Axa didn’t name the companies whose shares it would sell. It said it will divest mining companies that get more than 50 percent of their revenue from coal and electric utilities with more than half their energy from thermal coal plants.

Last year, Axa paid out 1 billion euros in weather-related insurance claims, putting climate risks at the heart of its strategy. Insurers including Axa, Munich Re and Swiss Re AG invest over long periods to cope with liabilities that may crystallize far in the future and have expressed concerns that rising temperatures will increase claims in the coming decades.

About 200 institutions with assets of more than $50 billion have said they’d scale back on investing in polluting industries, according to the environmental group 350.org led by Bill McKibben that’s at the heart of the divestment movement.

The campaign has given momentum to the three-decade-old effort to rein in greenhouse gases as the United Nations works this year to bring together more than 190 nations in a historic deal to limit emissions everywhere for the first time.

Investor Pressure

“Pension funds are saying they are very concerned about this,” Colin Melvin, chief executive officer of the biggest pension fund adviser, Hermes Equity Ownership Services Ltd., said in an interview. “They’re under pressure about climate from their beneficiaries. They recognize the world is warming and this will damage their own livelihoods and governments aren’t able to deal with it.”

Melvin, whose company has 40 funds in 10 countries managing $230 billion, said investors have already begun to weigh in on the climate debate.

At least 14 energy companies are facing shareholder resolutions on environmental and social policies this year, a the strongest action on record. More than 190 resolutions have been proposed this year, up 88 percent since 2011 when Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors with more than $13 trillion in assets, began collecting the data.

Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc., Total SA, Chevron Corp. and Eni SpA are among the major oil companies targeted, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.