President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission has been a vocal critic of the financial regulator’s recent effort to require companies to disclose their risks from climate change.
Paul Atkins, a Republican whom President George W. Bush named to the SEC in 2002, is best known as an advocate for cryptocurrency since leaving the commission in 2008. He’s also assailed the SEC’s controversial climate-disclosure rule as a burden to corporate America.
Finalized in March under Biden SEC Chair Gary Gensler, the rule would require publicly traded companies to divulge details about the risks that climate change poses to their business. The SEC paused the rule in April amid lawsuits from Republican state attorneys general and a company led by Chris Wright, Trump’s pick for Energy secretary.
Atkins, who founded the financial sector consultancy group Patomak Global Partner, is a “proven leader for common sense regulations," Trump said in announcing the selection Wednesday.
“He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He also recognizes that digital assets & other innovations are crucial to Making America Greater than Ever Before.”
Environmental groups and advocates for sustainable investing criticized Atkins’ selection and urged the Senate to reject him, saying he would gut efforts to promote investing based on environmental, social and governance considerations, known as ESG.
“Atkins’ mission to roll back accountability and transparency should raise alarm for the future of responsible investing,” said Kyle Herrig, a spokesperson for Unlocking America’s Future, which promotes ESG investing and has run ads supporting the SEC climate-disclosure rule.
Atkins would "surely put a stop to any progress on ESG [principles], which are critical for building a resilient American financial system, protecting the financial security of America’s retirees, and maintaining America’s leadership on the global stage," Herrig said in a statement.
Before the SEC climate disclosure rule was finalized, Atkins and Republican SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce had argued that it could harm investors because of the complexity and uncertainty of accurately gauging climate risks. Trump appointed Peirce, who was seated in 2018.
Atkins rejected the contention that investors are demanding climate disclosures. He accused the SEC of conflating the demands of both politically motivated investors and climate advocacy groups with the larger market.
“It’s a roundabout way through regulation of disclosure to try to regulate or influence greenhouse gas emissions by themselves, which is delegated by Congress to another agency of the United States government, and that’s namely the EPA,” Atkins said at a virtual panel discussion in 2022 run by the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Atkins wrote a Wall Street Journal opinion column in 2022 urging the SEC to “retract and rethink its planned disclosure rule.” He joined a comment letter with other former SEC commissioners opposing the rule.
During a Federalist Society webinar in July, Atkins called it a “huge rule that would completely upend corporate disclosure.” He said the rule, which the SEC had recently paused, would expand disclosure “and really make things revolve around climate disclosure and all sorts of subjective and very hypothetical effects.”
Testifying before Congress in 2019, Atkins told lawmakers that more mandatory disclosures would be burdensome for companies and would dissuade them from going public. Atkins was testifying against Democratic-led legislation that would have required public companies to provide more information about their environmental and social effects and vulnerabilities.
Atkins would replace Gensler, who championed the climate disclosure rule and has been leading a crackdown on the crypto industry. Gensler, nominated by President Joe Biden, announced in November that he would step down on Inauguration Day.
The SEC's five commissioners are appointed for five-year terms, which can be extended, and are politically balanced so that no more than three commissioners are from the same party. Although Gensler's term runs into 2026, he followed a long practice of SEC chairs resigning when a new president takes office.
Trump, who once expressed skepticism about power-hungry cryptocurrencies, received billions of dollars from the industry for his 2024 campaign and said he would launch his own cryptocurrency business.
Mining cryptocurrency requires high-powered computers that consume a vast amount of electricity. U.S. operations currently account for as much as 2.3 percent of total U.S. electricity usage, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s equivalent to the demand from Utah or West Virginia.
