SEC Cares About Climate Reporting, Not Behavior, Official Says

The SEC is uninterested in changing how companies address climate change, except when it comes to their disclosures, a senior agency official said Tuesday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is agnostic to companies’ environmental behavior as it finalizes rules that would require companies to report on their greenhouse gas emissions and make other climate disclosures, said Erik Gerding, the incoming head of the agency’s Division of Corporation Finance. The SEC is aiming to adopt climate disclosure rules by April.

“We’re not looking to nudge behavior. We’re a disclosure agency,” Gerding said at a securities regulation conference in Coronado, Calif. “We’re ...