ASHINGTON, May 28 — Almost a quarter of the shareholders of the Southern Company, one of the nation's largest utilities, voted at the annual meeting today to require the company to analyze and report on the potential financial risks associated with its emissions of the pollutants that cause global warming.

At the same time, shareholders of Exxon Mobil, the world's biggest oil company, meeting in Dallas, gave a similar level of support to several resolutions on environmental issues. One, which would require the company to report on how it would increase its investments in renewable energy, was backed by 21 percent of the shareholders, and another, on how it would respond to the risks of global warming, was supported by 22 percent.

No one expected any of these resolutions to win majority support. But they are a measure of the increasing intensity of shareholders' challenges to corporations to respond to environmental concerns.

Spurred on by a coalition of environmental and religious groups, shareholders have filed 31 global warming resolutions with 23 companies in the United States this year and 5 in Canada. The companies include auto manufacturers, electric power companies and oil companies.

"It is a trend that I don't think is going to disappear," said Sister Barbara Aires, coordinator of corporate responsibility for the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth in New Jersey, who introduced the resolution today at Southern's meeting in Georgia. "I think more institutional investors are looking for assessments of the triple bottom line — social, environmental and financial — not simply financial."

Last year, resolutions concerning global warming won about 18 percent of shareholders' support at a dozen or so companies, according to the United States Public Interest Research Group, which has helped organize efforts for the resolutions. This year, they have averaged more than 25 percent at more than twice the number of companies, the group said.

The Investor Responsibility Research Center, a nonprofit group in Washington that advises institutions on proxy issues, was more cautious in interpreting the numbers. Its overall figures were lower because they included a low of 5.2 percent for a resolution at Citigroup, which finances energy ventures. That resolution called for Citigroup to review the effect of these financial ventures on climate.

Still, said Meg Voorhes, director of the center's social issues service, among electric utilities and oil and gas companies, the average support level was 22.6 percent in 2003, indicating investor concern about the risks that these companies face.

"In the 32-year history of shareholder activism on social issues," she said, "only board-diversity proposals have had average support levels topping 20 percent."

Last year, 9 percent of Southern's shareholders voted for a resolution to increase the company's commitment to renewable forms of energy to 20 percent of its portfolio by 2010.

"Obviously, we're way beyond that now," said Rebecca Stanfield, a lawyer with the research group. This year's measure, on the separate matter of financial risk but still perceived as a pro-environmental vote, received support from 23 percent of the shareholders.

"If it's any indication of their concern," said Ms. Stanfield, who spoke at the meeting, held outside Atlanta, "they treated us with kid gloves, shuttling us around and making sure we had coffee, anything we wanted."

"I think they're concerned" about where these resolutions are headed over the long term, she said.

Laura Varn, a Southern spokeswoman, said: "Any time a resolution comes before the annual meeting, it is something we take seriously."

She said, however, that the company was pleased that 77 percent of its shareholders agreed with the board that the resolution on financial risk would be of little benefit.

"The information that would be necessary to predict economic risk would be highly speculative and therefore unreliable to the investors," Ms. Varn said.

Still, Ms. Stanfield said the votes suggested the "increasing awareness that failure to address pollution issues can make a company vulnerable to changing regulatory landscapes, liability for damages and poor public image."

Indeed, reports from Europe and the United Nations have estimated that changes in climate could cost the world $300 billion annually by 2050 from weather damage, pollution and industrial and agricultural losses.

The financial-risk resolution that was considered by Southern shareholders asked the board to submit a report to shareholders by August that would detail the economic risks to the company resulting from past, present and future emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and mercury; report on the company's efforts to reduce these emissions; and detail the economic benefits of committing the company to a substantial reduction of emissions.

The resolution is identical to ones that were filed at four other major utilities this year: the American Electric Power Company, Excel Energy Inc., the TXU Corporation and the Cinergy Corporation. Along with Southern, they are the top five emitters of carbon dioxide in the country. Votes have been held so far at American Electric Power, where 27 percent of shareholders approved the resolution, and at TXU, where 24 percent approved.

