JBS, a Brazilian company that is the world’s biggest meatpacker, is expected to make its debut on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, one day later than planned.
It’s a significant milestone that is years in the making for the company, which has been attacked by environmentalists and sued by New York State’s attorney general, among other challenges. In 2020, JBS’s holding company pleaded guilty to U.S. bribery charges.
Then there are concerns about the company’s emissions, which, according to JBS’s self-reported metrics, are roughly on par with the state of Michigan. Those emissions primarily come from the company’s vast beef operations. Cows release the potent greenhouse gas methane and need an immense amount land. (Read more about beef’s environmental toll here.)
JBS’s actual climate impact, however, is larger because its estimates do not include emissions associated with land-use changes like deforestation. (Its most recent sustainability report said those numbers were not included because “those calculations are currently being improved.”)
Over the past couple of years, JBS has faced pressure from environmentalists and a bipartisan group of senators who have raised concerns about its stock being traded in the United States.
Despite the pushback, the Securities and Exchange Commission greenlit the company’s plans in April. JBS was already traded publicly in Brazil, and the New York listing will give it access to fresh capital, which could fuel growth and additional acquisitions.
Critics who say JBS should not be listed on the stock exchange have worried that the company might mislead investors. JBS has been accused of overstating its commitment to reducing emissions, and some worry that its impact on the climate will only continue to grow.
A spotty record on climate
At the Climate Forward conference hosted by The New York Times in 2023, the global chief executive of JBS, Gilberto Tomazoni, told my colleague David Gelles that the company was planning to reach net zero emissions by 2040.
But the statement had already been deemed misleading by the National Advertising Review Board, an advertising industry self-regulatory body, and in 2024, the New York attorney general sued JBS for “greenwashing,” claiming that its net zero messaging amounted to false advertising.
A state court dismissed the lawsuit this year, but gave the attorney general’s office the opportunity to submit an amended complaint. A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office said it planned to do so in time to meet a late-summer deadline.
According to JBS’s self-published data, emissions dropped by about 8 percent from 2021 to 2023, the most recent year for which data is available.
“Our ambition to set near-term, science-based goals in line with our Net Zero by 2040 ambition has not changed,” the company said in its 2023 sustainability report. In a statement, the company also said it now had a five-pronged approach to building sustainable supply chains.
Separately, multiple investigations have tied JBS to purchases of cattle raised on deforested land.
In a statement, Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said he had led a two-year Senate committee investigation that found JBS had “turned a blind eye as parts of its supply chain burned down the Amazon,” and that he had “strong concerns” about its public listing.
Wyden was one of 15 senators from across parties who signed a letter to the S.E.C. in 2024 to “express deep concerns” about JBS’s plans.
Why now?
Though the timing of a stock listing can depend on a variety of economic factors, the election of President Trump may have helped tip the scales for JBS, said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida who studies initial public offerings.
“I think here, the fact that the Trump administration is in power and is tending not to be concerned about corporate misdeeds, is a reason that they think now might be a good time to tap equity markets in the U.S.,” Ritter said.
Trump has paused some investigations stemming from the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a law that prompted a Justice Department investigation of the holding company that controls JBS. The holding company agreed to pay a penalty of more than $250 million in 2020 after pleading guilty to charges related to the bribery of Brazilian officials.
Similar bribery allegations ensnared Joesley and Wesley Batista, the billionaire sons of the company’s founder. They each spent time in jail in Brazil and rejoined the company’s board last year.
JBS is also a majority owner of Pilgrim’s Pride, a major U.S. chicken producer that contributed $5 million to President Trump’s inaugural committee, making it the largest donor.
In a letter sent to the chief executives of both companies last month, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, raised concerns about the donation and said “the SEC’s decision, made just months after the donation from Pilgrim’s Pride, raises questions regarding undue influence.”
A statement from JBS said that “the Pilgrim’s contribution to the inauguration was entirely unrelated to the multiyear process of listing JBS on the New York Stock Exchange — a process that required full compliance with all SEC regulations.”
Regulation
E.P.A. axes Biden’s climate and pollution limits on power plants
The Trump administration moved Wednesday to erase limits on greenhouse gases from power plants and to weaken restrictions on their other hazardous emissions, including mercury, arsenic and lead.
Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, hailed a “historic day” and said the proposed changes would unshackle the coal, oil and gas industries from “expensive, unreasonable and burdensome regulations” imposed by the Biden administration.
Together, the moves are a major blow to efforts to tackle climate change and to reduce threats to public health. The power sector is the country’s second-largest source of pollution that is heating the planet, behind transportation. The Trump administration is pursuing an aggressive agenda to bolster the production and use of fossil fuels, while also scrapping policies that reduce planet-warming emissions. — Lisa Friedman
Energy
World Bank ends its ban on funding nuclear power projects
The World Bank said on Wednesday it would lift its longstanding ban on funding nuclear power projects. The bank’s policy shift, described in an email to employees, comes as nuclear power is experiencing a global surge in support.
The decision by the World Bank’s board could have profound implications for the ability of developing countries to industrialize without burning planet-warming fuels such as coal and oil.
The ban has been formally in place since 2013, but the last time the bank funded a nuclear power project was 1959 in Italy. In the decades since, a few of the bank’s major funders, particularly Germany, have opposed its involvement in nuclear energy, on the grounds that the risk of catastrophic accidents in poor countries with less expertise in nuclear technology is unacceptably high. — Max Bearak
Renewables
Why rooftop solar could crash under the G.O.P. tax bill
“I’ve been in this industry 22 years and remember when it was only rich people, doomsday preppers and environmentalists installing solar panels on their roofs,” said Ben Airth, policy director at Freedom Forever, one of the country’s largest residential solar installers.
That quote is from Brad Plumer’s article on how the big domestic policy bill currently being debated by Congressional Republicans could hurt the rooftop solar industry in the United States.
The bill would “eliminate tax credits for homeowners and solar leasing companies that have fueled the popularity of rooftop solar. If it becomes law, it would lead to an immediate plunge in installations, analysts and companies say,” Plumer reports.
One analysis, he wrote, estimates that residential solar installations could fall by half next year if the House bill becomes law. Without the tax credits, it would take 17 years, on average, for homeowners to earn back their solar investments.
More climate news from around the web:
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The Trump administration has fired almost all the staff responsible for Climate.gov, a major government source for educating the public on climate change, The Guardian reports.
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Developers plan to build more than 100 gas-powered plants in Texas in the next few years to keep up with rising demand, according to Inside Climate News.
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The Associated Press has a guide to choosing food with a lower environmental impact.
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Bloomberg reports that a growing number of big companies across the world have abandoned their climate goals in the past year.
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Claire Brown covers climate change for The Times and writes for the Climate Forward newsletter.
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