Energy
In shortfall: over 666 million people lacked electricity and more than 2 billion relied on polluting cooking fuels in 2023 per the IEA. That is in line with the Doughnut's monitoring, which showed 9 percent of people lacking electricity in 2022.
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Energy access is delivered by utilities, distributed-solar firms, fuel suppliers and the mobile-money systems that let poor households pay for connections. International public finance is only about 7 percent of clean energy investment in developing economies outside China, so where listed companies choose to spend their money is a necessary input. The gap is concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, home to 85 percent of the unelectrified population. There the IEA reports energy investment one-third lower in 2025 than in 2015, and debt servicing consuming more than 85 percent of the continent's energy investment. If every listed utility, oil major, equipment maker and bank treated universal access as a core objective and lobbied its home governments for concessional support, capital and technology would flow at scale. Shareholder channels such as the Follow This climate resolutions at Shell show owners already contest energy strategy. The sovereign-debt relief, concessional finance and public utility reform that the IEA names as the missing pieces are beyond any proxy vote. Owners supply a necessary input, and governments and development lenders must also act.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Energy access improving, but international financial support still needed to boost progress and address disparities, International Energy Agency, 2025-06-25
- World Energy Investment 2025, Executive summary, International Energy Agency, 2025
- The Doughnut, Doughnut Economics Action Lab, 2025 (accessed 2026-08)
- One-fifth of Shell shareholders maintain demand for emissions reductions to meet Paris by voting for Follow This climate resolution, Follow This, 2023-05-23
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Files annual climate resolutions at Shell, co-filed by institutional investors, asking the company to align emissions targets with the Paris Agreement and to disclose its strategy under declining oil and gas demand.
2 campaigns on record
Disclose Shell's strategy for creating shareholder value under scenarios of declining oil and gas demand.
With 21 institutional investors managing 1.2 trillion dollars
Result: 13 percent in favor
Align Shell's medium-term emissions reduction targets with the Paris Climate Agreement.
With 27 institutional investors including MN
Result: 19 percent in favor
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Doughnut Economics's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.