Because the level of support at Southern was somewhat less than that, Ms. Varn was skeptical that the vote today indicated there was any forward movement for environmentalists.

"Ours came in at the low end," she said of the 23 percent. "They were hoping for more of an upswing so they could characterize it as growing momentum, but that wasn't the case."

While the managements of these companies have all opposed the resolutions, most have been endorsed by firms that advise institutional shareholders. The most successful so far was a global warming resolution earlier this year at ChevronTexaco, where 32 percent of shareholders voted in favor. This was more than three times the level of support that the last global warming resolution received at the company, which was 9.6 percent in 2001.

Ms. Voorhes of the Investor Responsibility Research Center said, "What we're seeing with these vote results creeping up is that people are saying maybe there is something to this idea that global climate change is a risk and the companies aren't preparing for it, they aren't discussing it forthrightly or in detail."

he Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to publish a draft report next week on the state of the environment, but after editing by the White House, a long section describing risks from rising global temperatures has been whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs.

The report, commissioned in 2001 by the agency's administrator, Christie Whitman, was intended to provide the first comprehensive review of what is known about various environmental problems, where gaps in understanding exist and how to fill them.

Agency officials said it was tentatively scheduled to be released early next week, before Mrs. Whitman steps down on June 27, ending a troubled time in office that often put her at odds with President Bush.

Drafts of the climate section, with changes sought by the White House, were given to The New York Times yesterday by a former E.P.A. official, along with earlier drafts and an internal memorandum in which some officials protested the changes. Two agency officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the documents were authentic.

The editing eliminated references to many studies concluding that warming is at least partly caused by rising concentrations of smokestack and tail-pipe emissions and could threaten health and ecosystems.

Among the deletions were conclusions about the likely human contribution to warming from a 2001 report on climate by the National Research Council that the White House had commissioned and that President Bush had endorsed in speeches that year. White House officials also deleted a reference to a 1999 study showing that global temperatures had risen sharply in the previous decade compared with the last 1,000 years. In its place, administration officials added a reference to a new study, partly financed by the American Petroleum Institute, questioning that conclusion.

In the end, E.P.A. staff members, after discussions with administration officials, said they decided to delete the entire discussion to avoid criticism that they were selectively filtering science to suit policy.

Administration officials defended the report and said there was nothing untoward about the process that produced it. Mrs. Whitman said that she was "perfectly comfortable" with the edited version and that the differences over climate change should not hold up the broader assessment of the nation's air, land and water.

"The first draft, as with many first drafts, contained everything," she said in a brief telephone interview from the CBS studios in Manhattan, where she was waiting to tape "The Late Show With David Letterman."

"As it went through the review, there was less consensus on the science and conclusions on climate change," Ms. Whitman said. "So rather than go out with something half-baked or not put out the whole report, we felt it was important for us to get this out because there is a lot of really good information that people can use to measure our successes."

James L. Connaughton, chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality, a White House advisory group, said, "It would be utterly inaccurate to suggest that this administration has not provided quite an extensive discussion about the state of the climate. Ultimately, E.P.A. made the decision not to include the section on climate change because we had these ample discussions of the subject already."

But private environmental groups sharply criticized the changes when they heard of them.

"Political staff are becoming increasingly bold in forcing agency officials to endorse junk science," said Jeremy Symons, a climate policy expert at the National Wildlife Federation. "This is like the White House directing the secretary of labor to alter unemployment data to paint a rosy economic picture."

Drafts of the report have been circulating for months, but a heavy round of rewriting and cutting by White House officials in late April raised protest among E.P.A. officials working on the report.

An April 29 memorandum circulated among staff members said that after the changes by White House officials, the section on climate "no longer accurately represents scientific consensus on climate change."

Another memorandum circulated at the same time said that the easiest course would be to accept the White House revisions but that to do so would taint the agency, because "E.P.A. will take responsibility and severe criticism from the science and environmental communities for poorly representing the science."

