A coalition of 22 Republican state attorneys general last week warned a group of leading financial services firms that their commitment to achieving global net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 may constitute collusion that violates federal and state antitrust and consumer protection laws.
The attorneys general sent the letter to the Net Zero Financial Service Providers Alliance (NZFSPA), a financial consortium whose 21 members include Bloomberg, the Big Four, S&P Global and Morningstar. The NZFSPA’s stated mission is limiting “the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels” by 2050.
It’s not the first time the group has acted against companies involved in climate change action and sustainable investing. The group, part of a sustained Republican campaign against ESG investing, also issued a letter in May that accused insurance companies of being involved in an “activist climate agenda.”
The states now participating in the coalition are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The attorneys general said that “NZFSPA commitments may violate state and federal law, including antitrust laws and consumer protection laws. Although many NZFSPA signatories are direct competitors with each other, they nevertheless commit to using their market influence to enforce their collective climate agenda in the broader economy and to ‘[w]ork in coordination’ with other U.N.-convened ‘Net Zero’ groups.”
Equally troubling, the AGs said, is the member firms’ “commitment to extend your collective reach by pressuring other companies to adopt ‘net zero targets and strategies’ across the value chain.”
The AGs accused the firms of using “pressure tactics” that are “backed up by substantial market power.”
For example, the attorneys general said, all of the Big Four accounting firms—which control aabout three-fourths of the market share in the accounting industry—are NZFSPA signatories and founding members.
“Accordingly, your joint commitments under the NZFSPA may run afoul of United States antitrust law and its state equivalents, which broadly prohibit business competitors from engaging in concerted action in restraint of trade or commerce. In addition, the actions required by your NZFSPA commitments may create consumer-disclosure requirements that your companies are failing to meet,” the states said.
The attorneys alleged NZFSPA member firms may also be in danger of breaching antitrust laws since “members coordinate market pressure to advance NZFSP’s agenda and work in coordination with other activist organizations, including the Net Zero Asset Owner Alliance, Paris Aligned Investment Initiative, Net Zero Bankers Alliance and the Net Zero Asset Managers.”
The AGs asked for more information from the alliance to facilitate its legal investigation including the following:
• Details of any actions each firm has taken or refrained from taking “to establish and meet any emissions reduction targets, including targets relating to your operational emissions, that are consistent with a fair share of the 50% global reduction in carbon emissions needed by 2030, or that are ‘in line with 1.5°C emissions pathways.’”
• Details of communications or engagements the firms had with other companies or businesses that are not NZFSPA’s signatories regarding the “importance and implications of setting net zero targets and strategies across Scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions.”
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, who signed the letter, said in a separate press release that failure by these corporations to make objective decisions to produce the best possible outcomes for clients and failure to inform consumers of “these conflicts of interest … are essentially taking actions to hamper the flow of goods and services to align with the Paris Agreement’s unrealistic standards. Such frivolous practices risk stunting our economy and seriously harming Virginia consumers.”
Miyares argued “the companies are necessarily acting to artificially restrict the supply of goods and services, which restrains trade, inhibits innovation, suppresses output and harms consumers.”
Members of NZFSPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
