Three ways to get value from sustainability reporting

In a highly dynamic environment for sustainability reporting regulations, leading companies are going beyond baseline disclosure requirements. PwC’s Global Sustainability Reporting Survey 2025 drew responses from 496 companies that have reported, or plan to report, under the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) or the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) reporting frameworks. Among this group, about 40% are pushing back their plans to begin statutory reporting, as regulators in the EU and other jurisdictions ease requirements.

Yet an equal number plan to report on the original timeline, even if they’re not legally required to do so. In part, that’s due to pressure from stakeholders, including investors, customers, and government entities (including some US states) that continue to demand high-quality information about how companies are managing sustainability risks and opportunities.

A broader explanation is that business leaders realize sustainability information can be critical to informing business decisions. More than two-thirds of companies that have already reported under CSRD or ISSB say they gained significant or moderate value, beyond compliance, from the data and insights collected during the reporting process. About a quarter (28%) say they saw significant value.

These organisations are more likely to use the insights to inform compliance with other regulations (a difference of 33 percentage points over companies seeing little value from reporting), overall business strategy (27 points), risk management (25 points), and supply chain transformation (21 points).

Organisations that want to gain value from sustainability reporting should focus on three priorities:

Put the tools in place for repeatable success. Companies need the right processes, supported by technology infrastructure and tools, to make sustainability reporting a business-as-usual exercise. Publishing that first CSRD report may have been an all-hands accomplishment, but the goal must be efficient, repeatable reporting. This means setting up workflows and systems for the long haul and capitalizing on AI tools to do much more than summarise documents.

Liberate sustainability data to inform decisions and strategies across the business. Collaborate across functions to not only support reporting readiness but also put sustainability data and insights to work. This means incorporating sustainability information into decision-making processes relating to risk management, supply chain, workforce, strategy, and investment.

Get senior leaders involved. It’s no coincidence that companies getting significant value from sustainability data and insights say that senior leaders have increased the amout of time spent on the issue over the last year. It takes serious engagement from top leaders to understand opportunities for value creation that may be revealed through the reporting process.