Reader’s Notice: The Columbia Heart on Sustainable Funding (CCSI) and the Sabin Heart for Local weather Change Regulation (Sabin Heart) are conducting a Panorama Evaluation of Antitrust and Sustainability to determine the boundaries of competitors and collaboration in markets as they affect non-economic advantages, significantly with respect to sustainability initiatives. In reference to this effort, the studying record beneath provides an introduction to the intersection of sustainability and antitrust, with a predominant deal with the US. We hope that is helpful to practitioners, organizations, and companies who’re looking for to familiarize themselves with these points. A full report detailing the findings of the Panorama Evaluation shall be launched in late summer season 2023.
Prime Beneficial Sources:
[Webinar] Overview of interconnected antitrust + sustainability issues, together with competitor collaborations, the anti-ESG motion, greenwashing, and extra:
[Blog] Contends that a lot of ESG associated company and investor exercise doesn’t run afoul of antitrust legislation. “Apart from in uncommon circumstances, antitrust legislation is mostly involved with collaborative habits between competing companies and unfavorable results on shoppers. Firms looking for to take motion to align themselves higher with buyer or market preferences, scale back their carbon footprint, select suppliers who’re themselves extra sustainable (and thus dependable in the long run), be conscious of investor priorities, or in any other case take account of ESG components, all within the curiosity of making long-term worth, typically have large liberty in implementing such single-firm insurance policies.”:
[Short primer] Authorized evaluation of the distinction between unilateral and collaborative ESG initiatives. Notes that though “virtuous intentions don’t immunize firms from antitrust legal guidelines…the general message is that whereas firms implementing ESG commitments ought to take heed to antitrust legislation, they need to be assured that antitrust won’t stand in the way in which of ESG efforts which can be nicely justified and punctiliously applied.”
[Blog] Breakdown of state-level anti-ESG legal guidelines, a few of which incorporate boycott language:
[Academic Paper] Explains how antitrust legislation shapes market coordination, and private-sector companies are one or many financial actors to contemplate when allocating coordination rights. “It’s conventionally understood that the aim of antitrust legislation is to advertise competitors. Far more basically, nevertheless, antitrust legislation allocates coordination rights. Particularly, our present antitrust framework authorizes massive, highly effective companies as the first mechanisms of financial and market coordination.” This “has served to undermine different coordination mechanisms—comparable to staff’ organizations, “cartels,” and the general public coordination of markets.”
Primer Articles and Webinars – Sustainability and Antitrust in Rigidity:
Cynthia Hanawalt and Denise Hearn, The Slippery Notion of Boycotts within the Anti-ESG Motion, Local weather Regulation: A Sabin Heart Weblog, June 14, 2023.
Columbia Heart on Sustainable Funding, April 25, 2023, Webinar: Does Antitrust Assist or Hinder Sustainability?
Elizabeth Paton, Ephrat Livi, and Jenny Gross, When Does Collaboration Turn into Collusion?, New York Instances, November 7, 2022 (up to date Nov. 13, 2022).
Matteo Gasparini, Knut Haanaes, and Peter Tufano, When Local weather Collaboration is Handled as an Antitrust Violation, Harvard Enterprise Assessment (October 17, 2022).
Elizabeth Meager, Why competitors legislation is a risk to local weather collaboration, Capital Monitor (October 10, 2022).
Marios Iacovides, Why Aligning Antitrust Coverage With Sustainability is a Ethical Crucial, ProMarket (March 22, 2022).
Hal Singer, Gangster Antitrust and the Conservative Battle to Burn Fossil Fuels, The American Prospect (August 3, 2020).
Tutorial Papers and Reviews – Why Facets of Competitors Coverage Could Be a Barrier to Sustainability, and How one can Reply:
Competitor Collaboration Company Tips (US, Canada, UK, and EU):
Official Web site of the U.S. Federal Commerce Fee (“FTC”), Antitrust Tips for Collaborations Amongst Opponents, Issued by the Federal Commerce Fee and the U.S. Division of Justice, (April 2000).
Official Web site of the Authorities of Canada, Competitors Bureau, Competitor Collaboration Tips (Could 6, 2021).
Official Web site of the Authorities of the UK, Competitors Markets Authority, Draft steerage on environmental sustainability agreements (February 28, 2023).
Official Web site of the European Fee (“EC”), Tips on the applicability of Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to horizontal co-operation agreements, (June 1, 2023).