2019 Alliant Energy Annual Meeting of Share Owners will begin. I'd like to welcome Patricia Kampling, Chairman and CEO. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Good morning, welcome to Alliant Energy's 2019 Annual Meeting of Share Owners. I'm Pat Kampling, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Thank you for joining us this morning for the Alliant Energy annual meeting. Joining me are John Larsen, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Robert Durian, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We'll be pleased to answer your questions relating to the company. You can submit questions electronically by clicking on the Ask a Question box on your screen. You are now seeing the rules of conduct for guidelines in submitting questions. At Alliant Energy, we start all meetings with a safety share, which this morning will be provided by John Larsen.
Thank you, Pat, good morning. May is National Bike Month. People are now out enjoying the nice spring weather on their bike or motorcycle. Please remember as you're driving, to look twice to save a life. Let's all share the road. Take the extra time to check your mirrors and blind spots. It just might save a life.
Great reminder, John. Thank you. This meeting has two sections. First, a report on the voting results for the four proposals listed in the proxy, then we'll answer your submitted questions. To begin, I'll call the Alliant Energy Annual Meeting of Share Owners to order. When you received your proxy statement and ballot, you were asked to vote on four proposals. Each proposal is outlined in the proxy statement. All share owners as of March 22nd, 2019, can vote their shares. If you've already voted, your vote has been counted. If you have not yet voted or would like to change your vote, you can do so online. Voting will close in the next few minutes. Your shares have been voted as you submitted. If you did not mark your vote, I will vote your shares as recommended by your board of directors.
While we are waiting for last-minute votes, I'd like to acknowledge the members of your board of directors, all of whom are attending this meeting. I also want to recognize my executive team and thank them for their leadership in delivering another great year of operating and financial results. Also with me is Deloitte & Touche, our independent registered public accounting firm, and Broadridge Financial Solutions, the inspector of elections. The proxy did show that we received one share owner proposal from the Office of the New York City Comptroller. Now I'll turn it over to their representative, Emily Law, to present their proposal.
Miss Law, you will have four minutes to present your proposal. Please proceed.
Thank you. Good morning. My name is Emily Law, I'm here on behalf of the Office of the New York City Comptroller, Scott Stringer, to present a shareholder proposal number four. We are a long-term Alliant Energy shareholder with over 400,000 shares. Proposal number four calls on Alliant Energy to provide full transparency of its political spending activity. We are not requesting that Alliant Energy refrain from political activity. As a heavily regulated business, it will be in Alliant Energy long-term business interest to engage in public policymaking. However, participation in the political process entails reputational and financial risk, such as violating contribution rules and exerting political influence in ways that will harm Alliant Energy long-term interest.
In the egregious case of Duke Energy, with its significant coal ash spill in 2014, subsequent criminal investigation focused on the extensive participation that Duke Energy had in its state political processes in the years before the spill. Duke Energy had directed its resource to political activity that significantly weakened the environmental regulation environment in which it operated, rather than actually spending those resources to implement methods to prevent such spills. Alliant Energy holds itself out as a corporate leader in sustainability report related disclosure and practices in an annual sustainability report. We therefore cannot understand why Alliant's board remains resistant to the same high level of transparency and accountability in the political area.
Alliant Energy should follow the lead of its utility peers such as AES, AGL Resources , American Electric Power, Edison International, to provide actual political spending disclosure on its own website beyond insufficient references to the publicly available data on state and federal sites. These sites are so confusing as to make it nearly impossible to know what Alliant is doing. They provide no disclosure beyond what is legally required, which includes potentially significant spending that may be channeled anonymously to 501(c)(4) groups and trade associations, so-called dark money. Since the law prohibits Alliant Energy from making direct contributions to political candidates, nearly all of the Alliant Energy political spending is to such dark money groups and 527 super PACs. Alliant Energy cites the burden and business risk of such disclosure.
As we have repeatedly explained to your management, many other companies have addressed these concerns with minimal disclosure requirements and still providing meaningful disclosure. Without transparency, shareholder have no insight into whether Alliant Energy get real return on contributed company results, nor into whether such contributions are consistent with the values and business interests. Therefore, we urge you to support the proposal number four. Thank you.
