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The Regulatory Clock Doesn’t Stop: August Updates for Sustainability Practitioners

Welcome to the August edition of Sustainability Industry Insights. Two significant deadlines landed this month -- one domestic, one across the Atlantic -- and both have real implications for US-based practitioners. Here's what you need to know.

Curated Insights

The SEC Climate Rule: Where Things Stand

The public comment period on the SEC's proposal to formally rescind its 2024 climate disclosure rules closed on August 3rd. The SEC will now review comments before issuing a final rule. If the rescission moves forward, Congress could attempt to reinstate disclosure requirements through legislation, though that faces a difficult path in the current environment.

What doesn't change:

• California's SB 253 Scope 1 and 2 reporting deadline is November 10th.

• SB 261 remains under injunction pending the Ninth Circuit's ruling.

• The EU's CSRD continues to apply to many US multinationals.

The fragmentation that a uniform federal rule would have resolved is now simply the environment practitioners are operating in.

My colleague Alyssa Zucker has been tracking these developments closely, and her take on what the implications mean for investors and markets is worth a read. Read her latest analysis on the 2024 climate-related disclosure rules on LinkedIn.

The PPWR: Another Deadline That Just Became Real

The EU's Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation entered application on August 12th across all 27 member states, and the ground-level picture is worth noting.

Small businesses are already pulling out of European markets entirely because the compliance costs don't pencil out at their scale. For larger organizations, the compliance work is real -- conformity assessments, technical documentation, PFAS restrictions for food-contact packaging -- but the organizations with clean data infrastructure and supply-chain visibility are in a fundamentally different position than those scrambling to reconstruct it under deadline pressure.

The pattern is the same one we've seen with CSRD, with SB 253, with ISSB. Organizations that treated data governance as a compliance investment rather than a one-time reporting exercise have a structural advantage every time a new requirement lands. The PPWR is just the latest proof point.

Food for Thought...

The common thread this month is that regulatory uncertainty is not the same thing as regulatory retreat. The SEC rescission, the PPWR, California's extended deadline -- none of these reduce the underlying business case for clean, defensible, financially rigorous sustainability data. They just redistribute where the compliance pressure lands and make it harder to manage without a connected data infrastructure.

If you want to dig into what that looks like in practice, I'll be moderating a Pro Groups session at Workiva Amplify in Las Vegas on September 16th -- "From Disclosure to Accountability: Practical Steps to Prepare for What's Next in Sustainability Reporting." Pro Groups members also get an exclusive $400 discount off full conference registration. See everything Pro Groups has going on at Amplify this year.

Can't make it to Las Vegas? Pro Groups will be rebroadcasting that session exclusively for members virtually on Tuesday, November 17th from 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM CT -- with 1 CPE credit available. Register here.

Connect with Mark

If you found this update helpful, please follow me on LinkedIn to stay connected. And be sure to check out the latest episodes of my video series, "Sustainability Signals," where I dive deeper into the hard data driving our industry forward. Keep an eye out for those posts in your feed!

About Mark Mellen

@Mark Mellen has nearly two decades of experience advising organizations in managing risk, especially focused on sustainability and corporate disclosure matters. He currently serves as Executive Advisor to the Sustainability Reporting Pro Group and as Executive Advisor provides subject matter expertise to Pro Groups content. He was previously a senior manager with Deloitte’s Sustainability practice. Mark is a CPA (Colorado and Nebraska) and was previously a nominated trainer for GRI training.

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