CSRD and SEC Reporting Requirements: What’s New for 2024 and Beyond

Graphic of two bike riders going by windmills and solar panels

ESG reporting requirements are becoming a critical component of corporate strategy for organizations around the world, particularly in the United States and the European Union. With the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) about to come into force in the EU and new rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission arriving soon, ESG reporting has quickly moved from a voluntary activity designed to enhance the brand to a vital requirement for compliance. 

This article will look at the background of the ESG reporting requirements from CSRD and the SEC, the obligations different organizations will have to each and how the world of ESG risk is rapidly changing.

CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive)

SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) Climate-Related Disclosure Rules

CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive)

What is the CSRD?

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is a European Union directive that sets out rules for organizations to report ESG and sustainability … Read more...

The Everyday Work of ESG Reporting

Many have no idea where to start when it comes to ESG reporting responsibilities. Here are a few ideas to help get you moving in the right direction.

Environment, social and governance (ESG) principles have become a monolithic presence in the strategic thinking of today’s organizations. Consumer demands, investor concerns and mandatory regulatory reporting have taken ESG from the vague public relations exercises of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to the rigorous reporting requirements coming into force in many jurisdictions around the world. 

One of the difficult things about monoliths is that it can be tricky to get a handle on them. Their sheer size and complexity can be overwhelming for those who are not used to dealing with them. ESG is a monolith that has arisen relatively quickly to become a critical concern for organizational leadership. If you’re confronting the reality of having new ESG reporting responsibilities and you have … Read more...

ESG Reporting is a Critical Skillset for your EHS Teams 

ESG reporting is gaining more attention from regulators and standards bodies. Once voluntary, there is an influx of mandatory regulations across many countries.
ESG reporting is gaining much more attention from regulators and standards bodies. Once mainly voluntary, now there is an influx of mandatory regulations across many countries.

Commitment to ESG issues is high across organizations. It is driven by various internal drivers such as the desire to create a positive impact for the planet and society, avoid negative publicity, attract customers and better talent, etc. ESG reporting acts as a tool to provide evidence of a company’s activities and performance on the issues it has committed to work on.  

ESG reporting has become more sophisticated and formal than it was a few years ago. The reporting landscape is evolving rapidly. While it once consisted primarily of voluntary and intent-driven disclosures, there has been a recent influx of mandatory disclosure requirements to increase transparency of ESG data for better decision making. 

ESG Reporting: From Early Days to Today 

Looking back at the … Read more...

What is the Critical Data for ESG Management and Reporting? 

With ESG reporting becoming a mandatory component of ESG management, you need to collect and analyze lots of data from across your organization. It can be hard to know where to start, but Intelex's ESG reporting software can help you figure it out.
With ESG reporting becoming a mandatory component of ESG management, you need to collect and analyze lots of data from across your organization. It can be hard to know where to start, but Intelex’s ESG reporting software can help you figure it out.

Environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) is an approach that allows organizations to measure their contributions to sustainability and ethical practices in a way that provides transparency to the market, financial benefits to the organization and benchmarking for industry. It is a response to increasing calls around the world for organizations to play a more significant role in creating a sustainable future while maintaining ethical behavior and contributing to the communities in which they operate.  

ESG is an implementation of the aspirations of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which contains 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) according to the following categories, as shown in Table … Read more...

It’s Not All Bad News: How ESG Management Is Meeting the Challenge of Climate Change

Why Your ESG Management Program is a Good-News Story
Many organizations are innovating to become more sustainable. From leading brands to small businesses, everyone can make a contribution to building a better world.

In the fight against climate change, the news reports can be dire reading. This summer alone, an unprecedented heat wave in China is impacting the global supply chain, creating hydropower shortages and providing conditions for devastating fires. The American south is grappling with weather that shifts radically between drought and severe flooding. In the UK and Europe, a brutal heatwave has killed hundreds and caused significant property damage as a result of rural fires. 

It would be easy to say that this is simply fearmongering by the media, but regular reports from climate science support the thesis that man-made climate change is having a significant impact on severe weather events. No matter where we look, the news about climate change seems all bad. 