Thank you. This proposal was discussed in the proxy statement, your board recommended a vote against the proposal for reasons outlined on page 63. The voting is now closed. I'm told that we have a quorum. Let me share the preliminary results. First, each of the nominees to the board of directors has been elected. Second, the executive compensation proposal was approved. Third, Deloitte & Touche has been ratified as our independent registered accounting firm. Fourth, the shareowner proposal presented was approved. These results are preliminary until verified by Broadridge. The final results will be detailed in an 8-K filing with the SEC in a few days. This concludes the business portion of the annual meeting. The meeting is adjourned. I am pleased to open the meeting and answer any submitted questions from our shareowners. Please adhere to the guidelines I shared earlier.
I'll now ask Robert to read the questions to me. Robert, what is the first question?
Thanks, Pat. First question we received is a question about the number of director employees at the company. More specifically, that it seems like the number of directors was reduced a few years ago and now has gone back to similar numbers.
We are very mindful as we fill any positions, as we streamline the organization. The number of directors in the company has continued to decrease. What you are observing, though, is a change in the type of director positions we have now compared to those we had in the past.
Thanks, Pat. Our next question contains two parts. The first part includes a question about retiree benefits. I would encourage individuals with retiree benefits questions to visit our retiree website for information and resources to help ensure benefit questions are answered correctly. The second part of the submitted question relates to the format of the annual meeting. The individual submitting the question believes we should have both a physical and virtual annual meeting. They also asked about the savings from going to a virtual meeting and the attendance of last year's meeting.
The primary purpose of moving to a virtual annual meeting was really to broaden the participation by shareowners who are located all over across the country. The attendance at our in-person meetings was continuing to decline. I am pleased to report that attendance at last year's virtual meeting was higher than in the prior in-person meetings. Our retirees do have a great opportunity to meet with our executives at our upcoming retiree reunions. We look forward to seeing you there and interacting with the executive team.
Thanks, Pat. The third submitted question asks if it is possible to close all of our coal plants earlier than our stated goal of 2050.
I'm going to ask John Larsen, our President and Chief Operating Officer, to answer that question.
It's a good question and an important topic. We've been on a path to transition our generation portfolio for nearly 10 years, transitioning to a more modern, efficient fleet and increasing our renewable portfolio. In 2018, we were one of the first to announce the elimination of all current coal generation by 2050. Based on the advancement of new technologies and improved efficiencies we're seeing, we do think it's possible that we could achieve this goal prior to 2050. This generation transition is a key part of our strategy, and we'll continue to update and share our goals going forward.
Thanks, John. The next submitted question is requesting additional information regarding Alliant Energy's generating facilities, including our mix of renewables to be included in next year's annual report. We appreciate the request and will consider this information for next year's report. The final question being submitted states: if solar and wind, which are both highly variable, are taken out of generating capacity, is there enough base capacity to handle the load during peak times?
Solar and wind are both very integral to the system needs. The Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, ensures that we have high reliability and there are enough capacity resources to handle the load during normal and peak times. All of the resources on the grid, including wind, solar, and coal, are a key part of that, and we see those resources playing an ever-increasing role going forward.
Thanks, John. We did actually have one final question here submitted while we were talking. It asks: can we have the preliminary vote outcome for shareowner proposal number four in terms of numbers or %? I would just refer folks to, we will be filing a Form 8-K following the annual meeting here with all of the numbers regarding the voting statistics. I'd encourage you to look that up on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission website.
Any other further questions, Robert?
There are no further questions.
Great. Thank you. This concludes our presentation. Anytime you have a question, feel free to reach out to the company. The easiest way is to email shareownerservices@alliantenergy.com. Your questions will always be answered promptly. Again, thank you for attending our annual meeting. On a personal note, I greatly appreciate the support and confidence you had in me and my management team during my seven years as CEO. I am retiring on July 1st, and John Larsen has been named my successor. I know that under John's leadership, the company will continue to thrive. Thanks again. Have a terrific and safe day