Officials seek companies’ data on impacts of climate change

Maine’s state treasurer and a dozen other financial officials from across the nation are asking federal regulators to begin requiring that publicly traded companies disclose how climate change could affect their bottom lines.

In a petition filed Tuesday, the group is asking that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission begin requiring publicly traded companies to assess and disclose any financial risks tied to climate change. Examples of information that might be disclosed included future physical risks to infrastructure, financial risks from greenhouse gas regulation and legal issues from climate change.

In addition to Maine State Treasurer David Lemoine, the list of petitioners includes a dozen financial or legal officials from other states, public retirement funds, environmental groups and nonprofit organizations.

The coalition members argue that disclosure of potential impact from climate change is consistent with other types of information that public corporations already are required to spell out in corporate filings with the SEC.

“Yet corporate disclosures of the risks and opportunities created by climate change lag behind these developments, and investors are left with little or in some cases no useful information about corporate exposure to these risks,” reads a line in the opening paragraphs of the 116-page petition.

Lemoine said he joined the petition because he believes state treasurers have an obligation to protect investors, in this case by asking the SEC to develop clear regulations for the disclosures.

“We’re trying to give the investing public a better understanding of the risks of their investment,” Lemoine said by telephone from Oregon, where he is attending a conference of state treasurers.

A news release Tuesday put out by two of the petitioners – Environmental Defense and Ceres, a coalition focusing on sustainability issues – gave examples of major energy and insurance companies making little to no mention of climate change in recent SEC filings.

Ceres and the asset management firm Calvert Group recently gave more than half of the companies listed in the Standard & Poor 500 index poor marks for disclosing to investors the risks tied to climate change.

Other state officials who joined the petition include the state treasurers of California, Vermont, Rhode Island, Oregon, Maryland, North Carolina and Kentucky.