August 23, 2018
Climate Change: SEC Not Cracking the Disclosure Whip?
Earlier this year, we blogged about the GAO’s assessment of the SEC’s efforts to promote better climate change disclosure. According to the GAO, the biggest constraint that the SEC faced in its efforts was its need to rely on self-reporting. But this Bloomberg article says that the SEC isn’t pushing companies to improve disclosure in this area:
The SEC last issued a climate change-related public comment letter in September 2016, when it asked Chevron to expand its risk factor disclosure related to California’s greenhouse gas emission regulations. Typically, the SEC issues such letters to companies with suggestions on how they can fill in gaps. But the agency has been silent during this administration.
The article says that during the Obama administration, the SEC issued 44 climate change-related comment letters, while the SEC under Chairman Jay Clayton hasn’t issued any.
Climate Change: SEC Drops ExxonMobil Investigation
In another climate change disclosure-related development, the WSJ recently reported that SEC has dropped its investigation of ExxonMobil’s disclosures about how it accounted for oil and gas assets. As the WSJ reported in 2016, the investigation centered on the impact of climate change on the company:
The SEC’s probe is homing in on how Exxon calculates the impact to its business from the world’s mounting response to climate change, including what figures the company uses to account for the future costs of complying with regulations to curb greenhouse gases as it evaluates the economic viability of its projects.
The SEC’s investigation followed on a similar one initiated by the NY & Massachusetts AGs. That investigation continues, as does private class action litigation surrounding the company’s climate disclosure.
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– John Jenkins