Sustainability Management System Helps Businesses Stay Ahead of ESG Regulations

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ESG technology (Credit: Pixabay)

With increasing regulations and a growing pressure from stakeholders to be accountable with their environmental, social and governance efforts, a sustainability management system to help businesses quickly report on those practices has been released by Wolters Kluwer.

Wolters Kluwer says the regulatory compliance system helps companies quickly abide by a number of government and financial policies, including the upcoming European Union Taxonomy, GRI Standards, SASB Standards and other frameworks. The CCH Tagetik ESG and Sustainability Performance Management platform combines information from a company’s ESG initiatives and financial performance to create ESG reports and help manage compliance requirements.

The platform gathers and analyzes data and automatically generates ESG reports for disclosure.

The EU’s Taxonomy is classification system that establishes a list of environmentally sustainable economic activities as it strives to reach climate and energy targets by 2030 as part of the European Green Deal. It provides companies, investors and policymakers with a framework to be in line with such sustainable activities and help shift investments where they are needed to help reach goals.

The first delegated act on sustainable activities went into effect this year and the European Commission added regulations that target energy uses that help accelerate a shift from fossil fuels, including coal, which will be implemented by early next year.

In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled plans for companies to include climate-related disclosures including information on how Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions impact operations and financial results when they register as public.

Such regulatory moves as well as frameworks like GRI and SASB have kept businesses on top of their ESG investments and activities, and many companies believe there should be formal reporting processes. Deloitte found that 57% of finance and sustainability leaders at businesses it surveyed say the quality and availability of data are their biggest challenges in ESG disclosures.

In addition to compliance efforts, the Wolters Kluwer platform can help businesses with improved information for quicker decision making to help drive sustainable growth goals and reduce risk with the integration of ESG data with financial results, operational plans and scenario analysis, according to the company. This can help them with ESG opportunities, identify cost savings and minimize potential problems, Wolters Kluwer says.

Environment + Energy Leader