Investors Want SEC to Require Climate Change Data on Fossil Fuel Reserves

A group of investors and environmentalists wants the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to make companies report greenhouse-gas data about their oil and gas reserves. The group — which includes the nation’s biggest pension fund, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS; Ceres, a coalition of U.S.-based investors and public interest groups concerned with sustainability; and F&C Management of London — represents more than $700 billion in assets. In a letter commenting on proposed SEC rule changes on oil and gas reporting, the group urged that companies be required to disclose reserves whose extraction, production, and burning would cause higher-than-average greenhouse gas emissions. “We are concerned,” the group stated, “that climate change, and policies adopted to combat greenhouse gas emissions, could render certain assets — particularly those with high carbon intensity — uneconomic.”