Albany

Two men who control some $330 billion in state and New York City public pension funds want federal watchdogs to enforce a 5-year-old rule that fossil fuel companies report potential financial risks from ongoing climate change and government efforts to combat it.

In a letter Friday to the Securities and Exchange Commission, both state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and city Comptroller Scott Stringer urged the commission "to compel fossil fuel industry companies — by enforcement or other action — to enhance disclosure of material risks climate change poses to their business and what steps they are taking to meet those challenges," according to a news release.

DiNapoli and Stringer joined officials from states including California, Massachusetts, Vermont, Oregon and Washington State who also wrote SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White about lax enforcement of SEC rules adopted in 2010. The rules require energy companies to report on how climate change and government policies in response could affect corporate finances.

Any such analysis could include the "stranded assets," which could apply to known fossil fuel reserves that might not be produced because of policies meant to reduce emissions of fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions, which an international scientific consensus identifies as driving ongoing climate change.

"As investors, we're concerned that many fossil fuel companies are responding to global warming's unprecedented challenge with a business-as-usual approach," DiNapoli said in a statement. "Fossil fuel companies can't acknowledge climate change and their role in it, but then act as if it won't affect them and their investors. They can't have it both ways."

SEC spokeswoman Judith Burns declined comment on the letter. She could not indicate whether the SEC has ever made a fossil fuel company revise required financial filings because of insufficient reporting on potential climate change impacts.

The federal rules were politically controversial when announced. Conservative GOP congressmen failed in a 2011 bid to pass a law to block SEC from imposing the rule.

Opponents included Republicans from Wyoming, Florida, Texas and New Jersey, several of whom also later voted for a failed bill to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating fossil fuel-emitted greenhouse gases.

One opponent, Congressman Bill Posey, a Florida Republican, called the SEC rules "burdensome and expensive." Posey also rejects the scientific consensus that fossil fuel emissions are driving climate change.

But such science has fueled calls for reductions in fossil fuel-related greenhouse gas emissions and support for cleaner, alternative energies. The impact of such steps could affect the bottom line for fossil fuel companies, which have been spending increasing amounts to locate fossil fuels in difficult-to-reach areas that can be costly to retrieve.

DiNapoli and Stringer said energy companies also have not explained in SEC filings "how they will address the risks that rising sea levels and extreme weather pose to coastal refineries, port facilities, off-shore oil rigs or other critical infrastructure."

The men also said energy companies should be made to "analyze the potential impact of a warming climate on (financial) performance under scenarios in which efforts to mitigate climate change were ineffective."

Government programs to control greenhouse gas emissions, like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in New York and other northeastern states, have also already been launched in California and Europe. DiNapoli said his office is studying how climate change scenarios could impact state pension fund investments.

bnearing@timesunion.com • 518-454-5094 • @Bnearing10