Apple has officially endorsed a new bill in California that would oblige larger companies to report their annual greenhouse gas emissions.

Senator Scott Wiener, who is proposing the measure, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the iPhone maker has backed the proposal. He wrote: "Thank you, Apple, for making clear that this is doable (and) a critically important piece of climate action.”

The bill would require companies with annual revenue in excess of $1 billion who do business in California to disclose independently verified data on their emissions.

In its letter, a copy of which was included in Wiener’s post, Apple’s director of state and local government affairs D. Michael Foulkes wrote: "Throughout our environmental journey, we've emphasised the importance of measurement and reporting to help us understand our impact."

Foulkes’s letter praises Wiener’s attempts to require companies to measure and report their Scope 3 emissions – i.e. indirect emissions linked to supply chains and end-users. The bill currently leaves the date for Scope 1 and Scope 2 disclosures –emissions from operations and those associated with a company’s energy use respectively – open, with Foulkes suggesting that the state leaves “sufficient time for data collection, quality control, and third-party review”.

Apple is the latest company to back the bill, with major tech and retail players including Adobe, Ikea and Microsoft all stating their support for the proposed legislation in a letter sent to California officials last month.

Lawmakers in the state are currently also discussing a separate bill that would require companies operating in California with $500 million in revenue to report on climate-related financial risks.

While the bill backed by Apple only targets a relatively small group of major firms in the state, the other bill could impact thousands of companies who would be compelled to report on things like whether they have budgeted for increased compliance and insurance costs that would be required as a result of shifting environmental factors.

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