Issue - July 1, 2025

📝 Editor’s Summary

Litigation loomed large: Australia’s gas grid, the U.S. EPA, and Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” were all sued, while a waste hauler paid $1.4 million for racist abuse. Regulators mostly hit the brakes—Brussels iced its Green Claims bill, EU ministers trimmed CSRD/CS3D, and Switzerland, the UK, and Singapore sought delays, just as Washington moved to scrap the Roadless Rule. Add a looming wave of missed targets on 250 sustainability-linked bonds and nearly 3,000 climate suits tallied in LSE’s new snapshot, and ESG risk is anything but paused.

⚖️ ESG Casefile

Australian Gas Networks Faces ACCC Greenwashing Suit over “Love Gas” Ads
Australia’s competition watchdog has taken the utility to the Federal Court, alleging its 2022-23 “Love Gas” TV and digital campaign falsely claimed that the pipeline gas supplied to 1.3 million homes would be “renewable within a generation.” The ACCC states that the unqualified promise disregarded “significant technical and economic barriers,” thereby breaching consumer law rules on misleading environmental claims. It is seeking declarations, penalties, and corrective orders.
🔗 Read more → ACCC

Communities Sue EPA Over Cancellation of $3 B Climate-Justice Grants
More than 20 nonprofits, tribes, and municipalities filed a class action in D.C. federal court after Administrator Lee Zeldin scrapped the IRA-funded Environmental & Climate Justice Program, alleging the move “impounds” congressionally appropriated money and violates separation-of-powers. The suit, brought by SELC, Earthjustice, and others, seeks reinstatement of 350 grants for projects ranging from lead-pipe removal to flood-control riverwalks in Appalachia.
🔗 Read more → Inside Climate News

Waste Pro of Florida Settles EEOC Race-Harassment Suit for $1.4 M
The trash hauler will pay 26 Black and Haitian-American workers and submit to three years of federal oversight after managers in Jacksonville allegedly doled out harsher routes and slurs like “monkey” and “go back to Haiti”. The consent decree also mandates CEO-level training, a neutral seniority system for route assignments, and a statewide program to track discrimination.
🔗 Read more → EEOC

Everglades Detention Center Faces Lawsuit
Earthjustice and local groups have asked a Miami federal court to halt the construction of Florida’s new “Alligator Alcatraz” migrant-processing site on the Big Cypress Preserve, arguing that the mostly-wetlands location, which serves as habitat for endangered panthers, requires a full environmental review and public comment before tents are erected.
🔗 Read more → AP

🏛️ Regulatory Developments

EU Green Claims Directive Stalls
After Italy and center-right MEPs balked, the Commission yanked the anti-greenwashing bill from trilogue. A slimmed-down draft may emerge later in the year.
🔗 Read more → Forbes

Council Backs ‘Omnibus I’ Mandate to Pare Back CSRD & CS3D
EU ministers endorsed higher size thresholds (1,000+ staff / €450 M turnover for CSRD; 5,000 staff / €1.5 B for CS3D), a tier-1, risk-based due diligence test, and a delayed transition plan, as well as liability and transposition dates, aiming to reduce reporting burdens on SMEs while giving larger firms more time.
🔗 Read more → Council of the EU

Switzerland Hits ‘Pause’ on Expanded Climate-Disclosure Rules
Bern ordered a two-year freeze on revisions to its 2024 Ordinance on Climate Disclosures, including new roadmap requirements for financial firms, until it sees how the EU’s own “simplification” of sustainability reporting unfolds and a broader overhaul of Swiss company-law reporting rules is finalized (no later than 2027).
🔗 Read more → Swiss Federal Council

UK Opens Consultation on Draft Sustainability Reporting Standards
London has issued exposure drafts for the “UK SRS,” mirroring the ISSB S1 and S2 with six minor domestic tweaks, and is asking companies to weigh the costs versus the benefits before any mandatory adoption. The consultation, running through 17 September 2025, marks the beginning of the government’s broader overhaul of corporate-reporting rules and aligns with new plans for oversight of transition plans and regulation of assurance providers.
🔗 Read more → UK Government

Singapore Inc. asks for breathing room on ISSB rules
The Singapore Business Federation urged SGX RegCo to push back the mandatory ISSB-aligned climate disclosures for small- and mid-cap issuers by one to two years, following a joint survey that found only 4% feel fully ready for the FY-2025 start date. The lobby group also wants proportional requirements, sector guidance, and a single digital reporting hub.
🔗 Read more → The Straits Times

ISSB Issues Practical Guide on Disclosing Transition-Plan Details under IFRS S2
The IFRS Foundation released guidance—built on the UK Transition Plan Taskforce playbook—showing companies how to explain mitigation and adaptation goals, actions, and financing when they report under IFRS S2, aiming to cut “fragmented” transition-plan disclosures and provide jurisdictions with a ready supplement to the global baseline.
🔗 Read more → IFRS Foundation

GRI Rolls Out New Climate-Change & Energy Standards (GRI 102 & 103)
The Global Reporting Initiative has unveiled revamped climate and energy standards that align fully with the GHG Protocol, interoperate with IFRS S2, and incorporate “just-transition” metrics for workers and communities. These standards aim to streamline company disclosures while enhancing accountability for emissions and decarbonization plans.
🔗 Read more → GRI

U.S. Plan to Scrap ‘Roadless Rule’ Opens 58 M Acres to Logging
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the 2001 “Roadless Rule” will be repealed, lifting long-standing bans on road-building and timber harvesting across roughly one-third of the National Forest System. Supporters call the move a fire-prevention and economic measure; conservation groups warn it will spur industrial logging, increase wildfire risk in roaded areas, and promise to sue once the rollback is formally filed.
🔗 Read more → ABC News

🧼 Greenwashing Watch

Hundreds of SLBs Face Penalties as Targets Come Due
More than 250 sustainability-linked bonds must meet their KPIs in 2025—up from just 24 last year—and early disclosures show that issuers like Europcar, A2A, and Legrand are already missing their emissions-cut goals, triggering coupon step-ups and sparking fresh concerns over SLB “greenwashing.”
🔗 Read more → Bloomberg

💡 Insight of the Week

Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation: 2025 Snapshot
The latest annual stocktake tallies 2,967 climate-related suits worldwide—226 filed in 2024 alone—and flags three big shifts: a sharp rise in Global South enforcement actions, a growing wave of “anti-climate” challenges to policymaking and ESG, and an uptick in corporate cases testing duties on Scope 3 emissions and liability for climate harm.
🔗 Read more → Setzer J & Higham C (2025) Global Trends in Climate Change Litigation: 2025 Snapshot, Grantham Research Institute, LSE.

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