February 9, 2025

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Chamber Urges SEC Caution on Climate Disclosure

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to continue cautiously on weather chance disclosure, declaring enforcement efforts should really not get priority above rulemaking.

In a letter to Acting SEC Chair Allison Herren Lee, the Chamber suggested the commission had acted prematurely in asserting before this thirty day period that it had fashioned a new Local weather and ESG Process Power to step up enforcement of disclosure of weather dangers.

“The Chamber urges caution about the SEC’s not long ago-declared ESG enforcement initiative,” Govt Vice President Tom Quaadman wrote, noting that it “appears to get an enforcement-initially approach to ESG and weather alter even however the commission has not still done its assessment and updates to the 2010 assistance about weather alter disclosures.”

“We are deeply concerned that applying the SEC’s enforcement equipment in area of notice-and-comment rulemaking will discourage businesses from likely community just as the economic climate turns its sights onto recovery from the pandemic by capital development and job creation,” he mentioned.

According to the SEC, which has been under pressure from Democratic lawmakers, environmentalists, and advocates for more durable fiscal rules to boost scrutiny of weather disclosure compliance, the undertaking power will “develop initiatives to proactively discover ESG-similar misconduct.”

The Chamber’s letter echoes the fears of two Republican commissioners who mentioned it could be “more prudent for us to await the effects of the Company Finance staff’s most current assessment of weather alter-similar disclosure” just before allocating resources to a undertaking power.

As component of its Venture for Expansion and Prospect, the  Chamber of Commerce has been urging businesses to voluntarily disclose product details about their environmental and social efforts. It has also launched ESG-reporting finest procedures for corporations to use as a guidebook when compiling their disclosures.

“The Chamber … strongly believes that any community policy approach to ESG reporting will have to be rooted in the Supreme Court’s effectively-proven concept of materiality,” Quaadman mentioned.

Disclosures, he extra, “should be used to shield buyers and should really not be used as a signifies to achieve policy aims outside the scope of the federal securities laws.”

(Picture by Justin Sullivan/Getty Pictures)

Allison Herren Lee, weather chance disclosure, undertaking power, Tom Quaadman, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission