The REP Wrap: Minnesota postpones PFAS rules
Your weekly summary of corporate sustainability news.
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has delayed the deadline for reports under its PFAS pollution prevention law, from July to September. The extension is intended to allow manufacturers more time to get to grips with new guidance, published by the agency to help comply with the rules. More than 500 firms have registered to the PFAS Reporting Information System for Manufacturers, but just 18 have submitted reports so far.
The UK Government will abolish Carbon Price Support (CPS) in 2028, after 15 years. CPS is a tax on emissions produced by British electricity generators. It currently costs £18 per tonne of CO2e. In a statement this week, Dan Tomlinson, the exchequer secretary to the Treasury, said it had “done its job and is no longer fit for purpose” because coal “has been driven off the grid and the Emissions Trading Scheme has matured”.
ISS is suing Indiana over a law introduced to curtail its ability to encourage shareholders to vote against companies at their annual general meetings. The law, versions of which have been introduced in numerous other US states, requires proxy advisers to warn firms if they are recommending a vote against management, and explain why. ISS is the world’s biggest proxy advisor, and says such rules would subject it to “a stunningly broad regime of state-law mandated warnings whenever ISS speaks to any of its clients anywhere in the world – all for the act of giving advice to those clients that goes against what company managers want their shareholders to do”.
Canada’s RBC and Scotiabank have both ditched their 2030 emissions reductions targets. Scotiabank has also dropped its commitment to reach net-zero financed emissions by 2050.
The vice chair of China’s National Development and Reform Commission said on Friday that the country will double its supply of clean energy by 2035, from a 2025 baseline. Major hydropower and desert-based renewable plants will drive the programme.
Companies have disclosed more than $1trn of capital expenditure aligned with the EU’s green taxonomy, according to data from Bloomberg. Nadia Humphreys, the firm’s head of sustainable finance, said the figures show that “real money [is] being spent on projects that meet a common definition of ‘sustainable’” and demonstrated the value of the EU Taxonomy as a tool to help drive corporate investment into the transition.
More than 50 companies, including Siemens Energy, SLB and Marriott Drilling Group, have written an open letter to EU leaders urging them to strengthen the European Commission’s upcoming Geothermal Action Plan. The letter calls for de-risking mechanisms for innovative projects and more credible tools to drive demand.