Industry
Energy, Resources & Utilities
Rebalance the energy equation
Solution
Sustainability Services
Ecosystem-led Approach to Power Your Sustainability Strategy
Highlights
- Managing sustainability within companies is becoming less about compliance and more about competitive advantage, good performance management, and attracting capital.
- Regulations are expanding the areas of risk and opportunities that companies need to manage.
- Companies are required to disclose data with higher quality for investors and stakeholders.
On this page
Reporting guidelines
Across Europe, there is a collaborative effort to establish a shared foundation to report on the impacts and risks related to climate. This is changing the regulatory landscape—new regulations are being built on top of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and the European Union (EU) Taxonomy. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) came into effect in January 2024 and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CS3D) came into effect in April 2024.
In brief, CSRD amends the EU’s 2014 Non-financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) and expands what and how companies report on sustainability. It is a part of the EU’s Green Deal, which aims to help Europe become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. CSRD has three main objectives:
• Ensure transparency and harmonisation of the information provided
• Align data quality for sustainability and financial reporting
• Drive capital to sustainable companies
To learn more about CSRD and how TCS can help your business comply with it, read this recent article by our Sustainability Consulting Partner, Susan Blesener.
CSRD has strengthened how organisations report on the social and environmental risks they face. Today, it is set to transform the regulatory environment once more by enforcing consideration for human rights and the environment throughout supply chains.
CS3D, on the other hand, aims to transform corporate sustainability through a comprehensive and mandatory approach, requiring large companies to conduct due diligence to identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for adverse sustainability impacts in their operations and value chains.
In this article, Dr Gohar Sargsyan, Sustainability Leader, TCS Europe, explains CS3D in more detail and explores how it could be a game-changer for sustainability in business.
Democratised data
Data is the lifeblood of accurate and timely sustainability reporting. It is, therefore, essential that your business focuses on gathering reliable and accurate data that can give you a clear understanding of your environmental and social impacts. This will enable you to identify areas for improvement and set meaningful sustainability goals.
High-quality data enhances transparency and credibility and ensures consistency and comparability over time, so you can track progress and benchmark performance. Without reliable data, sustainability reporting loses its effectiveness as a tool to drive positive change.
Integrating sustainability metrics
To gain complete visibility into your sustainability performance, it is important to seamlessly integrate sustainability metrics into your business’ operational processes. With the right digital infrastructure, you will be able to efficiently collect data for analysis and monitor environmental and social impacts across your entire value chain in real time.
By analysing sustainability metrics such as energy consumption, waste generation, and emissions, you will be able to uncover hidden patterns, optimise processes, and make informed decisions to drive your sustainability and competitiveness.
Establishing traceability and transparency within your value chain is also crucial for effective reporting. Following the journey of your products and materials from the raw state to final consumption will enable you to effectively disclose information on your sustainable sourcing, ethical practices, and environmental impacts. This will also help to demonstrate your sustainability commitments to your customers, investors, and other stakeholders and enhance your business’ reputation.
Fostering transparency and accountability across all levels of your organisation will also significantly help you to proactively identify sustainability risks by monitoring suppliers, manufacturers, and logistics partners.
Here’s how TCS can help
Strategic service partners help you go beyond mere compliance. At TCS, we can help your business move beyond approaching sustainability reporting as just a compliance exercise and embed sustainability within the very fabric of your business. Our integration solutions can help you enhance the quality of your data across the value chain and automate and simplify your reporting. We can support your data strategy right from collection, mapping, and validation to large-scale data management and analytics.