SEC climate disclosure rules 2026: repeal proposal and what companies still report

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's climate disclosure rules are not currently in force. The Commission stayed the 2024 rules during litigation and has now proposed rescinding them in full. Public comments on the repeal proposal are due by 3 August 2026.

That does not remove climate change from U.S. securities disclosure. Existing federal rules can still require a public company to discuss material climate-related risks, costs and business effects. California has separate emissions and climate-risk reporting laws that can reach public and private companies doing business in the state.

A single federal template may be disappearing, but the reporting work is not. It is splitting across federal materiality judgements, state rules, investor requests and the voluntary reports that companies already publish.

Related reading: The California climate disclosure guide covers Senate Bill 253 and Senate Bill 261 in detail. For the wider reporting architecture, read TCFD explained, ISSB and IFRS S2 explained and the ESG reporting frameworks comparison.

The SEC rule is stayed and repeal is still only proposed

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted its climate-related disclosure rules on 6 March 2024. Less than a month later, after legal challenges were consolidated in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the Commission stayed the rules while the litigation continued.

The position changed again in March 2025, when the SEC stopped defending the rules in court. The Eighth Circuit later held the cases in abeyance while the Commission reconsidered the rule through notice-and-comment rulemaking.

On 29 May 2026, the SEC proposed rescinding the 2024 rules in their entirety. The proposal was published in the Federal Register on 3 June, opening a comment period that closes on 3 August. Until the Commission completes that process, the 2024 rules remain stayed and the rescission remains a proposal.

What the 2024 climate rule would have required

The 2024 rule was designed to make climate information more consistent inside registration statements and annual reports. It covered material climate risks, their effects on strategy and financial condition, board oversight, management's role, risk-management processes and material climate targets.

Some requirements depended on company size and materiality. Large accelerated filers and certain accelerated filers would have disclosed Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions when material, followed by phased assurance. Smaller reporting companies and emerging growth companies were exempt from the emissions requirement.

The rule also reached the financial statements. Companies would have reported specified costs and losses from severe weather and other natural conditions, subject to thresholds. If carbon offsets or renewable energy certificates were a material part of a disclosed climate target, associated costs and losses could also appear in a financial-statement note.

Scope 3 emissions were not included in the final rule. The SEC narrowed the requirements substantially from its 2022 proposal before adopting them in 2024, but opponents still challenged the Commission's authority and the costs of the regime.

Which companies the rule would have covered

The 2024 rule applied through the SEC reporting system, so its main reach was companies filing registration statements and annual reports with the Commission. That included domestic registrants and foreign private issuers. It was not a general reporting law for every private company operating in the United States.

Requirements were also scaled. All covered registrants would have addressed material climate risks and specified financial-statement effects, but the greenhouse-gas disclosures were narrower. Scope 1 and Scope 2 reporting applied only to large accelerated filers and accelerated filers when those emissions were material. Smaller reporting companies and emerging growth companies were exempt from that part of the rule, while Scope 3 was excluded altogether.

This is one reason the federal and California regimes should not be treated as substitutes. A private company may sit outside SEC periodic reporting yet still fall within a California law because of its revenue and business activity in the state. Conversely, an SEC registrant can face material climate disclosure questions even when it is outside California's statutory thresholds.

Why the SEC wants to repeal it

The 2026 proposal gives two broad reasons for rescission. The Commission now argues that the 2024 rules exceeded the limits of its statutory disclosure authority. It also says the prescribed requirements were unnecessary under a company-specific materiality approach and imposed costs that were not justified by the expected benefits.

Those are the current Commission's legal and policy conclusions, not a court ruling on the merits. The Eighth Circuit has not decided whether the 2024 rules were lawful. A final rescission would end the prescribed climate-disclosure regime through agency rulemaking rather than through a completed judicial judgment.

The result would be a return to a less standardised federal position. Companies would no longer face the same climate-specific set of SEC headings, metrics and financial-statement instructions. Investors would have to draw more information from ordinary risk factors, management discussion, voluntary sustainability reports and state-mandated disclosures.

Existing federal disclosure duties do not disappear

Federal securities filings already have a materiality-based route for climate information. The SEC's 2010 climate guidance explains how existing requirements can apply to the effects of legislation, regulation, international agreements, business trends and physical climate impacts.

