Climate disputes - ESG disclosure investigations – Are you ready?

Listed companies across various sectors and industries are grappling with how to manage and disclose ESG issues, particularly relating to climate. These issues include:

• Accounting for carbon and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of their business, suppliers and value chain partners.
• Considering the downstream effects of their products and services.
• Integrating energy transition plans and climate targets into their business strategy.
• Deciding how best to communicate these plans and targets and their progress in relation to them, to all their stakeholders – shareholders, consumers, employees, lenders, investors and the wider public.

This communication of ESG targets and performance is attracting considerable interest from regulators tasked with managing and enforcing increasing levels of mandatory disclosures on ESG factors, climate change and GHG emissions. This has changed regulators’ approach to greenwashing and enforcement in relation to sustainability claims and regulatory investigations into ESG disclosures are rising globally.

This article in our series on climate disputes explores how the proliferation of ESG and climate-related disclosure requirements has focused regulatory minds on enforcement in relation to sustainability claims and how investigations in the area are on the rise globally.

To follow the rest of this series, please subscribe to our ESG Notes blog or see our Climate Disputes Hub.