at least 88 people and left a trail of devastation across six US states, December 13, 2021. and your business needs to take a lot of steps to comply with them. On top of that, they tell you that California, where you do substantial business, recently signed into law two climate laws that you also need to comply with. Your stress level rises, and you wonder what it’ll cost you. You’ve known these rules were coming, since the SEC proposed them two years ago, but now they’re here.
This is especially true today, because your company may be able to leverage the new ~$3 trillion in potential federal financial incentives from the trifecta of the Inflation Reduction Act, Infrastructure Act and CHIPS and Science Act to do so.“It’s a pivotal moment,” Sullivan said in an exclusive interview, explaining that, “Regulation can really be a catalyst for transformation, for business transformation, because this is so much more than a disclosure and compliance exercise.
They can also reveal competitive advantages. Sullivan added that, “a lot of our clients are talking about, how do we use this to instill discipline, rigor, just infrastructure to better capture and identify the strategic opportunities before our competitors.”Disclosure builds trust with all an organization’s stakeholders. The independent validation, or assurance, such as from a firm like Deloitte, required by the SEC rules for climate-related financial data , increases that trust.
Increased transparency around “the financial relevance of climate related impacts and risks,” is “an avenue to drive trust and strengthen sort of strategic focus,” Sullivan explained. It’s an opportunity, she added, to “really communicate with stakeholders around how organizations are increasingly understanding, prioritizing, measuring, and then ultimately acting on, as well as disclosing, information around climate related risks and opportunities.