A 2021 sample letter from the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance shows how that can work in practice. Depending on the facts, staff may ask about material transition risks, climate litigation, capital expenditure, physical damage, insurance effects, compliance costs and the purchase or sale of carbon credits. The letter also asks companies to explain why a sustainability report contains more expansive climate information than an SEC filing.

This is not a substitute climate rule. The sample letter is staff guidance, has no independent legal force and creates no new obligation. It illustrates how existing requirements in the business description, risk factors and management's discussion and analysis can reach climate information when that information is material.

The distinction changes the reporting question. Under the stayed 2024 rule, a company would have worked through a prescribed climate-disclosure framework. Under existing rules, the company must decide which climate-related facts are material to investors and make sure its filing is accurate, complete and consistent with other public statements.

California keeps a separate reporting track

Federal repeal would not cancel state law. California's Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, commonly known as SB 253, requires large companies doing business in the state to report Scope 1, Scope 2 and later Scope 3 emissions. SB 261 creates a separate climate-related financial-risk reporting programme.

California's thresholds are based on revenue and doing business in the state, so the laws can reach private companies and businesses headquartered elsewhere. Their implementation is moving on different tracks, and litigation has affected SB 261 enforcement. The dedicated California climate disclosure laws guide carries the current deadlines, thresholds and court position.

For a company caught by both U.S. securities law and California reporting, the sensible data architecture is not two disconnected exercises. Emissions boundaries, source records, climate-risk analysis and management sign-off can be shared, while the final disclosures remain tailored to different legal tests.

Voluntary reports now carry more reconciliation risk

Many large companies already publish sustainability reports using the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), the former Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) structure, Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) questionnaires or their own climate-reporting formats. A repeal of the SEC rule would not make those reports vanish.

It would, however, leave more room for the voluntary report and the securities filing to drift apart. A sustainability report may describe transition plans, emissions, physical risks and targets in detail while the annual filing uses narrower language. If the difference reflects a reasoned materiality judgement, the company should be able to explain it. If it reflects separate teams and weak review, it becomes a disclosure-control problem.

The strongest reporting systems therefore keep one evidence base and several outputs. They record which entity owns the data, how the emissions boundary was set, what changed from the previous year, which risks reached financial materiality and who approved each public statement.

What reporting teams should do while the proposal is open

The first task is to stop treating the SEC rule as either active law or a completed repeal. Reporting calendars should mark it as stayed, with the rescission proposal under consideration and the comment deadline on 3 August.

Companies can then separate their obligations by source:

• Federal securities filings: maintain a documented process for identifying material climate risks, costs and business effects under existing disclosure rules.
• California reporting: check entity scope, revenue thresholds, implementation dates, litigation and assurance requirements against current state guidance.
• Other jurisdictions: map International Financial Reporting Standard S2 (IFRS S2), Climate-related Disclosures, European Union rules and other local requirements to the same underlying data without assuming that one report satisfies every regime.
• Voluntary statements: reconcile sustainability reports, targets and emissions claims with the information in investor filings.
• Controls: preserve data lineage, review evidence and approval records even if a prescribed federal template is removed.

Companies that dismantle their climate data process may save work against one federal template while making every other report harder to defend. Companies that preserve the evidence but tailor the output can respond more efficiently as the U.S. rulebook fragments.

What happens after 3 August

Once the comment period closes, the SEC can review submissions and decide whether to adopt a final rescission, modify the proposal or take no final action. The timing is not fixed by the comment deadline itself.

A final rescission would settle the status of the 2024 climate-specific amendments at the Commission level. It would not repeal the federal securities laws, erase the 2010 guidance, override California statutes or prevent investors from requesting climate information.

The U.S. reporting map would become less uniform. Public companies would still need to decide what is material for SEC filings, while state laws and international standards ask for more structured climate information. The compliance burden may fall in one place, but comparability is likely to fall with it.

Official sources

• SEC: 2026 proposed rescission of climate-related disclosure rules
• SEC: rescission proposal fact sheet
• SEC: 2024 climate-related disclosure final rule and stay
• SEC: 2024 final rule fact sheet
• SEC: 2010 climate change disclosure guidance
• SEC Division of Corporation Finance: sample climate disclosure letter
• California Air Resources Board: corporate emissions and climate-risk reporting programmes
• Feature image: SEC headquarters facade by David, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0