Senators push back against SEC climate rule

A group of 34 senators is making a push to overturn the SEC’s recently introduced climate disclosure rule.

The effort is spearheaded by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., who leads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The controversial rule, which made no one happy when the Securities and Exchange Commission passed it in March, mandates that publicly traded companies report both direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions. That requirement, Manchin and other senators argue, represents an overreaching imposition on publicly traded companies.

“The SEC’s new rule on emissions disclosures completely contradicts its long-standing commitment to protect investors and promote a fair and efficient US financial market,” Manchin, the only Democrat among the senators taking a stand, said in a statement Wednesday.

He criticized the regulation for unfairly targeting the fossil-fuel sector, jeopardizing US economic security, and opposing the diverse energy policy crucial to national and allied interests.

“Every American investor can already choose to invest their money in climate-forward companies if they wish to,” Manchin added. “The infusion of politics in a free and fair market is entirely overreaching, fiscally irresponsible, and simply un-American.”

Manchin previously expressed his reservations about the rule, engaging with SEC chair Gensler as early as April 2022 and as recently as November 2023, urging a reevaluation of the rule’s implications. Now he’s throwing his support behind a joint resolution against the SEC climate rule, along with 33 Republican senators, including Sens. Tim Scott, Mitch McConnell, and Marco Rubio.

“The SEC’s final climate disclosure rule threatens economic opportunity across the country, and it must be overturned,” Scott said separately in an emailed statement.

“The SEC’s mission is to regulate our capital markets and ensure all Americans can safely share in their economic success – not to force a partisan climate agenda on American businesses,” he said. “This rule is federal overreach at its worst, and the SEC should stay in its lane.