The changes were mainly made by the Council on Environmental Quality, although the Office of Management and Budget was also involved, several E.P.A. officials said. It is the second time in a year that the White House has sought to play down global warming in official documents.

Last September, an annual E.P.A. report on air pollution that for six years had contained a section on climate was released without one, and the decision to delete it was made by Bush administration appointees at the agency with White House approval.

Like the September report, the forthcoming report says the issues will be dealt with later by a climate research plan being prepared by the Bush administration.

Other sections of the coming E.P.A. report — on water quality, ecological conditions, ozone depletion in the atmosphere and other issues — all start with a summary statement about the potential impact of changes on human health and the environment, which are the two responsibilities of the agency.

But in the "Global Issues" section of the draft returned by the White House to E.P.A. in April, an introductory sentence reading, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment" was cut and replaced with a paragraph that starts: "The complexity of the Earth system and the interconnections among its components make it a scientific challenge to document change, diagnose its causes, and develop useful projections of how natural variability and human actions may affect the global environment in the future."

Some E.P.A. staff members defended the document, saying that although pared down it would still help policy makers and the agency address the climate issue.

"This is a positive step by the agency," said an author of the report, who did not want to be named, adding that it would help someone determine "if a facility or pollutant is going to hurt my family or make it bad for the birds, bees and fish out there."

ASHINGTON, June 24 — An array of industrialized and developing countries agreed today on the outline of a cooperative research program aimed at capturing and storing carbon dioxide, the main smokestack emission linked to global warming.

The agreement came halfway through a three-day conference in McLean, Va., organized by the Bush administration, which has argued for more than a year that a technological breakthrough will be needed to stabilize levels of so-called greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

A buildup of those gases has been blamed by many scientists for most of a 50-year warming trend that could raise sea levels and disrupt climate patterns if emissions are not reduced. Most industrialized countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, a binding treaty that would require reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases. It awaits ratification by Russia to take effect.

The Bush administration has rejected that approach, saying climate science remains too uncertain to justify mandatory measures. It favors voluntary programs for curbing growth in the gases and long-term research on new nonpolluting energy sources or ways to sop up emissions from the burning of fossil fuels like oil, natural gas and coal.

"Regardless of what target you choose," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said, "no goal is going to be achieved unless we develop the new technologies to get there."

One justification for pursuing that approach, administration officials and independent experts at the meeting said, is a projection that 90 percent of the increased demand for electricity worldwide in the next half-century will be met by burning fossil fuels. The administration wants to find ways to continue using coal, which remains plentiful and cheap, without adding to the atmosphere's burden of greenhouse gases.

At the meeting, officials from the United States, the European Union, Canada, Australia, Russia, Japan, China, India and several other countries said they planned to sign a charter on Thursday under which they would coordinate research projects on the process, called carbon sequestration.

Energy experts from private environmental groups who attended the conference said that devising such techniques was important, but added that without binding limits on emissions, there would be no impetus for power generators to use modernized equipment.

UBLIC opinion is tough enough on chief executives these days, but try being the boss of a utility when some of its own shareholders have labeled it one of the "Filthy Five" for its copious carbon dioxide emissions.

That's where James E. Rogers, the president and chief executive of the Cinergy Corporation, finds himself. Cinergy, based in Cincinnati, provides electrical power to about two million customers in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. Ninety percent of the electricity it produces comes from its coal-powered plants, which release as much as 70 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Because of concern about greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, environmental groups have pressed Cinergy and other utilities to reduce emissions and report on their efforts. Earlier this year, a coalition of shareholders, including the State of Connecticut pension fund and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, filed a proxy resolution asking Cinergy to report its climate change risks.

(Cinergy successfully petitioned the S.E.C. to prevent a vote. But similar ideas have drawn significant support in proxy votes at other electrical utilities — 27 percent at American Electric Power and 23 percent at the Southern Company.)

