In Albany, climate authority is not contracting. It is consolidating.
The New York State Senate has passed legislation that would require large companies doing business in the state to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, moving the Empire State closer to establishing its own corporate climate reporting regime. The bill now advances to the Assembly, where a companion measure is already in place.
At a moment when federal climate oversight is narrowing, state-level disclosure architecture is expanding.
Disclosure as discipline
The Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, Senate Bill 9072A, would require companies generating more than $1 billion in annual revenue and operating in New York to publicly report their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions beginning in 2028, followed by Scope 3 emissions in 2029 and annually thereafter. Revenue calculations would include income from subsidiaries.
The threshold is deliberate.
By targeting the largest corporate actors, lawmakers are positioning disclosure not as a niche environmental requirement, but as a market-wide transparency mechanism. The proposal mirrors California’s SB 253, which similarly mandates emissions reporting for companies exceeding $1 billion in revenue and is currently facing legal challenges.
New York is not moving alone.
Filling a federal vacuum
The bill forms part of a broader series of environmentally focused initiatives passed by the Senate, including measures addressing industrial pollution, toxic chemicals, and air quality standards. It also arrives as the Trump administration has scaled back federal climate regulations aimed at providing transparency into corporate and industrial emissions.
Authority shifts. Disclosure persists.
Several states are now advancing their own reporting regimes, creating the potential for a layered compliance landscape in which large corporations must navigate multiple disclosure standards. While the federal government reassesses its regulatory posture, subnational governments are asserting oversight within their jurisdiction.
The perimeter is changing.
Scope and flexibility
Under the proposed law, New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation would adopt regulations establishing reporting requirements. Covered entities would disclose direct and indirect emissions in staged phases, with specific reporting deadlines to be determined later, offering greater flexibility than earlier versions of the bill.
Certain out-of-state entities would be exempt if their activities in New York are limited to defined corporate functions, such as maintaining bank accounts, holding shareholder meetings, or defending legal actions. The law seeks to clarify what constitutes doing business in the state.
Compliance architecture is being refined.
Steven Rothstein, chief program officer at Ceres, said the legislation would ensure that investors, employees, and customers of the largest companies have access to information needed to understand resiliency and risk. Senator Pete Harckham, the bill’s sponsor, argued that requiring disclosure of both direct and indirect emissions would close gaps in climate data collection and strengthen oversight.
The emphasis is on transparency.
A divided regulatory map
If enacted, New York would join California in imposing broad greenhouse gas reporting obligations on large corporations, even as federal regulators pull back from climate-related oversight. The divergence raises the prospect of a fragmented national landscape in which corporate climate disclosure is shaped increasingly by state capitals rather than Washington.
Uniformity is no longer assured.
For companies operating across multiple states, the question will not only be how to measure emissions, but how to align reporting frameworks amid evolving legal and political challenges. California’s disclosure laws are already facing litigation from business groups, and similar legal scrutiny could follow in New York.
The balance between federal retrenchment and state assertion is still unfolding. Whether disclosure regimes converge into a durable national standard or harden into a patchwork of regional mandates will determine how corporate climate accountability evolves in the years ahead.
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