Emerging Story: Murphy DEP Seeks To Protect Investors From Climate Risk
For the First Time Ever, DEP Cites Moody’s
It Is Not DEP’s Job To Protect Wall Street
Today, the Murphy DEP announced an upcoming July proposal of the long delayed climate adaptation regulations dubbed REAL.
The DEP provided a courtesy draft of the comprehensive massive rule proposal.
I am reviewing the proposal now, but felt obliged, after I pulled my jaw up from my desk, to get out an early word on the proposal.
This is astonishing. For the first time ever, DEP is explicitly asserting a regulatory objective of protecting financial investors from financial risks of climate change.
That is a radical departure from DEP’s statutory and historic mission.
Need I state the obvious: DEP is NOT the Department of Banking and Insurance. It is not DEP’s job to protect Wall Street investors.
Specifically, the proposal states:
Given this significant financial exposure and the reality that investment in resilience leads to savings in recovery and an increasing awareness of and desire to avoid unmitigated climate risks among investors …
These findings display that past methodologies, and current standards for assessing and managing flood risk, may not capture all areas at risk of flooding and/or may not accurately reflect the severity of flood risk in known flood-prone areas in the wake of a changing climate. …
This proposed rulemaking will help those making decisions regarding investments in at risk areas have the necessary information to adequately factor that risk into decisions on where they may want their family to reside, where development should occur, and the types of development that are most appropriate in a particular area.” (p.17)
https://dep.nj.gov/wp-content/uploads/njreal/docs/real-courtesy-copy-5.10.24.pdf
With respect to the second paragraph above, which admits that DEP’s standards are not sufficiently protective, we criticized the July 2023 inland flood rules as “obsolete” because they were based on the 100 year storm event – as are the proposed new REAL rules, see: