New York Stalls on Climate Reporting Rule

Author

Tim Mohin
June 13, 2025

The top five stories in sustainability this week:

  1. The New York Climate Law That Wasn’t

  2. The UN Ocean Conference in Nice is likely to produce a new treaty.

  3. The EU is fast-tracking its deregulatory, simplification push.

  4. The U.S. disaster recovery agency FEMA to be phased out after this year’s hurricane season.

  5. The U.S. ponders a carbon border tariff. 

The final day of New York’s Legislative Calendar closed amid dashed hopes that state senators would push through SB S3456, New York’s climate reporting legislation. 

In the week preceding the vote, a co-sponsor of the bill, Senator Peter Harckham, was ‘guardedly optimistic, but we are not taking anything for granted.’ Hopes faded as the session ended without an agreement. 

The New York bill– The Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (CCDAA) - would have been very similar to California’s law (SB 253) - requiring companies with more than $1 billion in total revenue that are doing business in the state to:

  • Begin reporting Scope 1 and 2 emissions with limited assurance starting in 2027, increasing to reasonable assurance by 2031. 

  • Starting in 2028, Scope 3 emissions reporting would have become mandatory, with assurance requirements to be determined by that year.

One of the reasons the bill failed was the pressure from business groups, who wrote a letter to New York Governor Kathy Hochul. The letter claims the rules will mean “businesses will face new expectations to track and verify emissions data, something many of them — especially small businesses — lack the resources or technical capacity to do.”

The New York bill will likely be reintroduced in the next session which - if passed - will push back the compliance timelines an additional year. 

Meanwhile, as we shared last week, implementation planning continues for California’s climate disclosure law, and key details are still unknown. A business group asked for more transparency this week when Jon Kendrick, a CalChamber policy advocate, spoke to a California Senate subcommittee - commenting: “If you’re going to look at [climate disclosure law] as being about transparency and accountability, the rulemaking should be transparent and accountable as well.” 

Similar climate reporting bills continue to move through the state legislatures in Illinois, New Jersey, and Washington. 

2. An Ocean Of Risks and Opportunities

The third UN Ocean Conference, which the U.S. did not attend, kicked off this week in the seaside city of Nice, France. 

The world's oceans are critical for limiting the effects of climate change, absorbing around 30% of the excess carbon produced and 90% of the heat, helping moderate temperatures on land. However, scientists now worry that oceans are reaching their upper limits of carbon and temperature absorption as ocean temperatures reached their second-highest level since records began.

The four-day event, which ends today, aims to accelerate action toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life Under Water. The two main goals of the event are:

There are other goals, like a moratorium on ocean-bed mining, ocean bottom trawling, and a plastics treaty. While these may not be agreed upon, the discussions lay the groundwork for the fourth conference in Chile in 2028. 

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) - a standard to measure and  report nature-related risks - released a discussion paper on nature-related risks in the ocean realm (ocean-related issues) during the event. The comment period for the paper is open until October 1st. TNFD also released sector-specific guidance for fisheries, cruises, and marine transport.

3. EU Fast-Tracking Deregulatory Push

The EU is accelerating its deregulatory push:

So much is happening so fast that, frankly, it’s hard to track. With the summer holidays approaching, we expect to have better clarity on the new European ESG landscape in July. 

4. More US Climate Agency Defunding and Layoffs

As we move into an expected ‘above average’ hurricane season across the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, the Trump administration has announced that this will be the last hurricane season for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The agency that deals with disaster recovery and preparedness will be phased out. President Trump said, “We’re moving it back to the states so the governors can handle it.”

In addition to FEMA, a climate education website (climate.gov) operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will no longer publish new content. The entire website staff was laid off late last month. One anonymous staffer said, “The entire content production staff at climate.gov (including me) were let go from our government contract on 31 May.”

5. Trump Tariffs Turn to Carbon

While Trump’s tariffs face legal challenges, he may turn to a carbon tariff to maintain pressure on trade partners. The Foreign Pollution Fee Act (FPFA) was brought to the Senate back in April by Republican Senators “to level the playing field for American manufacturers.”

The bill would operate similarly to the EU’s carbon tariff, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), charging importers a fee on the embodied carbon for certain imported products (the total carbon emissions associated with making the product).

New Harvard research released this week found that the bill could bring in $40 billion a year at current import rates. However, it could have unintended consequences, impacting Canada more than its intended target, China. The research advises that the bill consider domestic carbon taxes, like Canada’s $75 per tonne on heavy industry, as the EU’s CBAM does. Another piece of research found that the bill would have minimal impact on emissions in the short term.

The views expressed on this website/weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer. 

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