2025 Anti-ESG Statehouse Report
Stepping Back: Where We Are Today
Since 2022, Pleiades Strategy has meticulously tracked state anti-ESG policy efforts, as right-wing actors have sought to weaponize state finances and financial regulatory powers to prohibit investors and companies from accounting for climate-related risks and force continued investment in fossil fuels. We aim to inform investors, corporates, journalists, advocates, policymakers, and other key stakeholders not just on the progress of these proposals through state capitols, but also on the impacts — often negative — that they are having on pensionholders, taxpayers, investors, and the corporate sector at large once enacted.
The Stakes
Since our Statehouse Report last summer, the L.A. fires killed 30 people and caused more than $250 billion dollars in damages. Hurricane Helene bulldozed across Florida, Georgia, and both Carolinas, the deadliest hurricane since Hurricane Katrina, and wiped out mountain hamlets in western North Carolina along with much of downtown Asheville, previously considered a climate refuge. The price tag? Nearly $80 billion in losses. Only last month, a tornado cut a 22-mile swath through Missouri, damaging or destroying 16,000 homes and leading to $1.6 billion in damages in St. Louis alone.
These events, alongside many more that don’t earn national headlines, are proving every day the mounting costs of the climate crisis. In response, homeowners insurance rates are rising rapidly and policy availability is tightening, higher utility bills are reflecting climate-related damage to the grid, and ratings agencies are starting to lower municipal bond ratings due to climate risk exposure. The climate crisis is a financial crisis, with projected global economic losses of $38 trillion per year by 2050. Already these losses are being felt every day by homeowners on the hook when a sky-high insurance bill must be paid to keep a mortgage, by taxpayers when a storm erodes a bridge on a local road and it must be replaced, and by entire towns when the power goes out due to grid damage and schools and workplaces have to be closed. And as climate-driven weather events mount — and partisan politics interfere with a rational response in the U.S. — the cost of everything from energy to food will rise, and the corporate sector will adapt uneasily to a new era of structural uncertainty. Anti-ESG efforts distract from this reality.
2025 By the Numbers
106 anti-ESG legislative proposals introduced across 32 states
11 bills passed in 10 states (AR, FL, ID, KY, MO, OH, OK, TX, WV, WY)
70 legislative proposals are dead
20 inactive bills will carry over into 2026
4 bills remain active in 2025
482 anti-ESG bills and resolutions tracked across 42 states since 2021, with 52 now signed into law in 21 states
134 separate executive actions taken by state treasurers, attorneys general, and secretaries of state since tracking began