposal lost — we don’t have the exact result yet — Exelon has yet to perceive that BURN MORE COAL has actually had a tremendous success that may just come back to haunt Exelon and other utility managements.

That is, in denying Exelon’s bid to omit the BURN MORE COAL shareholder proposal from Exelon’s 2019 proxy statement, the lawyers at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission affirmed BURN MORE COAL’s point that Exelon (and other utilities) are not telling the truth when it comes to the significance of their CO2 cuts. Publicly traded companies are not allowed to lie. Ask Elon Musk for his recent experience on this count.

See you next year, Exelon. Or maybe sooner.