A new rule requiring companies to disclose how much they pollute is coming in 2024

After multiple delays, the Securities and Exchange Commission has finally set a deadline to decide on its climate disclosure rule by Spring 2024.

The Securities and Exchange Commission will decide by next spring on a rule to make public companies disclose how much they generate in greenhouse gases and how climate change could hurt their businesses. The rule, which comes amid the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle climate change, has been met with backlash from business leaders and lawmakers who argue that it oversteps the SEC’s mission to safeguard investors and regulate markets. “Congress created the SEC to carry out the mission of protecting investors, maintaining fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitating capital formation—not to advance progressive climate policies,” a group of Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter to the agency earlier this year. Advocates say that in an age of expanding climate-related regulations, investors deserve to know the growing financial risks that some companies face from climate change ­– and laws curbing emissions – before deciding to invest. The SEC first proposed its climate disclosure rule in March 2022, but since then, the agency has delayed releasing a final version on multiple occasions. The proposal requires companies to share information on two forms of climate change risk: physical and transition risks.