SB 261 requires entities with more than $500 million in global annual revenue to publish biennial reports—beginning January 1, 2026—describing their climate-related financial risks. The companion SB 253 requires entities with more than $1 billion in global revenue to report their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, starting on a date to be determined in late 2026. CARB’s preliminary list is intended to support development of its fee regulation—the mechanism that will require covered entities to help fund CARB’s administration of SB 253 and SB 261—as well as to put companies on notice that California deems them likely within scope of the laws.
To assemble the list, CARB relied on the California Secretary of State’s business registry, limited to active filings through March 2022. Using partial name matches, CARB cross-referenced registered company names against Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) revenue data. This approach has clear limits. For example, entities not registered with the Secretary of State and/or lacking D&B revenue data do not appear on the CARB preliminary list. CARB itself emphasized that the list is not exhaustive and should not be treated as a definitive roster of covered entities. As a result, many organizations that may nonetheless qualify as “doing business in California” and meet the revenue thresholds may ultimately be subject to the laws, even though they do not appear on the list. As we have discussed in previous alerts on this topic, CARB has not yet defined the phrase “doing business in California” by regulation, though it has suggested the phrase may be broadly construed to capture any business “actively engaging in any transaction for the purpose of financial or pecuniary gain or profit” that is either organized or commercially domiciled in California or has California sales exceeding $735,019. Cal. Rev. & Tax. Code § 23101(a)-(b).
In any event, each company remains responsible for determining its own compliance obligations, regardless of whether it appears on the list. That determination must come quickly. By January 1, 2026, entities subject to SB 261 must publish their climate-related financial risk reports online, with CARB’s public docket accepting links to those reports as early as December 1, 2025. Covered companies also will face a 2026 deadline to be determined—proposed to be as early as June 30, 2026—for submitting SB 253 Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions reports.
That January 1 deadline is fixed even though CARB has not yet published reporting templates or draft regulations. CARB anticipates releasing draft templates for SB 253 disclosures during early October, and plans to issue its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on October 14. That publication will trigger a 45-day public comment period, after which CARB will review the feedback it receives, hold a public hearing, and then submit its final rule package to the Office of Administrative Law for a 30-day review before it becomes final.
U.S. entities with a nexus to California should not wait for confirmation of their status. Now is the time to assess potential coverage, finalize the January 2026 disclosure of climate-related financial risks, and implement systems to ensure compliance with Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions reporting. Pillsbury’s team of environmental lawyers is available to assist in evaluating applicability and, when applicable, advise regarding compliance strategy.
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