Can investor coalitions drive corporate climate action?

In recent years, numerous investor-led initiatives have formed to drive sustainability and climate action across the real economy. To date, their effectiveness remains largely untested. This paper addresses this gap by evaluating the impact of Climate Action 100+ (CA100+), the world’s largest investor coalition focused on climate change. To overcome common measurement challenges, the study employs a multidimensional approach to assessing corporate climate action, including newly collected data on the ambition of carbon emission reduction targets and a Natural Language Processing model to assess climate-related disclosures. It also calculates the collective ownership share (in terms of outstanding shares) that CA100+ investors own in companies to proxy the initiative’s influence.

The study tries to isolate the causal impact of CA100+ by examining the coalition’s selection process for its focus companies and comparing targeted companies with a suitable control group. The findings indicate that CA100+ has not significantly influenced climate-related disclosures or immediate reductions in carbon intensity. However, its engagement has led to greater ambition in companies’ medium- and long-term emission reduction targets. Notably, this effect is concentrated among companies selected by investors on a discretionary basis. Surprisingly, the study finds no evidence that the initiative’s scale – measured via collective ownership and assets under management – amplifies impact, nor any spillover effects to non-target firms.

Key points for decision-makers

• Climate Action 100+ (CA100+) represents a coalition of more than 600 investors, targeting 168 high-emitting companies to align their corporate actions with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
• This study evaluates whether observed changes in climate action among the targeted companies result from CA100+’s engagement or reflect broader market trends.
• Corporate climate action is assessed using a dataset from the Transition Pathway Initiative on emissions reduction targets, augmented with new primary data, along with analysis of corporate disclosures using the ClimateBERT model.
• While CA100+ has not substantially influenced climate-related reporting or near-term emissions reductions, its collective engagement has strengthened the ambition of medium- and long-term emission reduction targets.
• Notably, the effect on targets is concentrated among the ‘Plus’ companies, which were added to CA100+’s focus list on a discretionary basis. This suggests that investor selectivity may matter for engagement outcomes.
• The results also indicate that investors should focus more on near-term milestones, as a lack of short-term targets could lead to ‘backloading’ decarbonisation efforts, where companies commit to future reductions without immediate action.
• The study finds no significant moderation effect of CA100+’s collective ownership share in companies, suggesting that greater collective ownership does not necessarily translate into greater engagement impact. Moreover, there is no evidence of spillover effects from coordinated CA100+ engagement into investors’ individual engagement activities with non-target firms.
• The study evaluates the first phase of CA100+ engagement (2017–2023) which focused on climate-related disclosure and target-setting. Reducing companies’ carbon intensities – a newer objective that CA100+ introduced in its ongoing second phase of engagement – may require more time to materialise.

An earlier version of this paper was published in October 2024 by the LSE Department of Geography and Environment in its ‘Papers in Environmental Economics and Policy’ series (Paper no. 49). The current Grantham Research Institute working paper version replaces the one first published in November 2024, having been updated by the author in August 2025.