For decades, shareholder activists have filed dozens, if not hundreds, of resolutions with public companies asking them to improve their environmental policies and practices. Not one passed—until this year.

The breakthrough vote came in May at IdaCorp.,  a $988-million a year utility company and independent power producer based in Boise, Idaho. Despite the usual opposition from management, the owners of 51.2 percent of IdaCorp.’s shares voted to ask the company to adopt greenhouse gas reduction goals.

Hardly anyone noticed at the time because, well, it was Idaho and not even the shareholder activists expected a victory. “I expected a vote of about 25%,” said Michael Passoff of As You Sow, a nonprofit group that organized the investor vote.

Since then, the company responded. Legally, it didn’t have to act because, as you may know, most shareholder votes are “precatory,” a fancy legal term meaning that management can ignore even a majority of the company’s owners. In any event, IdaCorp. agreed to adopt goals for curbing the heat-trapping gases that cause global warming, issued its first request for a proposal for a wind farm and submitted a “smart grid” proposal, hoping to tap into the federal government’s stimulus money to upgrade the grid.

“The company was stuck in its ways,” Passoff said, “and I think the shareholder vote woke them up. To their credit, they’ve been very responsive. We seem to be developing a good working relationship with them.”

The IdaCorp. vote was the highlight of  a very good year of investor engagement with companies, according to a recap from Ceres, a coalition of institutional investors and environmental groups that works to get companies to become more sustainable.

“There’s growing investor concern about climate risk, and there’s a growing corporate response,” said Rob Berridge, manager of investor programs at Ceres, when we spoke by phone. “We’re very pleased with the agreements that investors were able get from companies.”

Among the 2009 highlights:

Chevron agreed to develop and disclose a business plan setting an annual GHG emissions reduction target for its operations, and to track emissions from its products

Citigroup agreed to establish a due diligence process loans related to mountain top removal (MTR) coal mining and to consider shareholder input in the development of that process

Pulte, the nation’s largest homebuilder, agreed to establish quantitative emissions reduction goals for its operations.

Of the 68 climate-related shareholder resolutions filed by investors in 2009, 31 were withdrawn after the companies agreed to take positive steps, according to Ceres.

Why the encouraging news?

Partly because Ceres has clout. It leads an alliance of 80 investors, called the Investor Network on Climate Risk, with assets of more than $7 trillion. Big  funds like CalSTRS, the New York City and state of Connecticut pension fund are active members.

Congressional action on climate regulation also came into play, we can assume. With the government moving to regulate GHG emissions, companies need to pay attention to climate-related risks.

What’s more, as Ceres notes, financial analysts who advise shareholders are taking the climate issue seriously. RiskMetrics Group (parent company of the powerful Institutional Shareholder Services proxy advisor) supported at least 21 resolutions, well over half of those that went to a vote.

Finally, as the climate crisis gets more attention, particularly from smart and influential companies like GE and DuPont, few companies want to be seen as laggards.

In that regard, the most surprising vote of the 2009 shareholder season may have been one at coal company Massey Energy, where a climate-change resolution got 45.6 percent support.

This can’t have been welcome news to Massey’s CEO Don Blankenship. He’s the CEO who said last year that “I don’t believe climate change is real” and that “the greeniacs are taking over the world.” (If only.) Of Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, Blankenship said: “They’re totally wrong. What they do is nonsense….They’re all crazy.” (You can watch his amazing You Tube video here.)

It’s safe to assume that Massey, with a CEO like Blankenship, has a conservative investor base. So that 45% vote tells you that times are changing.

For more details on company agreements, see the Highlights from the 2009 Climate Change Proxy Season  at the Ceres website.

In Washington, it’s a popular climate conundrum everyone talks about: Even if the U.S. lowers its greenhouse gas emissions, China and India are on track to dwarf the entire Western World’s as they build enormous coal-fired power plants. Politicians regularly say we must get China and India to use less coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, to power their emerging economies.

But who do you think is financing all these new coal plants in the developing world?

Try the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and other international public financial institutions supported by the world’s wealthiest nations.

That’s right. While the industrialized world is struggling to cut emissions, and gearing up to negotiate an international climate treaty in Copenhagen, it is bankrolling the construction of thousands upon thousands of megawatts of new coal-fired power in developing countries.

A new study by Bruce Rich, formerly of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), shows that international public financial institutions have provided $37 billion to finance the construction of at least 88 new coal plants in the developing world since 1994. What’s more, that $37 billion in direct financing secured another $60 billion or so from private and local sources, bringing total investment in new coal plants in developing nations to over $100 billion.

Even worse, the World Bank classifies these coal plants as “low carbon” financing projects if they are the so-called supercritical type with marginally better CO2 emissions rates.

Collectively those 88 coal plants will pump out 792 million tons of CO2 a year — essentially negating pollution reductions the Waxman-Markey climate bill hopes to achieve over the next decade.

Bear in mind that 88 is a minimum number because most export credit agencies do not release detailed information on transactions and only plants for which the financing could be verified were included in EDF’s study.

If you’re wondering why 1994 is the baseline, it’s the year the United Nations Convention on Climate Change took effect, committing industrialized nations to provide funds and technology to mitigate climate change in poorer nations. Instead, the wealthier nations have been locking into place a carbon-intensive energy infrastructure, one that will endure for decades since coal plants typically operate for 40 to 50 years.