While under pressure to reduce emissions, Cinergy must consider customers' desire for reasonably priced power and investors' desire for profit. "My job is to balance the sometimes competing needs of these different stakeholders," he said.

A former consumer advocate who fought rate increases and a former regulator for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Mr. Rogers, 55, seems to understand the opposition to Cinergy's legislative and environmental positions.

In 1990, not long after he took the helm of the company, he broke from the industry and supported amendments to the federal Clean Air Act that sought to reduce sulfur dioxide. In testimony before the Senate in 2001, he advocated setting limits for carbon dioxide emissions as part of comprehensive national emissions-reduction legislation — a position he has since backed away from.

"Having been on many sides of the issue gives me a unique perspective," he said. "My whole career has been predicated on making common cause with other groups."

That has earned him respect even from people who are generally critical of utilities. "He's one of the new breed of utility executives," said David G. Hawkins, director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group based in New York.

Mr. Rogers, who grew up in Kentucky and earned a law degree from the University of Kentucky, married his first wife, Robyn, when he was 19; they had three children — Chrissy, who is now 35; Kara, 34; and Benjamin, 31. The marriage ended in divorce in 1975. He married his present wife, Mary Ann, in 1977.

After graduation, he was an assistant attorney general for the State of Kentucky, where he fought utility rate increases. In two stints at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, he helped to enforce environmental regulations and served as deputy general counsel for enforcement and litigation. In between, he worked at the Washington office of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, a law firm that represented many energy companies.

He then worked for Houston Natural Gas, in charge of its interstate pipelines, a $2.6 billion business. He jumped at the chance to take the helm of a troubled gas pipeline company called Public Service Indiana, leaving Houston Natural Gas before it changed its name to Enron.

An early task at Public Service Indiana was to meet with groups that opposed, and ultimately defeated, its plan for a nuclear reactor. After sinking $26 million into construction, the company abandoned it just before he took over, and he worked to mend relations with opponents. "Rogers came in as the white knight," said Michael A. Mullett, a co-founder of and now lawyer for Citizens Action Coalition, which opposed the plant. "He reached out to people."

In 1994, Mr. Rogers engineered a merger with Cincinnati Gas and Electric, fighting off a hostile takeover bid, and created Cinergy, which has a market value of $6.4 billion.

 
R. ROGERS, who calls himself a "public policy junkie," has testified 11 times before Congress on energy issues. He says his role as head of a major energy company gives him "a special responsibility to understand and deal with this issue responsibly."

But that requires yet another balancing act. Testifying in April on behalf of the Edison Electric Institute, an energy industry group, he backed President Bush's Clear Skies proposal, which would limit some emissions, including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury, but not carbon dioxide, which is the biggest pollutant created by burning coal. The proposal, which favors utilities like Cinergy that depend on coal for most of their fuel, does not go as far as what Mr. Rogers had advocated before Congress just two years ago.

Mr. Rogers said the earlier testimony had reflected his personal views, not the industry's. "Our industry is not ready to go as far as I am at this point," he said.

He says he believes science clearly shows that the planet is warming, and that energy companies like his should reduce or at least hold steady their emissions. Cinergy has spent around $1 billion to convert a coal-fired plant to natural gas, which emits two-thirds less carbon dioxide, and to buy two gas-fired plants. It has also experimented with renewable energy sources like windmills and fuel cells. Its carbon dioxide emissions have hovered near the same level for the three years through 2002.

He said that while the government, industry and environmentalists battle over how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the government should regulate other emissions like sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury. "There's a saying in Washington: `The perfect is sometimes the enemy of the good,' " he says.

He says he is being pragmatic, but others say his actions reflect his skill at political maneuvering. "He's constantly recalculating," said Mr. Mullett of Citizens Action Coalition. "Wherever he considers the political balance is, that's where he wants to be."

After an initial honeymoon period, he said, Mr. Rogers disappointed the consumer group by pursuing California-style energy deregulation in markets where Cinergy operates and letting an energy conservation campaign lapse. Cinergy is petitioning for a rate increase of 15 percent in Indiana to cover environmental expenditures and increase capacity.

