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As I noted in the blog earlier this week, yesterday SEC Chair Gary Gensler participated in a program organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness titled Climate Disclosure Developments: The SEC, California, and EU Extraterritoriality (here’s the replay). David Hamm from Summit Materials noted the following interesting takeaways from Chair Gensler’s remarks:

– Chair Gensler did not provide any guidance on the expected timing of the rule. I knew that would be too good to be true, but I joined the event hoping against hope for some incremental guidance. He referenced the staff going through 16,000 comment letters, so I suppose that was a soft signal to not look for anything in the very near term.

– Chair Gensler didn’t seem to be very concerned with the developments in California (because of NSMIA) or Europe (because of the different remit of the SEC with the European regulators). The repeated theme was the limited remit of the SEC related to investors making investment decisions related to the 6,000-7,000 public registrants. This was an understandable approach, but I was expecting a bit more of a discussion of the interplay of the different regimes.

– Chair Gensler’s most interesting statement to me was: “If we are able to finalize it [referring to the climate rule], it would be good to sustain it in the courts.” Given the audience (some had talked about this event as the Chair going into the lions’ den and there were some good spirited jokes about whether the US Chamber had filed a suit yet), this was clearly an appeal to think about the value to the US Chamber’s members to having a rule that they could point to in order to alleviate compliance with other regimes under a theory of substituted compliance (not equivalency given the different remits).

With the October timeframe for SEC action on climate disclosure now moving into the rearview mirror, we enter a new phase of anticipation (and dread) about the SEC’s climate disclosure rules. I would not expect to see the SEC’s Fall Reg Flex Agenda published until the end of December or the beginning of January, when we would next get a glimpse into the SEC’s anticipated timing on the climate disclosure rules and other rulemaking initiatives. Until then, we will basically be in “any day now” mode.

In the meantime, the pressure from Congress on climate disclosure is not abating. Earlier this month, 26 members of the House of Representatives representing constituents in California sent a letter to Chair Gensler strongly urging the SEC to include robust greenhouse gas emissions disclosure requirements in its final climate disclosure rulemaking, particularly in light of California’s anticipated Scope 3 disclosure requirements.

– Dave Lynn