California has a lot of big companies that export everything from electronics to transportation equipment to food, and most every major company in the country does business in the state, which is home to about one in nine Americans. Newsom often boasts about the state’s status as one of the world’s largest economies.The policy would require more than 5,300 companies to report their emissions, according to Ceres, a nonprofit policy group supporting the bill.
Opponents of the bill say it is not feasible to accurately account for all of the mandated emissions from sources beyond what companies are directly responsible for. Hundreds of companies in California already have to disclose their direct emissions through the state’s, said Danny Cullenward, a climate economist and fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. The decade-old program, which allows large emitters to buy allowances from the state to pollute and trade them with other companies, is one of the largest in the world.
“Our state can’t just take 2023 off in terms of climate action,” said Mary Creasman, the group’s chief executive officer.