SEC moves to scrap Biden-era rule on climate risk disclosures

The Securities and Exchange Commission wants to formally kill rules it’s now calling a “dramatic overreach” of its own authority that would have required public companies to report greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related risks to their operations.

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The 2024 rules, which never went into effect, were “unsound as a matter of policy,” the SEC said Friday in a proposal that would officially dismantle the Biden-era regulations. 

“We need to stick to our knitting,” Chairman Paul Atkins said on Fox Business Friday morning. “Let the Environmental Protection Agency do their job and we stick to our job.”

Comments on the proposal are due within 60 days of publication in the Federal Register.

The 2024 corporate disclosure requirements, issued under former Chairman Gary Gensler, called on companies to report their pollution as well as how climate-related risks, like the threat of rising sea levels, hurricanes, droughts or wildfires, affected their bottom lines. Companies that take steps to minimize or eliminate such risks would have had to report those as well. 

The rules were considered one of Washington’s signature efforts to combat climate change, but the SEC faced an onslaught of legal challenges. Groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued the SEC had overstepped its authority in making such sweeping changes. 

Two months after President Donald Trump took office, the SEC said it would stop defending the rules in court, essentially sticking them in regulatory limbo.