New York state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer have both sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, urging the agency to enforce a rule that forces fossil fuel companies to disclose potential financial risks stemming from climate change and related regulation.
DiNapoli serves as sole trustee of the state’s $176.8 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund. Stringer serves as an investment advisor to the boards of the city’s five pension funds.
More from the Times Union:
In a letter Friday to the Securities and Exchange Commission, both state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and city Comptroller Scott Stringer urged the commission “to compel fossil fuel industry companies — by enforcement or other action — to enhance disclosure of material risks climate change poses to their business and what steps they are taking to meet those challenges,” according to a news release.
[…]
The rules require energy companies to report on how climate change and government policies in response could affect corporate finances.
Any such analysis could include the “stranded assets,” which could apply to known fossil fuel reserves that might not be produced because of policies meant to reduce emissions of fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions, which an international scientific consensus identifies as driving ongoing climate change.
“As investors, we’re concerned that many fossil fuel companies are responding to global warming’s unprecedented challenge with a business-as-usual approach,” DiNapoli said in a statement. “Fossil fuel companies can’t acknowledge climate change and their role in it, but then act as if it won’t affect them and their investors. They can’t have it both ways.”
Read the full letter here.
Photo by Awhill34 via Wikimedia Commons
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