Corporate Sustainability
Reporting Directive (CSRD)
Consulting
The CSRD brings new obligations and challenges for corporate sustainability reporting. Is your company ready?
First Climate Consulting specializes in helping companies based in the EU prepare for the CSRD, with a double materiality assessment, gap analysis, and the development of a CSRD action plan.
The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) at a glance:
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The CSRD is designed to create transparency regarding environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics and standardizes sustainability reporting like never before for companies across the entire EU.
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Starting in the fiscal year 2024, the CSRD enters into force for more than 11,000 companies within the EU and gradually expands scope and coverage to around 50,000 companies. Not sure if your company is one of them? Find out here when your company has to report.
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Companies face various key challenges including gathering a vast amount of data, and implementing effective sustainability policies, metrics, and targets.
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CSRD demands a high level of expertise to identify, assess, and determine material impacts, risks and opportunities along a company’s entire value chain. With extensive experience in sustainability reporting, First Climate Consulting supports you with your CSRD needs.
Know Your Impact.
Manage Risk.
Identify Opportunity.
CSRD Reporting
with First Climate.
With First Climate, sustainability reporting under the CSRD is about more than just compliance. It is about uncovering risks, finding opportunities for success, and maximizing positive impact. While the CSRD report is a mandatory obligation, it is also an exciting chance for companies to attract investors and distinguish themselves from the competition in their industry. Companies that invest the time and resources to creating a CSRD reporting plan with an experienced partner like First Climate benefit from better identification of opportunities.
First Climate Consulting will set you on the road to CSRD success. Together we create a roadmap to compliance: Based on an in-depth materiality assessment, we identify and prioritize gaps in your company’s strategy and create an action plan for fulfilling reporting obligations in a compliant way.
Our CSRD Experts
Jonathan Schwieger
Head of GHG Accounting
& Climate Reporting
Sid Petersen
Managing Director
First Climate Consulting GmbH
Let’s start with a CSRD Double Materiality Assessment.
A Double Materiality Assessment is the core element to every CSRD report. Put simply, it analyzes how your company impacts the outside world from an environmental, social and governance perspective, and alternatively how the outside world impacts your business performance and development. The assessment's outcome gives all stakeholders a clear understanding of where your company stands in its ESG and sustainability performance.
Our sustainability reporting experts will analyze your company from two perspectives:
Impact Materiality (Inside-Out Perspective)
We analyze how your company’s activities impact the outside world: looking at both the positive and negative impacts, on people, the environment, and society over time.
This part of the materiality assessment is relevant for consumers and stakeholders.
Financial Materiality (Outside-In Perspective)
We assess if your company is at risk from climate-related outside factors, such as drought or rising sea levels, and how that affects your company’s current and future financial standing.
This aspect is especially relevant for investors and shareholders.
Together, these two perspectives constitute a Double Materiality Assessment, creating a better picture of your company’s past, present, and future ESG performance for all your stakeholders. Each of the topic-specific European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) in the report builds upon this assessment, making it crucial to get it right.
Next CSRD Steps
Based on the outcome of Double Materiality Assessment, we determine which of the 12 European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) are relevant for your company to report on under the CSRD. Once we know this, we can conduct a gap analysis to determine where you have data gaps. The data collection process for each ESRS can be complex, difficult to gather and includes many stakeholders, and it is important to start preparing for this now.
We can support your company to build an effective CSRD roadmap in order to effectively meet compliance requirements.
Is your company affected by the CSRD?
Within the EU, around 50.000 companies will be affected by the CSRD. To ease the process, the EU is phasing in the CSRD group by group. See the graphic below to find out the about CSRD reporting timeline and when your company will be obligated to report under the new directive.
When your company is required to report under the CSRD (fiscal year):
Public Interest Entities (NFRD)
More than 500 employees + net turnover > €40M or balance sheet total >€20M
Large Companies
that meet at least 2 of 3 of the following criteria: More than 250 employees;
net turnover >€50M; balance sheet total >€25M
Listed SMEs (excluding micro-SMEs)
that meet at least 2 of 3 of the following criteria: More than 10 employees;
Net turnover > €900k; balance sheet total> €450k
Non-EU Companies with a Branch in the EU
Net turnover > €150M in two consecutive years; EU branch with net turnover > €40M; or EU subsidiary
*Status as of January 2024
Do you also need need support in complying successfully with the EU Taxonomy regulation?
Learn more about our First Climate's EU Taxonomy Services here.
Four Questions on the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive
with First Climate Consulting Managing Director, Sid Petersen
"For us at First Climate, it is especially exciting to help companies identify all of these possibilities, as it is always unique to each company."
What kinds of opportunities are there for companies in the CSRD?
Climate change is a reality that will only become more present in a company’s everyday business. If done thoroughly and correctly, the biggest advantage the CSRD gives companies is the chance to look both inward and outward at all impacts, see where they currently are, and set a realistic plan for where they can go in the future.
As an example, a company could determine that it currently has a Scope 3 emissions hotspot in its value chain. This is a problem of course, but also an opportunity for action: Emissions could for instance be reduced through renewable energy sourcing, or it could alternatively be an exciting opportunity for an insetting climate project that reduces emissions and benefits people along their value chain. For us at First Climate, it is especially exciting to help companies identify all of these possibilities, as it is always unique to each company.
How do you think the CSRD will impact company and stakeholder relationships?
We have consistently seen an increase in stakeholders placing more value on a company’s sustainability performance and the CSRD’s standardization across the EU will make it significantly easier for stakeholders to benchmark a company in comparison to others. Naturally, this new level of transparency on ESG topics will change the stakeholder-company relationship. It is yet to be seen exactly how this will change, but I suppose it will vary in the short term: For some companies, we could see more pressure from investors to minimize risks along their value chain, or from consumers to maximize positive impact on the ESG level. For others that have already taken significant climate action or managed risks well, this could actually relieve that pressure, as stakeholders can see how they measure up to others. In the long-term, I think we’ll see more active commitment to stakeholders’ concerns.
Either way, stakeholder engagement is a key element to the CSRD double materiality assessment, and I highly recommend companies to implement a thorough stakeholder engagement strategy in preparation for the CSRD.
When should companies start collecting data for the CSRD?
Companies should start preparing as soon as possible. The current ESRS drafts show that there are 80+ disclosure requirements, and more than 1.100 data points. This is by no means a small task and ensuring that the relevant data collection is done compliantly presents a massive challenge for companies. Realistically, many companies, particularly SMEs, do not yet have the capacity to handle this demanding level of compliance, let alone translate that data into an effective strategy and comprehensive report that will distinguish themselves from other companies in their industry. This is why it is essential for companies to have a trusted, experienced partner at their side to help in the double materiality assessments to operationalize the huge task of identifying relevant reporting topics and reduce complexity of the CSRD requirements and all data points, locate the gaps in data collection and to build a roadmap from there. We can be that partner for companies.
What is one tip you have for companies regarding the CSRD?
Do not wait to become familiar with the CSRD and its requirements. This report is not to be underestimated, and it demands time, careful judgement, and expertise.
First Climate has extensive experience helping companies voluntarily report their sustainability in the anticipation of mandatory reporting. Now that mandatory reporting with the CSRD is here, we are more than prepared to guide companies through this new challenge. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you.