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Investors holding more than $5 billion in Exxon Mobil Corp. shares are urging the company to disclose how its business would be affected by the global push to slow warming atmospheric temperatures.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System is planning an effort to put its muscle behind climate-related shareholder proposals for the first time. The outreach campaign is expected to test the strength of climate activism among shareholders of the world's largest publicly traded oil company, whose stock-market value was $345.55 billion as of Monday, according to FactSet.

Environmentally minded Exxon investors have sought for decades to use the company's annual meeting, set for next month, as a bully pulpit, usually with limited success. This year, a change in investor attitude following the December climate talks in Paris and an active proxy campaign could garner far more votes than in previous contests, analysts say.

Similar proposals passed overwhelmingly last year after executives at Royal Dutch Shell PLC and BP PLC decided to embrace them, but climate-related resolutions have never exceeded 35% in votes at the annual meetings of Exxon or Chevron Corp.

"This isn't an environmental issue. This has moved into the mainstream following the Paris agreement," said Anne Simpson, Calpers' investment director of global governance.

Nearly 200 countries pledged in Paris in December to hold the rise in average global temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Calpers is launching a campaign to encourage shareholders to support proposals urging Exxon, Chevron and 10 other energy and mining companies to examine how much of their reserves would have to be left untapped if the two-degree goal were to be achieved, Ms. Simpson said.

Exxon and Chevron executives have had a consistent message for years on the future of oil and gas drilling, saying that economic growth in emerging economies such as India and China will power fossil-fuel demand for many decades. The companies as well as forecasters including the International Energy Agency don't yet consider the low-carbon scenario contemplated in the Paris agreement to be a base case, or most likely, outcome.

Last week, Chevron recommended a vote against the proposal. The company said it already accounts for climate risks in its project planning, and that such a disclosure would put it at a competitive disadvantage.

Both Exxon and Chevron sought to keep the two-degree proposals from reaching their proxy ballot, telling the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission they are vague and unnecessary given their other disclosures about climate risks. Last month, the SEC ruled the proposals could go forward. The resolutions are nonbinding.

More than 30 investors, including New York City's pension funds and Legal & General Investment Management, have committed to supporting the Exxon resolution, according to Ceres, a non profit that advocates for sustainable business.

The campaign is part of a nascent movement advocating for greater understanding of climate risks. The central idea is that to achieve the two-degrees Celsius goal, a significant amount of oil, gas and coal held by world producers would have to remain in the ground.

Barclays PLC estimates that in a two-degree scenario, energy producers would earn $103 trillion in revenue between 2014 and 2040, $34 trillion lower than in a base-case scenario for energy consumption.

Some experts say these concerns are overblown. Companies are valued on their expected production in the next 10 to 15 years, not on their entire portfolio of reserves, said Nancy Meyer, associate director for climate strategy at consulting firm IHS.

"The whole premise that companies are financially risky today because their nonproved assets may be unburned…doesn't necessarily align with how those assets are valued in the marketplace," Ms. Meyer said.

Today's low energy prices are a bigger risk to producers than potential future regulations, she said.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney made speeches in 2014 and 2015 warning that climate change poses risks to investors and insurers. The G-20 group of industrial nations asked the Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland, to examine the issue.

One problem is that there is little consensus on how investors should quantify carbon risks. Around 400 sets of guidelines exist for disclosures related to climate or sustainability, according to a report released March 31 by a Financial Stability Board task force chaired by Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"The first step is just about getting enough information" from companies, "so that we can make decisions that are grounded in economics," said Jessica Ground, global head of stewardship at Schroders, which manages $462 billion in assets and is supporting the climate disclosure resolutions.

Write to Nicole Friedman at nicole.friedman@wsj.com and Bradley Olson at Bradley.Olson@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 12, 2016 12:05 ET (16:05 GMT)

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