Republicans, including Oklahoma Congressman Frank Lucas, piled on the Biden administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday for its climate disclosure rule.
Lucas and other members of the House Financial Services Committee spoke out against the rule during a hearing that featured Elad Roisman, Acting Chairman of the SEC and Robert Stebbins, General Counsel of the SEC.
The SEC initially released the proposed rule that included changes to existing disclosure obligations for public sompanies.
“No industry is insulated from this,” remarked Rep. Lucas.
“The energy sector will be seriously harmed. Manufacturers of all sizes will be impacted. And I think very clearly the climate rule will hit U.S. farmers and ranchers.”
During his questioning of Roisman, Congressman Lucas pointedly asked, “While the rule scales back the explicit disclosure requirement for Scope-3 emissions, many public companies must still collect emissions data from their supply chain to comply with this rule. Could you discuss how public companies, in many instances, will still need to collect this greenhouse gas emissions data?”
Mr. Roisman: “There is concern that even though there is no line item disclosure [of Scope-3], you’re still going to qualitatively have to talk about how you’re meeting those goals.”
Mr. Stebbins: “If they’re setting goals, they’re going to need to do Scope-3 work in order to do the analysis… I think [Scope]-3 is in there – the way I read the rule. To say that the value chain of customers and suppliers isn’t going to be affected in this is an overstatement.”
Committee Chairman, Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina called it a “disastrous climate risk disclosure rule” and said it was fatally flawed which exceeds the authorith of the SEC and threatens the nation’s economy.
“We’re here to discuss the SEC’s recently finalized climate disclosure rule, which will be disastrous for American markets, job creators, workers, and investors. It’s costly, complex, and against the public good.”
Watch Chairman McHenry’s opening remarkshere
Click here to watch Congressman Lucas’s full line of questioning.