Climate protestors picketed the annual shareholders' meeting of Siemens on Wednesday amid growing pressure on the German engineering giant to drop a controversial contract and decarbonise its business model.
Departing chief executive Joe Kaeser, under fire on multiple fronts, dismissed protests over an Australian mine contract as “almost grotesque” and “irrelevant”. But the protests have left their mark on nervous shareholders amid a three per cent fall in net profit in its fiscal first quarter and plans to hive off the company’s gas and power divisions and create a new listed entity, Siemens Energy.
Most in focus on Wednesday in Munich, though, were energetic and vocal climate activists outside the doors of the city’s Olympic park hall where the annual general meeting (agm) was taking place.
Germany's local Fridays for Future branch has condemned Siemens co-operation with Australian coal mine operator Adani in its controversial Carmichael project. The German company has signed an €18 million contract to provide signalling technology for the coal mine's railway.
The project has come under attack amid Australian wild fires, with vocal opposition coming from indigenous groups.
While activists with a flame-shaped placard reading “Stop Adani” gathered outside the meeting, Mr Kaeser defended the Siemens climate record inside. The group had achieved a 41 per cent decline in CO2 emissions since fiscal 2014 and was being unfairly targeted with protests “that won’t solve anything” because of one contract order.
“With such issues you just can’t win,” he said, insisting the Australian contract was an irrelevance in the company’s balance sheet and climate record.
‘All necessary permits’
“We are complying with all legal provisions and the Carmichael mine has in fact received all necessary permits from the Australian authorities,” he said.
He added that the company must better prepare itself for the ramifications of dealing with involvement “directly or indirectly” in controversial projects, and announced a €1 billion sustainability review of all of Siemens supply chains.
But institutional shareholders, mindful of the growing PR disaster around Siemens, took swipes at the outgoing chief executive for causing “massive damage” to the company’s image.
Others questioned whether the “environmental and reputation risks have been carefully examined”.
Noting total orders at €24.76 billion were down 2 per cent from the same period in the previous year, Siemens confirmed a full-year outlook of “moderate growth in comparable revenue, net of currency translation and portfolio effects”.
Leading the protest outside was German climate activist Luisa Neubauer, who met Mr Kaeser over the Adani contract and reportedly refused his offer to join the Siemens supervisory board.
She accused the German engineering conglomerate of being “stuck in the last century” and demanded Siemens present a “clear plan for how they will phase out fossil fuels”.
Joining climate activists outside the agm were medical doctors. Dr Martin Hermann, of Germany’s Alliance for Climate Change, said: “Climate change is the biggest threat for health in our century, and it is not tolerable any longer that companies like Siemens make money by further worsening the situation.”
