The “Get Ready for Standardized Climate Disclosure” campaign was designed by the Ceres Accelerator for Sustainable Capital Markets to drive support for disclosure regulations in the U.S. and globally to address the significant financial risks posed by climate change. To effectively manage the impact of climate risks on businesses and our economy, investors need consistent, comprehensive data from companies on their emissions and climate risk strategies. This is a critical step in the transition to a low carbon economy. The campaign aimed to educate leaders in business and policy, drive support for regulatory action, and elevate investor voices.
Ceres first engaged the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2003 with an investor sign-on letter urging them to address climate risks. Throughout the years since, Ceres has continued to encourage the SEC to standardize climate-related disclosure. The Commission issued a proposed rule on March 21, 2022, that would require all publicly traded companies to disclose annually how their businesses are measuring and managing climate-related financial risks. This launched the “Get Ready” campaign.
The campaign targeted four key audiences: regulators, policymakers, business leaders, and investors. Since its launch, the Ceres Accelerator has brought supportive leaders’ voices to the forefront of the disclosure conversation through webinars, advertising, social media, press, and more. While a final rule has not yet been issued, the campaign seeks to bolster the SEC’s foundation of support for finalizing and implementing this regulation, therefore ensuring capital markets can access consistent, comparable, and investor-grade climate risk information.
Strategy
The worlds of investment disclosure and climate action are not often linked together, so the strategic priority was bringing investors and companies on board with the benefits of climate awareness though education and elevation of influential voices. This campaign involved bringing the Ceres Accelerator’s higher-level mission of addressing climate risk as a financial risk to a technical area of capital market systems and making it accessible to achieve widespread support. Each audience required tailored language and mediums to make the campaign relevant to them.
Implementation
Upon the release of the rule, the Ceres Accelerator published a landing page (ceres.org/sec) to house relevant resources for the campaign. This page was updated regularly with new information and instructions for different audiences including investors, companies, and individuals to take action. The first objective of the campaign to drive letters to the SEC during their comment period.
The campaign began with a series of ads sharing a poll we commissioned early in 2022 that showed 87% of Americans are in favor of companies reporting climate risks. The ads were designed for a general audience to bring awareness to the topic through organic and paid channels. A month later, a second ad campaign launched with quotes from influential business leaders targeting a narrower finance audience across social media, paid search, and outlets such as the Wall Street Journal. Additional ads launched throughout the year on platforms like Politico to stimulate public discourse on the rule around key political events.
Through 2021-2022, Ceres recruited signatories to the Statement of Essential Principles, a sign-on letter for companies and investors supporting the basic tenants of climate disclosure, accruing over 560 signatories including investors representing over $4 trillion in AUM. This sign-on letter was a tool to engage key stakeholders and demonstrate the breadth of support for the rule.
A media outreach strategy commenced to connect with reporters covering climate finance, financial regulation, climate policy, and investing. The team secured strategic placement on two podcasts targeting specific corporate and finance audiences to explain the details of the rule and encourage comments. Finally, they published op-eds authored by Ceres experts and business leaders expressing support for the rule.
While the ads and media outreach focused on building awareness amongst key audiences, a webinar was critical to dig deeper into the central issues with the relevant stakeholders. The team produced an event with SEC Chair Gary Gensler as the keynote, a member of his staff for technical questions, and several business leaders to share their perspectives. The event recording was published online and recycled into shorter clips to distribute across social channels.
Following the end of the comment period, the campaign evolved to focus on shaping public dialogue through education and resource dissemination. This included meetings with congressional staff to share fact sheets and ongoing conversations with media. The team produced webinars and presentations on climate disclosure regulations in other jurisdictions such as the EU or UK that could apply to U.S. companies to deepen the emphasis on necessary standardization.
Both the quantitative and qualitative results of the campaign indicated a strong success. Quantitative results included over 2,500 webinar registrants, quotes in over 100 news articles, 16 million paid media impressions, and 130,000 visitors to the web landing page. Media outlets covering the campaign included New York Times, Fortune, S&P Global, Politico, Barron’s, Forbes, and Bloomberg.
The SEC’s comment period received over 15,000 comments, which is one of the largest responses the SEC has ever received. A Ceres analysis of the comment file showed 320 institutional investors weighed in with overwhelming support for the rule, demonstrating strong investor demand. Companies, investors, and nonprofits continued to sign the Statement of Essential Principles throughout the end of 2022 into 2023.
Anecdotally, the Ceres Accelerator team has had a robust schedule of individual engagements with investors and group meetings with corporate coalition groups and their members eager to discuss the details of the proposed rule and understand its implications. With the help of Ceres’ resources and expertise, the topic of climate disclosure has moved up on the agenda of many companies and investment firms. Additionally, the team has met with policymakers and regulators to share the results of the comment file analysis, explain recommendations to improve the rule, and provide evidence of widespread support.
Overall, the efforts of this campaign have made huge strides in bolstering the business community’s support and readiness for climate-related disclosures and opening channels of communication to government leaders.
