House Financial Services Subcommittee Examines SEC Climate Proposal

In January, the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing entitled, “Oversight of the SEC’s Proposed Climate Disclosure Rule: A Future of Legal Hurdles.” The hearing focused on the Commission’s proposed rulemaking on corporate issuers’ disclosure of climate risk and impact. Subcommittee Chairman Bill Huizenga (R-MI) noted that in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in West Virginia v. EPA, the SEC should rethink the scope of its proposals as it may see many of them challenged in court. Subcommittee Ranking Member Al Green (D-TX) noted that climate change has an impact on corporations and noted that Coca-Cola recently had to shutter a bottling plant due to the over-extraction of groundwater. Representative Ann Wagner, Chair of the Capital Markets Subcommittee voiced her concerns highlighting the failure of the Commission to properly execute a cost-benefit analysis of the impact of the proposed rule. She added that many of the Commission’s proposals fail to properly analyze the cost of these regulations. One witness, a fruit farmer from Michigan, stated the Commission’s proposal on Scope Three greenhouse gas emissions would hurt his family farm because they are within the supply chain of public companies.

Click here to watch an archived video of the Subcommittee on Oversight’s climate disclosure hearing.