Sustainability Disclosures

The Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) is a reporting framework aimed at enhancing transparency on the financial and operational risks of climate change to an organization, as well as the opportunities emerging from the energy transition. 

Qualifying companies include: asset manager, UK listed companies, life insurance providers and FCA-regulated pension providers.

TCFD provided the principles of what qualifying companies had to report. Now IFRS, developed by the International Sustainability Standards Boards (ISSB) has built upon these principles to provide standardized reporting to improve consistency and detail of disclosures.

Under TCFD / IFRS S2, companies may need to report depending on sector.

• Greenhouse (GHG) emissions – Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3
• Climate-related targets (e.g. Net-Zero by 2050)
• Climate-related transition risks – (e.g. vulnerability of company revenue linked to fossil fuels)
• Climate-related physical risks – (e.g. vulnerability to assets to flooding, storm damage)
• Climate-related opportunities (e.g. revenue opportunities linked to clean energy, sustainable products)
• Energy intensity – (e.g. energy consumed per £turnover or per unit produced).
• Financed emissions – emissions associated with investments, loans or insurance underwriting

From 2026, the United Kingdom will begin phasing in mandatory climate-related disclosures under the UK Sustainability Reporting Standards (UK SRS). These disclosures are linked to the global International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) framework. The UK SRS plays a key role in the UK Government’s Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR) framework, which aims to standardise reporting and increase transparency and corporate repsonsbility, primarily for investment decisions.

Companies will be required to publish their sustainability disclosures at the same time as their annual accounts from the first full accounting period from 2026 onwards. This means that companies must start to begin to collect robust data now to be ready to report.

Companies are only required to disclose client-related risks in the first two years, with wider sustainability aspects from Year 3 onwards. However, organisations are encouraged to report sustainability risks and opportunities earlier.

Unlike the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which applies a double materiality approach – with both financial (how sustainability matters impact the entity) and impact (how the entity impact the environment, people and wider society) – the UK SRS primarily focuses on financial impacts. 

Roadmap to UK SRS Preparedness

• Benchmark current sustainability data collection, reporting practices against the ISSB and UK SRS requirements to identify gaps.
• Identify the right people in your organisation to own each part of the disclosure process, assigning responsibilities and timescales. 
• Perform a materiality assessment to determine financially material sustainability-related risks and opportunities to your business
• Integrate sustainability disclosures into board-level and executive management governance structures
• Calculate robust audible sustainability metric and targets
• Continually review and improve data collection, validation, reporting processes

Ecovadis is a globally recognized sustainability assessment platform. It rates companies based on their policies and performance under four key themes: environment, labour & human right, ethics and sustainable procurement. Companies can achieved Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum medals, demonstrating their overall commitment to sustainability.

EcoVadis is used by major corporations to monitor and evaluate its supply chain. In many cases, participating in EcoVadis is a prerequisite to work with certain organisations. 

At Antea Group, our expert sustainability consultants can help you to achieve EcoVadis certification, improve policies and procedures, capture the require data and to achieve higher scores. 

The Carbon Discloure Project (CDP) is a global sustainability assessment scheme that requires companies to measure and disclose their environmental impact. Whilst it is voluntary, many large corporations use CDP as a method of risk assessing it’s supply chain. Over 740 financial instiations, manging over $130trillion in assets, use CDP to guide their investment decisions. 

Antea Group’s sustainability experts can help your organsaition to obtain and improve CDP scores. We support you and your tram to implement effective policies and procedures, and to gather and make sense of data from across your organization and supply chain.