Sleeper Requirement: Climate Change Disclosure

Companies, including but not limited to energy companies, are advised not to become complacent about climate change and sustainability disclosure obligations, despite the fact there has been scant followup to a 2010 guidance that laid out requirements for them. A client alert from WilmerHale says that increased scrutiny of these obligations is in the cards as the result of several recent developments, including a legal offensive by the attorney general of New York, agreements coming out of the Paris Agreement, increasingly dramatic physical changes to the earth itself, and the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, which would limit the amount of CO2 that power plants can release. That plan is being challenged in litigation and its application was recently stayed by the Supreme Court, but if it survives it will likely impact disclosure requirements in a wide range of industries that are big energy users, and not just power plants.