SEC climate disclosure rule (2024)
A climate disclosure rule adopted by the U.S. securities regulator on March 6, 2024, stayed a month later and abandoned in court by the SEC in March 2025.
An investor can compare the climate exposure of two listed companies only if they disclose it under common rules. The SEC rule required U.S. issuers to describe their material climate risks and their governance, and the largest ones to disclose their scope 1 and 2 emissions with third-party assurance, together with the effect of severe weather events in the notes to the financial statements. Scope 3, present in the 2022 proposal, had been dropped from the final text. Challenged before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, the rule never took effect. Its abandonment leaves the United States without a federal standard, between the California laws and the international ISSB standards, which complicates comparison of listed groups on both sides of the Atlantic.
Adopted on March 6, 2024, the rule was stayed by the SEC itself on April 4, 2024 pending litigation; on March 27, 2025, the Commission voted to stop defending it, with Acting Chair Mark Uyeda calling it costly and unnecessarily intrusive.
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