California SB 253 Reporting – An Update from Last Week’s CARB Board Meeting

The California Air Resources Board held a board meeting last Thursday. At the public portion of the meeting, CARB staff provided an informational update on the staff’s regulatory and public engagement work to date and their ongoing work to implement SB 253. There also was an extensive discussion of Scope 3 reporting, which begins next year. We further discuss last week’s CARB board meeting in this post.

Feedback from CARB’s Listening Sessions

This fall, CARB staff hosted six sector-specific listening sessions on the subsequent SB 253 regulation, which will apply to reporting in 2027 and beyond. CARB’s preliminary workshop proposal is discussed in this Ropes & Gray post. CARB’s initial SB 253 regulation, which among other things established the fee program and this year’s November 10 reporting deadline and contained threshold definitions of “revenue” and “doing business in California,” took effect on October 12. 

CARB staff received 177 verbal comments and written questions across its SB 253 listening sessions. At the board meeting, CARB staff presented and discussed the core themes from the comments related to the subsequent regulation: 

• Quantification methods: Requests for flexibility on recalculation and base year requirements, along with more flexible data methods reporting.

• Scope 3: Requests for clearer guidance and a preference for reporting entities to self-determine which Scope 3 categories to report.

• Interoperability: Requests for substituted compliance with reports created for other jurisdictions or government agencies.

• Reporting logistics: Requests for supportive tools and to leverage data from existing reports.

• Assurance: Requests for clarification on assurance reporting, and support for standards and accreditations.

Scope 3 Reporting

Much of the discussion at the meeting concerned Scope 3 reporting. Board questions focused on (1) flexibility under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (the reporting framework required by SB 253), (2) the categories of Scope 3 emissions potentially required to be reported and their industry impacts, (3) materiality determinations, (4) comparability of reports, (5) the use of secondary data and the impacts of data requests on small businesses, (6) double counting, (7) the reporting timeline and (8) interoperability and international harmonization.

CARB staff indicated they are still evaluating how to balance the flexibility built into the GHG Protocol  with the clarity and specificity requirements of the California Administrative Procedure Act. In response to board questions, staff indicated that, as part of thinking about how to translate the GHG Protocol into a regulation that has objective criteria, staff are considering the meaning of “materiality” for purposes of SB 253 and how to ensure a common understanding of that term. 

What’s Next?

2026 reports: At the meeting, CARB staff indicated they will be reviewing the reports submitted for this year, with the goal of publicly posting the outcome of the submissions within 90 days after the November 10 reporting deadline. Staff will first undertake a quality control exercise. As previously indicated by CARB, all uploaded emissions reports and statements of non‑reporting will be made public.

The subsequent regulation: CARB staff plan to hold another public workshop on the subsequent regulation before releasing the regulatory package. Once staff have completed public engagement and refinement of proposals, the staff report and draft regulatory language will be published for a 45-day public comment period.

Additional SB 253 Resources

See our recent publication, California SB 253 Countdown to Compliance – One Month to Go, for links to additional Ropes & Gray publications on SB 253 that may be helpful for completing and preparing to submit this year's report.

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