California Climate Disclosure:
3 Takeaways From a Discussion With Senator Wiener and Energy Partner Vid Prabhakaran

DWT has reported on how companies can navigate California's new climate laws. At the invitation of Beehive Climate and Asana, DWT partner Vid Prabhakaran was on a panel on December 13, 2024, with the lead author of California's climate disclosure legislation, Senator Scott Wiener, on this very topic.

There were a number of important takeaways for anyone who is concerned about California's reporting requirements. Among the most important:

1. Senator Wiener plans to hold the California Air Resources Board (CARB) accountable and ensure that they do in fact draft regulations implementing the laws before the July 1, 2025, deadline. This will be a very tight deadline considering CARB has only recently begun hiring the staff it needs to begin the rulemaking process.
2. Senator Wiener plans to ensure that California pushes forward with this data collection effort to ensure transparency and accountability. He believes that it is important to determine the worldwide emissions profiles for the products that are sold in California to enable a California consumer to make an informed decision—he is not interested in limiting the data collection to the emissions associated with California operations.
3. Senator Wiener recognizes that there may be disagreements about his broad aims for implementation throughout California government, so we will all need to see what happens in both the CARB rulemaking process and any eventual enforcement actions.

DWT will continue to report out the latest with respect to the implementation of these laws to help its clients understand and successfully comply with the new requirements.