The Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (CA SB 253), enacted in 2023, is a law that requires large, public and private United States-based corporations doing business in the state of California with annual revenues exceeding $1 billion to disclose publicly their full GHG data. More specifically, CA SB 253 requires these disclosures to be reported to a non-profit emissions reporting organization and be prepared in a way that is easily understandable and available to the public.

These climate and environmental regulations will require public disclosure of the following categories of GHG emissions:

• Scope 1—all direct greenhouse gas emissions that stem from sources that a Reporting Entity owns or directly controls, regardless of location, including, but not limited to, fuel combustion activities (beginning 2026)
• Scope 2—indirect greenhouse gas emissions from consumed electricity, steam, heating, or cooling purchased or acquired by a Reporting Entity, regardless of location (beginning 2026)
• Scope 3—indirect upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emissions, other than Scope 2 emissions, from sources that the Reporting Entity does not own or directly control and may include, but are not limited to, purchased goods and services, business travel, employee commutes, and processing and use of sold products (beginning 2027)

To support these regulations, Carbon Accountable has released the paper, CA SB 253: A Regulations Roadmap, which is intended to:

• demonstrate the plausibility of adopting regulations and applying CA SB 253
• provide helpful steps for successful compliance

Finally, Subarticle 3. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reporting Requirements of the paper reminds reporting entities to be sure GHG emissions data is electronically tagged in Inline XBRL (a structured, machine-readable data language) to maximize international alignment for streamlined submissions.

Source:

Carbon Accountable’s CA SB 253: A Regulations Roadmap, Recommends Inline XBRL (xbrl.us)