Mr. Mullet and others have said Mr. Rogers has felt it expedient to back away from earlier support of regulations to limit production of carbon dioxide because the Bush administration has refused to recognize any link between human activities and global climate change.

Mr. Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council said: "Jim still has the same vision of where the industry needs to go. But he's a little more circumspect given the environment his company is working in today." 

any of the world's largest companies are doing a poor job of preparing for the business impact of global warming, a report issued yesterday by investor, environmental and public interest groups said.

Most of the 20 corporate giants discussed, including leaders in the oil, auto and utility industries, are also failing to disclose to investors enough about the financial risks they face from climate change, according to the report, which was prepared by the Investor Responsibility Research Center in Washington.

None of the companies have produced dollar estimates of the potential costs or benefits of climate change, like more extreme weather, or of the financial impact of changing regulations on carbon emissions, the report said. And eight companies, including General Electric, General Motors and Exxon Mobil, made no mention of climate change in filings last year with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"We are not talking about issues that are 50 years out," said Mindy Luber, executive director of the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies, which commissioned the study. "We are seeing inadequate board reviews in many, many companies."

The study rated the companies in 14 categories covering the oversight of climate-change issues by corporate boards and progress in setting performance goals as well as disclosure. Two foreign oil companies, BP and Royal Dutch/Shell, were the only ones credited with activity in all 14 categories. The worst performers, including Exxon, G.E. and TXU, an energy services concern, have reported just four of the practices the report identified as prudent.

The companies discussed were allowed to review the parts of the report describing them before publication, but did not necessarily accept the conclusions. Exxon Mobil, for example, said yesterday that it was "adequately addressing the potential risks of climate change" and that its shareholders showed their satisfaction by voting down a resolution at this year's annual meeting requesting a board report on the subject.

Dan Cogan, deputy director for social issues at the investor responsibility center, said, "We gave credit for minimal action, so the relative rankings are more important than the actual scores." The center advises pension funds and others on corporate governance and social issues affecting companies.

With a few notable exceptions, like Alcoa and DuPont, Mr. Cogan said, American companies seem to be discounting the threat of climate change to their businesses more than their overseas competitors.

While better disclosure will help investors, especially those like pension funds with longtime horizons, it could also stimulate companies to move much faster to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to climate change, Mr. Cogan said. Emissions of toxic substances plummeted when companies had to start reporting them publicly to the Environmental Protection Agency, he noted. The report is available at www.ceres.org and www.irrc.org.

ASHINGTON, July 24 — Seven months after first promising to come forward with a plan to look into the causes of global warming, the Bush administration introduced a comprehensive program today to coordinate current efforts studying climate change — and develop some new ones — across some 13 federal agencies.

The plan was presented at a news conference by Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham. Among its provisions was $103 million to be spent to deploy new satellite-based global observation technologies.

Officials did not identify how any of the program would be financed, however, bringing concern from scientists that any new initiatives would simply draw resources away from existing research efforts.

Further, environmental advocacy groups criticized the effort as an administration delaying tactic to focus on uncertainties rather than the scientific consensus that has already emerged about how human activity contributes to global warming.

"The administration wants to call a lot of attention to its research plan, because it wants to distract attention from its failure to have a global warming and pollution reduction plan," said Daniel A. Lashof, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Mr. Evans and Mr. Abraham, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of "sound science" in making decisions about climate change.

"When it comes to global climate change, America is leading," said Mr. Evans, noting that the United States spent more on climate change research than Japan and Europe combined.

He said the federal government was spending $4.5 billion on climate change efforts, although that figure included financing for marginally related things, like a substantial amount in tax breaks that are given to business and agriculture for energy efficiency initiatives and the like.

Of the $4.5 billion figure, the budget for the Climate Change Science Program, which oversees the government's climate research, is about $1.7 billion. Budgets for the various research efforts on climate change are scheduled to be either flat or reduced in the next fiscal year.