Manchin joins Republicans opposing SEC climate-disclosure plan

(Bloomberg) — Senator Joe Manchin is calling on the Securities and Exchange Commission to reconsider a plan to require companies to disclose information about their greenhouse gas pollution.

Manchin said the SEC proposal appears to politicize the agency’s rulemaking process and would be overly burdensome, according to a letter Monday to Chair Gary Gensler. The Democrat from coal-rich West Virginia, who supports an expansion of oil and gas drilling and is a key swing vote in the evenly divided Senate, joins Republican lawmakers and business groups in opposing the rule.

The SEC announced the plan last month, which would require businesses to reveal the risks a warming planet poses to their operations when they file regulatory statements. Some large companies would also have to provide additional information on emissions they don’t make themselves, but come from other firms in their supply chain. 

A representative for Gensler didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. 

“Forcing this rule on companies has the potential to not only impose undue financial hardships, but also to erode public trust,” Manchin wrote in the letter. “The most concerning piece of the proposed rule is what appears to be the targeting of our nation’s fossil fuel companies.”

Earlier this year, Manchin criticized Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Joe Biden’s pick for the Federal Reserve’s top regulator job, for her views on climate change -- prompting her to withdraw her name from consideration. Manchin has recently called for a massive expansion of domestic oil and gas production to replace Russian supplies both in the U.S. and Europe in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.