Proposed SEC Climate Disclosure Rule Potentially Delayed Until Fall 2023

About two weeks ago, former SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson, currently a professor at NYU Law, stated during an April 27 webinar hosted by a carbon accounting firm that "it looks like the [climate disclosure] rule is going to be pushed back a little further than many had thought . . . . It [now] looks more like the fall of this year [2023]." If true, such a delay would mean that, at minimum, the proposed climate disclosures would not come into effect until 2024--and any such disclosures would likely be subject to legal challenge, which could delay their implementation even further.

Such a delay would be unsurprising. Although the SEC's proposed climate disclosures have been a policy priority for the Biden Administration since its inception, the process for promulgating this rule has been subject to numerous delays. For example, even though the SEC identified it as a policy priority within the first few weeks of the Biden Presidency, and targeted October 2021 to