Photo by: Bloomberg
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – NYSE-listed coal miner Peabody Energy will amend its disclosures regarding climate change, after the New York Attorney General took issue with the company during an eight-year-long investigation.
The miner on Monday said it had resolved the matter without any other action associated with this settlement, no admission or denial of wrongdoing and no financial penalty in agreeing to amend its disclosures.
The company said it would address the matters raised by the New York Attorney General in its third-quarter filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Chief among the agreed amendments was that Peabody had, for a long time, relied on the International Energy Agency's (IEA’s) World Energy Outlook (WEO) scenarios when estimating future risk. It had now agreed to enhance its disclosure around all the published scenarios when referencing the IEA's WEO.
Further, the language guiding investors about the company’s ability to estimate impacts from prospective future laws or regulations would also be enhanced. Any future statements concerning the difficulty of making particular projections or predictions would be accompanied by a statement that Peabody had made projections of the impact of scenarios involving certain potential laws and regulations relating to climate change or coal, which could result in materially adverse effects on its markets or the company.
Peabody also explained that, to evaluate risks and allocate capital, it had examined the potential impact of hypothetical future laws on coal markets.
Moving forward, Peabody believed that technology was the bridge to a low-emissions future for a world experiencing rising electricity demand to satisfy urbanisation and offer a higher quality of life.
Peabody had been among the most vocal companies worldwide in advocating clean coal technologies, including greater deployment of high-efficiency, low-emissions coal-fuelled plants and developing next-generation carbon capture, use and storage technologies.