Regarding Agenda Item 3: To ratify the acts of the members of the Executive Board
The Association of Ethical Shareholders Germany requests that the acts of the members of the Executive Board not be ratified.
Rationale:
The Executive Board of Siemens Energy AG is not living up to its responsibility to comply with the goals of the Paris Agreement because the company continues to participate in energy projects that are particularly harmful to the climate. It has no concrete plans to withdraw from all fossil energies.
Contract for a new coal-fired power plant is responsible for an abysmal climate footprint
Siemens Energy is actively involved in expanding the use of energies that are harmful to the climate. Siemens Energy’ actions thus contribution to making it more and more unlikely that the goals of the Paris Agreement can be achieved. At any rate, the company itself now makes the consequences transparent: For the first time – as required by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol – Siemens discloses how many tons of CO2 are emitted by the products it sold last fiscal year during their anticipated lifecycle: around 1.4 billion CO2e. By comparison: That is almost twice the annual emissions of the whole of Germany or 3.85 percent of global CO2 emissions in 2021.
The climate-damaging emissions for which Siemens Energy is jointly responsible have even risen. That is because Siemens Energy’s decision to withdraw from coal does not apply to current construction work on new coal-fired power plants. The contract for a new coal-fired power plant in Indonesia is the main reason for the increase – by a hefty 442 million tons of CO2 – in scope 3 emissions from the use of products it sells.
This shows that, to ensure effective climate protection, Siemens Energy must not only reduce emissions from its own production operations, but also withdraw from business with fossil energies. Siemens Energy has not even formulated clear goals on how to accomplish that, never mind the fact that those goals would not match the reduction targets necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. For Gas and Power, Siemens Energy only plans a 28% reduction by 2030 over 2019 levels. That means the young and future generations will be left to tackle the huge burdens involved in protecting the climate after 2030.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), no further oil or gas fields and new coal mines should be developed so that the goal of net carbon neutrality by 2050 can be achieved. Yet Siemens Energy helps drive such projects worldwide.
Siemens Energy provides equipment for LNG projects and endangers achievement of the climate targets
New infrastructure projects for fossil fuels are a massive threat to achievement of the Paris Agreement’s goals, since they establish a high emissions pathway for the coming decades. Siemens Energy continues to supply a large number of such projects; striking negative examples are in particular projects involving liquefied natural gas (LNG). For instance, Siemens Energy supplies compressors for the LNG export facilities of Venture Global, as well as steam turbines and compressors for the Golden Pass LNG project of QatarEnergy and ExxonMobil in the United States. In addition, it supplies gas turbines and compressors for Total’s LNG project in Mozambique, as well as for the LNG facilities of Nigeria LNG (NLNG) in Nigeria and for Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 project in Russia.
The production of LNG is particularly energy-intensive, and methane leaks occur through the entire lifecycle of LNG. In order to produce LNG, fossil gas is first cooled down to a very low temperature to liquefy it, then loaded onto LNG tankers and shipped to faraway ports, where it has to be converted back into gas before it can be combusted in a power plant. That means almost half of LNG’s total greenhouse gas emissions are caused before electricity or heat is even generated. And of the fossil gas have also been extracted by means of fracking, then LNG is just as damaging to the climate as coal and far more damaging to the climate than pipeline gas from conventional reservoirs.
Brazil: Siemens Energy is involved in Latin America’s largest gas-fired power plant project
Siemens Energy is also involved in LNG terminals of the “Superport Porto de Açu ” at Campos dos Goytacazes in the north of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro. This involvement raises the question of how Siemens lives up to its human rights due diligence obligations. It is said that hundreds of families whose property was expropriated so that the port could be built have still not received any compensation to date. They were deprived of their existing means of making a livelihood from their small family farms and fishing. Fishing areas had to be closed because salt water ran over from the dams built in the port of Açu.
From next year, Siemens must take preventive action against human rights violations in its foreign business pursuant to the German Act on Corporate Due Diligence in Supply Chains. The expropriation of land without compensation in the above-mentioned port project is a clear violation – and Siemens Energy has a responsibility, in cooperation with the parties involved in the project, to stop that and ensure it never happens again.
Regarding Agenda Item 4: To ratify the acts of the Supervisory Board
The Association of Ethical Shareholders Germany requests that the acts of the members of the Supervisory Board not be ratified.
Rationale:
The Supervisory Board of Siemens Energy AG has not adequately fulfilled its responsibility to instruct the Executive Board and control it effectively in relation to its duty to conduct environmental and human rights due diligence.
Western Sahara: Siemens Gamesa expands wind farms instead of respecting international law
Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE), in which Siemens Energy has a majority stake, last year started shipping wind turbines for the Boujdour wind farm to Western Sahara, a war zone that has been occupied by Morocco in contravention of international law. This will be the fifth wind park created with the involvement of the Siemens Group (formerly Siemens AG/Gamesa, now SGRE/Siemens Energy) in cooperation with the occupying power and with disregard to the rights of the people of Western Sahara. The wind farms to date supply, among other things, electricity for the phosphate mine in Western Sahara, which Moroccan state-owned companies are exploiting illegally under international law.
At last year’s Annual Shareholders’ Meeting, SGRE also openly admitted that it has not “held talks with representatives outside the [Moroccan] government and stated that it was not its role “to obtain political approval for the wind farm project.” That is in clear contradiction to the most recent ruling by the European General Court (EGC). In September 2021, it concluded that Western Sahara and Morocco are two distinct and separate territories and that the consent of the people of West Sahara must be obtained for economic activities there. The EGC explicitly underscored that this consent can be granted solely by the Frente Polisario, the representative of the Saharawi people recognized by the UN. However, Siemens Energy and its subsidiaries have not obtained the necessary consent for any of the five wind farms and also locates the wind farm as on Moroccan territory.
By cooperating with the occupying power and Nareva, a private company owned by the Moroccan king, Siemens Energy is supporting and stabilizing the illegal occupation, which in accompanied by massive violations of human rights. The Saharawi people’s right of selfdetermination is undermined, while the occupying power and king profit from its resources with the aid of the company. The Saharawis is not prepared to put up with that any longer; for example, the Frente Polisario has already spoken openly about potential legal action to seek compensation. Support for the illegal occupation must be ended immediately; Siemens Energy also cannot continue to ignore this issue.
