CSRD Draft – The Climate Standard you will have to report

The European Commission recently published a draft of the first set of standards for the upcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the Climate Standard.

We summarized the published CSRD draft in this article to provide an overview of what you will have to report on. And to show you why it is necessary to not only get a grasp of your company’s emissions, but also those of your supply chain. As this is just a first draft of the standard, changes are still possible.

Background – the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive

On 21 April 2021, the EU Commission presented a proposal for the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the successor of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive(CSR-RUG). The EU Commission proposes to expand the scope of application from 11,000 to approximately 49,000. Companies that fall under the following criteria are required to report under the CSRD:

From Financial Year 2023:

• Number of employees: > 250
• Balance sheet total: > €20M
• Annual net sales: > €40M

From Financial Year 2026:

• Number of employees: 50 to 250
• Balance sheet total: €4M to €20M
• Net sales: €8M to €40M

However, the directive only applies to SMEs traded on exchange-regulated markets in the EU.

The CSRD draft and Climate Standards

The CSRD draft is clustered into three reporting areas: Strategy, Implementation, and Performance Measurement. In the following, we will have a look at each area.

Strategy

Within the strategy category, you are required to report on how your business strategy both impacts and is impacted by climate change, which business risks and opportunities result from climate change, and how your organization manages climate-related aspects. Aspects you have to report on in particular are:

Implementation

The implementation category focuses on the policies and targets your business has agreed on in relation to climate change.

Performance Measurement

The performance measurement category is without a doubt the most challenging for any business, as it requires you to measure your climate impact and report your actual emissions.

If you want to read more about the climate standard, you can download the full publication of EFRAG, the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group, here.

How we help you

• We explain the new standards and help you understand what data you need to collect to satisfy the reporting requirements.
• We simplify the collection of ESG data in your organization by offering one central platform and integrations into ERP, HRM, CRM, EMS etc., to automate data collection.
• We facilitate data collection from your suppliers and ensure that relevant information from your supply chain arrives in a complete and correct form while taking away the effort from you to handle the information exchange with your suppliers.
• We help you complete the information requests from your customers and guarantee the protection of business-critical information, for example about your supplier network.
• We help you generate your report in the correct format at the touch of a button once the data has been entered.