Today, National Legal and Policy Center presented a “Report on Congruence of Security, Resiliency and Climate Initiatives” proposal at JPMorgan Chase & Co.‘s annual shareholder meeting.
In October the company announced a $1.5 trillion Security and Resiliency Initiative to finance defense manufacturing, energy independence, critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, and nuclear energy. However, it contradicts JPMorgan’s own underwriting framework, which penalizes many of the industries the SRI claims to support. NLPC outlined the contradiction in an exempt solicitation report that was circulated to JPMorgan investors over a month ago. Read the executive summary and the full report.
JPMorgan’s board opposed the proposal, as explained on page 84 of the company’s proxy statement.
Presenting the proposal at the annual meeting was Paul Chesser, director of NLPC’s Corporate Integrity Project. His three-minute remarks can be heard here, and a transcript follows:
I’m Paul Chesser of the National Legal and Policy Center.
I want to begin by saying that NLPC supports the premise of the Security and Resiliency Initiative, or SRI.
A $1.5 trillion dollar commitment to finance American reindustrialization, defense manufacturing, energy independence, and critical minerals is exactly the kind of long-term, strategic vision shareholders should want from the world’s largest bank.
Our proposal does not oppose the SRI.
It asks a straightforward question: how does the SRI coexist with JPMorgan’s Carbon Compass framework?
Carbon Compass commits the Company to steep emissions intensity reduction targets by 2030 across eight carbon-intensive sectors — all benchmarked to the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero by 2050 scenario.
That scenario assumes no new oil and gas field approvals after 2021, and the total phase-out of coal and oil power generation by 2040.
The SRI, on the other hand, requires more steel, more cement, more energy production, and more mining — not less.
JPMorgan’s own Climate Report describes a Carbon Assessment Framework that evaluates each new proposed in-scope transaction against the Company’s carbon intensity targets and delivers those evaluations to decision-makers.
That serves as a filter on underwriting — applied to the very clients the SRI is designed to serve.
JPMorgan would have you believe that Carbon Compass merely represents opportunities for new lines of business.
What the company leaves out is that entire portfolios have targets they must reach, which cannot be accomplished simply by adding green energy projects.
Constraining financing for high-carbon transactions is also part of the equation.
The SRI has now expanded to Europe.
The conflict between these two frameworks has expanded with it.
In 2025, JPMorgan left the Net Zero Banking Alliance.
But it did not abandon the Carbon Compass targets that underpinned that membership.
JPMorgan’s Board has called our concerns a “fundamental misunderstanding.”
If the two frameworks are truly compatible, a brief explanatory report should be simple to produce and cost very little.
The Board’s resistance to transparency about its own flagship initiatives is, itself, informative.
Shareholders of JPMorgan are entitled to understand which framework actually governs capital allocation when these two commitments conflict.
That is all Proposal 4 asks.
It asks for clarity — not a change in strategy, not a concession, and not an apology.
It asks JPMorgan’s Board to show its work to the people who own this Company.
I urge you to vote FOR Proposal 4.
Thank you.
All assertions made by Chesser in his above remarks are footnoted and can be found in NLPC’s exempt solicitation report, here. An executive summary of the report can be viewed here.
Read NLPC’s shareholder proposal for the JPMorgan Chase annual meeting here.
Listen to Chesser’s presentation of the proposal at the meeting here.
