Study of Climate Disclosure Rules in the United States： Based on Scope 3 Emissions Disputes

On March 6th 2024, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted and published Rules to Enhance and Standardize Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors, which against the backdrop of increasing global attention to the issue of climate change. Influenced by the deepening integration of environmental culture into social life, the high level of investor and stakeholder interest in climate issues, and the urgent need for a common standard for reporting companies and the marketplace, the issuance of the rule responds to market and social needs in the face of the strong interest in climate-related disclosure issues among companies of all sizes and from a wide range of industries. The final published version of the rule eliminates the mandatory reporting requirement for Scope 3 emissions in favour of voluntary disclosure, making a compromise with "registrants" by eliminating the mandatory reporting requirement for Scope 3 emissions. Although the final rule is more lenient, it will still exert great pressure on Chinese enterprises going to the United States. Both enterprises and the government need to prepare for a rainy day. For the government, it can comprehensively coordinate and macroscopically layout to help relevant enterprises to smoothly comply with the climate information disclosure issue. For enterprises, they should accelerate the layout of their internal compliance management framework and make good preparations for climate risk response and climate-related information disclosure.