FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 29, 2026
CONTACT: Jarice Thompson, media@ourfinancialsecurity.org
Washington DC – Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed to repeal its 2024 disclosure rule on climate-related financial risk for large public companies. In doing so, it claimed a sweeping reinterpretation of the agency’s disclosure authority that would undermine corporate transparency broadly and leave investors and markets without critical information needed for prudent investment.
The SEC climate disclosure rule finalized (and voluntarily stayed) in 2024 requires large public companies to disclose to the SEC and investors how climate change and the transition to a lower-carbon economy would impact companies’ operations, financial health, and strategies. Investors had long sought this type of data and many companies already disclose some climate information on a voluntary basis, but the SEC rule was needed to provide investors with consistent, comparable, and decision-useful information. Investors who engaged in the rulemaking process were nearly unanimous in support of the rule.
“Since the SEC finalized its climate disclosure rule in 2024, climate change has only gotten worse and is creating huge risks for companies like property insurance companies paying out for intensified disasters, lenders that are seeing worsening mortgage performance due to rising insurance and disaster costs, and companies with physical assets or supply chains in disaster-prone areas,” said Alex Martin, climate finance policy director at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “Stopping companies and investors from acknowledging climate risk doesn’t make it go away, it just makes it harder to plan for and manage growing risk, and protects corporate polluters from revealing the extent of their environmental harms.”
Beyond repealing this specific climate disclosure rule, the SEC laid out incredibly far-reaching arguments that could incapacitate the agency’s ability to require corporate disclosures and critically undermine the agency’s mission to protect investors, support fair and efficient markets, and promote capital formation. Congress granted the SEC clear and broad authority—as an agency with specific capital markets expertise—to require corporate disclosure to help investors understand companies’ risks, financial position, and strategies. The SEC has exercised this authority for decades to deliver relevant information to the public. This new proposal threatens to decimate that disclosure regime by constraining disclosures to a small number of statutorily enumerated factors largely outlined when the SEC was created in 1934.
“This proposal is an outrageous, legally unsound attempt by the SEC to eliminate basic transparency requirements for large corporations sorely needed by investors and the public,” said Natalia Renta, associate director for corporate governance and power at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. “It is yet another attempt by the SEC to tilt the scales in favor of large corporations and wealthy insiders at the expense of everyone else, including workers saving for retirement.”
#
May 29, 2026