Environmental and sustainability regulation for companies in Chile

A company operating in Chile does not face a single environmental law but four regulatory blocks with different regulators, thresholds, platforms and calendars: the climate framework of Law 21,455, the CMF's corporate sustainability reporting, the RETC's operational environmental reporting, and the waste regime of the EPR Law, with green taxation cutting across all of them. Working out which ones you fall into is the first decision, and it almost always depends on size, corporate form, tonnes emitted and product sold.

This guide lays out that map. Each block links to a page with the detail of the rule.

The map in one table

1. The climate framework: Law 21,455

The Climate Change Framework Law, published on 13 June 2022, sets the target of reaching greenhouse gas emissions neutrality by 2050 at the latest and builds the architecture to get there: a Long-Term Climate Strategy, a Nationally Determined Contribution, sectoral mitigation and adaptation plans, and regional and municipal plans.

For a company, the law does not by itself impose a footprint calculation, but it opens three points of contact:

• Emission standards that can set limits per establishment or group of sources, partly met with reduction or removal certificates from projects carried out in Chile.
• Article 41, which requires establishments already filing through the RETC Single Window to report their greenhouse gas and short-lived climate forcer emissions annually, with the scope to be set by a regulation. The update to that regulation was approved by the Council of Ministers for Sustainability and Climate Change in August 2025 and is still working its way through.
• Article 30, which gives legal basis to the voluntary certification system behind HuellaChile.

2. Corporate reporting: NCG 461 and the arrival of IFRS S1 and S2

NCG 461, issued by the Financial Market Commission on 12 November 2021, rewrote the annual report of securities issuers and created the integrated annual report. It came into force in stages: first publicly held corporations above 20 million UF in consolidated total assets, then those above 1 million UF, and finally the remaining issuers.

The milestone driving the current calendar is a different one. NCG 519, of 28 October 2024, introduced with deferred effect the obligation to report under IFRS S1 and IFRS S2, both issued by the ISSB. That obligation enters into force on 31 December 2026 and applies to reports covering the 2026 financial year. In other words, the year currently being measured is the first one that will have to be told under that standard.

SASB metrics by sector, using the SICS classification, do not disappear: they coexist with IFRS inside the sustainability section of the report, alongside the duty to disclose whether independent verification took place and under which standard. The operational walkthrough is in our NCG 461 compliance guide.

3. Operational environmental reporting: the RETC

The Pollutant Release and Transfer Register is where a Chilean company actually spends its hours. Its regulation, Supreme Decree No. 1 of 2013 of the Ministry of the Environment, requires all environmental filings to be made exclusively through the Single Window.

The duties that catch the most companies are these:

• Generating more than 12 tonnes of waste a year not covered by specific regulations triggers a filing by 30 March each year covering the previous year's waste.
• Being subject to an emission standard, an environmental qualification resolution or a decontamination plan pulls you into the register.
• Being a producer of a priority product, a waste manager or an industrial consumer under the EPR Law.
• Being liable for the green tax on stationary sources.

The Single Window holds twelve mandatory sectoral systems, including RUEA for atmospheric emissions, SINADER for waste, SIDREP for hazardous waste, RILES for liquid discharges and the EPR system, plus the voluntary carbon footprint system.

4. Waste and circular economy: the EPR Law

Law 20,920, of 1 June 2016, shifts to the producer the responsibility for organising and financing the management of waste from six priority products: lubricating oils, electrical and electronic equipment, batteries, packaging and wrapping, tyres, and cells and portable batteries.

The usual trap is packaging: the producer is not whoever makes the packaging, but whoever places the packaged or wrapped consumer good on the market. That brings in a great many companies that never thought of themselves as part of the waste sector.

Real obligations begin with each product's target decree. Tyres and packaging already have enforceable targets; lubricating oils will from 1 January 2027; cells, batteries and electrical and electronic equipment, 24 months after their decree was published in May 2026. How to check where you stand is set out in the practical EPR Law guide.

