California’s Governor to sign two bills to mandate Scope 3 disclosures by large companies

Here’s the intro from this blog by Cooley’s Cydney Posner:

The suspense is over. The AP is reporting that California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Sunday that he “plans to sign into law a pair of climate-focused bills intended to force major corporations to be more transparent about greenhouse gas emissions and the financial risks stemming from global warming.” Those bills are Senate Bill 253, the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act,  and SB261, Greenhouse gases: climate-related financial risk. SB 253 would mandate disclosure of GHG emissions data—Scopes 1, 2 and 3—by all U.S. business entities (public or private) with total annual revenues in excess of a billion dollars that “do business in California.”

SB 253 has been estimated to apply to about 5,300 companies. SB 261, with a lower reporting threshold of total annual revenues in excess of $500 million, would require subject companies to prepare reports disclosing their climate-related financial risk, in accordance with TCFD framework, and describing their measures adopted to reduce and adapt to that risk.  SB 261 has been estimated to apply to over 10,000 companies. For more information about these two bills, see this PubCo post.