Sure, these public international lenders have committed $6 billion over the past 15 years to help the world’s most vulnerable citizens adapt to a warming planet — but it’s a fraction of the $100 billion spent on new coal plants.

Some would call that shooting yourself in the foot.

And it’s not as though the World Bank is unaware of the dangers of continued reliance on coal. It commissioned a three-year independent study on the future role of the World Bank Group in supporting coal, oil and gas. But when that study recommended decisive action away from fossil fuel lending, the World Bank refused to endorse its findings — even at the urging of six Nobel Peace Laureates and the European Parliament.

The World Bank also knows that the poorest countries will suffer the worst effects of global warming. In 2003 it published Poverty and Climate Change: Reducing the Vulnerability of the Poor through Adaptation, which stated “climate change is a serious risk to poverty reduction and threatens to undo decades of development efforts.”

Why then does it finance coal? Here’s what the World Bank’s Chief Economist has to say: “Because coal is often cheap and abundant, and the need for electricity is so great, coal plants are going to be built with or without our support. Without our support, it is the cheaper, dirtier type of coal plants that will proliferate.”

Not true, says the Center for Global Development. It says most new coal plants that are built without World Bank funds, at least in India, ARE the cleaner, so-called “supercritical” type because the operating and fuel costs of the supercritical coal plants are cheaper.

More to the point, supercritical coal plants are only slightly cleaner, producing about 15 percent less C02 than traditional coal plants, according to EDF. They are still not as clean as even a natural gas-fired plant.

Which leads me to alternatives. Clearly, bringing electricity to the world’s poor is a worthy goal, but there’s a better way to achieve it: Renewables, energy efficiency and grid modernization. International financial institutions should be scaling up their support for these rather than financing coal.

Today the Bank spends twice as much on fossil fuel projects as new renewable energy and energy efficiency projects combined and five times as much as new renewables alone.

That’s a missed opportunity when large-scale renewables are so feasible in the developing world. Take Gujarat State in India, where a monstrous 4,000-megawatt coal-fired plant, the Tata Mundra, is being built with World Bank support. More than 7,000 megawatts of renewable energy are also in the works there — with no help from international development banks. AES, a US based energy company, is constructing a $1.2 billion 1,000 megawatt solar thermal array as part of that plan.

Think how many more renewable energy projects could be built if public international financial institutions changed their lending priorities.

Equally important, international financial institutions must also tighten the definition of “low carbon.” Supercritical coal plants now meet that feeble standard, which gives the World Bank’s claim that 40 percent of its energy lending is “low carbon” a hollow ring.

These reforms are imperative, for if we do not slow the rise of CO2 emissions from coal in the developing world, no amount of emissions cuts in industrialized nations will make a difference.

Helping to create Brainstorm Green was a highlight of my 12 years at FORTUNE, and I’m pleased that I’ll be back this year, co-chairing the event with my colleague Brian Dumaine, FORTUNE’s global editor. The program for this year’s Brainstorm Green is still a work in progress, but a group of us got a draft agenda down on paper last week and I’m confident that it will again be a lively, exciting, information-packed event. The theme, once again, will be: How can business help solve the world’s biggest environmental problems?

We’ll discuss and debate climate change regulation, “clean coal,” nuclear power, electric cars, the smart grid, investing in green, renewable energy, sustainable consumption (if there is such a thing), carbon finance and too many other topics to list here.

What makes Brainstorm Green special is the diversity of the crowd. This year, we’ll again hear from many of America’s most important environmental leaders, including Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense, Glenn Prickett of Conservation International, Mark Tercek of The Nature Conservancy (who was there last year on behalf of Goldman Sachs), David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Mindy Lubber of Ceres and Mike Brune of Rainforest Action Network. At least two dozen CEOs of big and medium-sized companies have agreed to speak, including Shai Agassi of Better Place (the electric car company), Ray Anderson of Interface, Carl Bass of Autodesk, David Crane of NRG Energy, Jeff Hollender of Seventh Generation, Fisk Johnson of S.C. Johnson, Donald Knauss of Clorox, Mike Morris of American Electric Power, Ralph Peterson of CH2M Hill, Jim Rogers of Duke Energy and Tom Werner of SunPower.

Other companies sending speakers include Wal-Mart, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs, Mars, Intel, Boeing, McKinsey, the private-equity firm KKR and architectural firm HOK. That list is sure to grow.

We’ll also be joined by speakers whose ideas are shaping the sustainability debate. I’m looking forward to spending time with Paul Hawken, whose books have shaped much of my own thinking about business and the environment. The dynamic Van Jones, who is profiled in the current issue of The New York by Betsy Kolbert,  will talk about green jobs. The always-inspiring Janine Benyus, who spoke last year, will be back to show us how biomimicry works in practice. My friend Joel Makower, the guru of green business and author of Strategies for the Green Economy, will return as well.

Venture capitalists from some of America’s top firms and entrepreneurs touting exciting startups will round out the group. We’re hoping to attract senior officials from the new Obama administration as well.

You can find a full list of speakers on the Brainstorm Green website. That’s also the best place to propose new speakers or to sign up for the event. (FORTUNE screens all participants.) We’ll meet in a beautiful setting—the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Laguna Niguel, CA, and I’m looking forward to seeing many of you blogreaders there.