Strong regulatory actions are needed to combat climate change, but climate policy uncertainty makes it difficult for investors to quantify the impact of future climate regulation. We show that such uncertainty is priced in the option market. The cost of option protection against downside tail risks is larger for firms with more carbon-intense business models. For carbon-intense firms, the cost of protection against downside tail risk is magnified at times when the public’s attention to climate change spikes, and it decreased after the election of climate change skeptic President Trump.

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Through a survey and analyses of observational data, we provide systematic evidence that institutional investors value and demand climate risk disclosures. The survey reveals the investors have a strong demand for climate risk disclosures, and many actively engage their portfolio firms for improvements. Empirical analyses of holdings data corroborate this evidence by showing a significantly positive association between climate-conscious institutional ownership and better firm-level climate risk disclosure. We establish further evidence of institutional investors’ influence on firms’ climate risk disclosures by examining a shock to the climate risk disclosure demand of French institutional investors (French Article 173).

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