The Biden administration announced a new proposal on Thursday to require the largest recipients of federal contracts to both set targets to reduce their planet-warming emissions and disclose how much they are contributing to climate change.
Under the rule, companies that get more than $50 million in annual contracts from the federal government would be required to set “science-based targets to reduce their [greenhouse gas] emissions.”
These suppliers would also be required to publicly disclose their own emissions, emissions found in their supply chains and caused by their products.
Under the rule, midsize contractors — those receiving between $7.5 million but less than $50 million — would be required to disclose emissions stemming from their direct operations, but not their supply chain or products. They wouldn’t be required to set emissions reduction targets.
The rule was proposed jointly by the Defense Department, General Services Administration and NASA.
The announcement comes as the Biden administration seeks to cut down emissions both in the country broadly and emissions that are caused by the government specifically.
President Biden set a target for cutting overall U.S. emissions by at least 50 percent by the end of the decade when compared to 2005 levels. The president has said he hopes that the country will reach “net-zero” emissions by 2050.
He has also signed an executive order calling for the federal government to be carbon neutral by 2050 and cut its emissions 65 percent by 2030.
Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said that the new proposal would help the federal government meet its goals.
“On week one, President Biden charged us to make the Federal government climate-ready and resilient. Requiring major Federal suppliers to disclose emissions and risks strengthens our supply chain and brings us closer to reaching our net-zero emissions goals,” Mallory said in a statement.
The issue of climate disclosures has been a hot topic in Washington.
Earlier this year, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a rule that would require all publicly traded companies to disclose their direct emissions and would also make companies reveal their product and supply chain emissions if those emissions are “material” to the business.
The proposal generated a wave of pushback from Republicans and many in the business community.
A fact sheet issued by the White House said that, currently, more than half of federal contractors already share climate-related information, though it didn’t specify the extent of what they disclose.
The new rule does not give a specific emissions reduction threshold that companies must achieve.
Instead, it says that the goals must be “in line with reductions that the latest climate science deems necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement” to limit warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
Source: The Hill
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