However, the truth … Read more...

How the War in Ukraine Is Impacting ESG and Supply Chain

Business resiliency and crisis management are more critical than ever, and supply chains that can adapt quickly to global disruption by developing diverse supplier relationships should become the norm and not the exception.

Russian’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 marked a radical shift in global geopolitics. Almost two years after the COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented global disruption, the rapid changes across Eastern Europe has further demonstrated that the world as it existed in 2019 is over.

As Blackrock’s Larry Fink has pointed out, the era of globalization that we’ve come to consider the natural order of things over the last 30 years is over. Only time will tell what the implications of these events will be. In the meantime, organizations will have to come to terms with new ways of working in a world in which cataclysmic disruptions can happen in a day and change the global landscape … Read more...

The Future of ESG Readiness: How To Use Technology for Strategy and Goal Setting Beyond Compliance 

The recent SEC proposal for climate-related disclosures proves that not only is ESG here to stay, but that regulatory disclosures are going to become a lot more complex and strategic.

Not long ago, the way businesses interacted with the market was based on simple supply and demand: businesses offered goods and services, customers bought them and the system worked more-or-less as designed. Considerations of environmental impact, social justice and principled governance were important, but because they weren’t standardized or enforced according to any universal benchmarks, they often existed in the more erudite realm of ethics or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and environment, society and corporate (ESG) compliance seemed far away from reality.

Jump ahead a few years to the present day and you’ll see that considerations regarding ESG have changed, and so have the ways we think about risk, stakeholder engagement and materiality. ESG has given consumers and investors the … Read more...

External Materiality and ESG: What You Should Be Looking For

Material risk management, or materiality, is a concept that is growing in importance as companies try to determine the material threats to their business.

As a business leader thinking about operational risk, do you consider internal risks first? For example, when considering operational risk, are regulatory compliance, talent retention or catastrophic asset failures resulting in production shutdowns top of mind? When you consider external risks, do you land on those that are most obvious, such as shifts in regulatory burdens, currency fluctuations, competitive threats, etc.…? (The list goes on and on.)

Like most leaders, you probably pay attention to ongoing issues, while staying as up to date as possible about evolving challenges and threats to the business so you aren’t caught off guard.

The problem with this approach is that it leaves an organization in an inherently vulnerable position. It’s hard to truly stay up to date. External risks are … Read more...

Highlights from COP26 – Will Leaders Deliver on Promises Made?

The tools needed to solve the environment crisis exist and commitments promised by world leaders last week could help the world move towards solutions.
Over 130 leaders of countries representing more than 90 percent of the world’s forests pledged to halt and reverse deforestation and land degradation by 2030.

The halfway point of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP26 saw many green commitments made by world leaders, but will these promises be kept?

Judging by a historical lack of collective action from the international community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the answer to that question would seem to be a resounding “no!” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had estimated in 2011 that limiting global average temperature increases to 1.5C would require a reduction of carbon dioxide or CO2 emissions of 45 percent in 2030, or a 25 percent reduction by 2030 to limit warming to 2C.  

Discouraging news came this week with the latest results of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) from more than 100 nations monitoring their CO2 … Read more...

Staying Focused Key Step to ESG Reporting Success: Panel

 key step in the ESG process is creating a core document, often referred to as a corporate sustainability report, that encapsulates a company’s overall mission around ESG and how they intend to meet their goals.
A key step in the ESG process is creating a core document, often referred to as a corporate sustainability report, that encapsulates a company’s overall mission around ESG and how they intend to meet their goals.

It’s tough to surf through business news or visit a company’s website without coming across a mention of ESG – Environmental, Social & Governance. The term refers to a firm’s collective efforts to conduct business in ways that benefit the environment and ensure social equality within its workplaces. Increasingly, stakeholders are basing their opinions and investment choices on how well companies are performing in these areas.

Getting ESG right is, quite simply, now a corporate imperative.

The challenge for firms to not only improve their ESG outcomes but also to communicate their progress to an incredibly attentive public can be monumental, particularly for those just starting out on their ESG measurement and reporting … Read more...