5. Environmental taxation: the green tax

Article 8 of Law 20,780, in the wording in force since 1 January 2023 following Law 21,210, taxes air emissions of particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide from establishments whose emitting sources, individually or together, emit 100 or more tonnes of particulate matter a year, or 25,000 or more tonnes of CO2 a year.

The CO2 rate is USD 5 per tonne emitted. The rate for local pollutants depends on the pollutant and the population of the municipality, with an additional factor where that municipality is part of a saturated or latent zone. Payment is made in April of the year following the emissions.

The old 50 MWt thermal capacity criterion no longer determines liability. If your internal procedure still relies on it, it is out of date.

6. The voluntary route: HuellaChile

HuellaChile is the Ministry of the Environment's programme for quantifying, reducing and neutralising emissions, with four cumulative seals: quantification, reduction, neutralisation and excellence. Joining is free; the third-party verification required by the quantification, reduction and excellence seals is paid by the organisation.

It is the shortest route to a verified emissions inventory and a public credential recognised by the State, and it feeds the climate information required by NCG 461 and, increasingly, by international customers.

7. What arrives from abroad

Many Chilean companies receive information requests that come not from Chilean rules but from their European customers. It helps to be clear about the real state of those frameworks:

• The CSRD, following Directive (EU) 2026/470, applies to EU companies with more than 1,000 employees and more than EUR 450 million in net turnover, for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2027. Third-country parents come in for financial years from 2028, with EUR 450 million of EU turnover plus an EU subsidiary or branch above EUR 200 million. The earlier 250-employee thresholds no longer apply.
• There is a voluntary standard based on the VSME, adopted on 3 July 2026, which acts as a cap on what a European customer can require from its value chain. It is a useful argument against oversized questionnaires.
• CBAM has been in its definitive regime since 1 January 2026, with a de minimis threshold of 50 tonnes of aggregated net mass a year per importer. It covers iron and steel, cement, aluminium and fertilisers, with electricity and hydrogen always in scope. If you export any of those to the EU, your buyer will ask you for embedded emissions data.

Immediate calendar

Where to start if you have nothing in place

1. Define your corporate and operational perimeter: which establishments you have, under which tax number and with what operational control. Almost every Chilean threshold is measured per establishment or per group of sources under single control.
2. Check your position in the RETC Single Window: which sectoral systems you have enabled and which you should have.
3. Count tonnes: waste generated per year, combustion emissions per source, and kilos of priority product placed on the market. Those three numbers settle three regulatory blocks.
4. Build the emissions inventory across scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3, traceable to the source document, which is what a HuellaChile verifier and the IFRS S2 framework both demand.
5. If you are a securities issuer, align the internal calendar with the shareholders' meeting date, not the accounting close.

The underlying problem is not regulatory

Everything above rests on the same foundation: data. And the pattern repeats in every company that opens this front. Data is spread across plants, departments and spreadsheets; each framework asks for the same number in a different format, a different unit and a different period; and when verification arrives you have to be able to trace every figure back to the invoice, delivery note or certificate behind it. That is the real work, and it decides whether the report takes two weeks or four months.

Frequently asked questions

Is my company required to calculate its carbon footprint in Chile?

There is no general obligation for all companies. It arrives through three routes: the article 41 emissions reporting of Law 21,455 for those already filing in the RETC, the climate information in the integrated annual report if you are a securities issuer, and the green tax if you cross its thresholds.

What if I am not a publicly held corporation?

NCG 461 does not reach you, but the RETC, the EPR Law and the green tax can, because they depend on emissions, waste and products rather than corporate form.

Does HuellaChile replace any obligation?

No. It is voluntary. But it produces a verified inventory that feeds mandatory reporting and customer questionnaires.

Who enforces and sanctions?

The Superintendency of the Environment for the RETC, the EPR Law and emission standards. The Financial Market Commission for the annual report. The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury for the green tax.

If the bottleneck is gathering and tracing data rather than understanding the rules, start there: our carbon footprint solution is built to carry the same figure across several frameworks at once.