ABA yesterday joined a broad coalition of more than 40 trade groups—led by the California Chamber of Commerce—in a letter to the California Assembly Natural Resources Committee opposing S.B. 260, a comprehensive greenhouse gas disclosure bill. The California state legislature is scheduled to hold a hearing on the bill June 6.
Specifically, the bill would require the California Air Resources Board to develop regulations requiring the disclosure of “Scope 3” emissions for companies with more than $1 billion in revenue operating in California. Scope 3 emissions include “emissions data throughout the entire supply chain and activities such as business travel, employee commutes, procurement waste and water usage.” For banks, this would include data for the borrowers in their lending portfolios, or financed emissions.
In the letter, the trade associations said that the legislation is unworkable because there is currently no objective criteria for assessing Scope 3 emissions data—which could lead to significant variation in the data companies report—and verifying this subjective data will be “extraordinarily challenging, if not impossible.” They also emphasized that California “should not be in the business of requiring reporting of international emissions data.”
