From insight to value: The sustainability reporting journey continues

Mandatory sustainability reporting has arrived with a bang in 2025 as thousands of companies published statements under the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and countries in other jurisdictions started to adopt the International Sustainability Standards Board’s (ISSB) reporting framework.

Yet this is also a year in which regulators recalibrated. While many jurisdictions continue to work towards ISSB adoption, the EU set out to reduce the number of organisations within scope of the CSRD and, for those that remain, simplify and defer reporting requirements. Meanwhile, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s climate-related financial disclosure regulations remain in flux. 

PwC’s inaugural Global Sustainability Reporting Survey, based on responses from 496 companies that have reported, or plan to do so in the future, under the CSRD or ISSB frameworks, reveals that while some have paused reporting plans in response to these changes, many are moving ahead. For example, about 40% of survey respondents planning to report under the CSRD in the future say they’ll postpone statutory reporting by two years, in line with the EU’s ‘stop the clock’ directive. An equal number say they’ll report on the original timeline, even if not legally required to do so, whether under the CSRD or an alternative framework like the ISSB or the Global Reporting Initiative. 

What explains this resolve? Stakeholder pressure is part of the answer. Investors, customers and some authorities (including some US states) continue to demand high-quality information about how companies are managing sustainability risks and opportunities.  

In addition, companies are using this information to inform 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. Those seeing the most value are more likely to be using the insights in areas such as overall business strategy, supply chain transformation, workforce transformation, marketing and risk management.

The mandatory sustainability reporting landscape is evolving. Yet more than half of our survey respondents say internal and external pressure to provide sustainability data and insights has increased over the last year. Less than 10% say pressure has decreased. There were some regional variations, with only a third (34%) of North American respondents reporting increased internal pressure. Even so, a greater number of respondents in all regions reported an increase in external and internal pressure compared to those citing a decrease.

In line with this finding, more than 60% of respondents say investment of resources and senior leadership time in sustainability reporting has increased over the last year. Very few respondents report a decrease in investment of resources (5%) or senior leadership time (6%).

Irrespective of the regulatory environment, stakeholders such as investors, employees and civil society groups want to know how companies are addressing sustainability-related impacts, risks and opportunities. In PwC’s Global Investor Survey 2024, more than 70% of investors said the companies they invest in should incorporate sustainability directly into business strategy. Almost two-thirds said these companies should take further steps to reduce carbon emissions.

In addition, big companies must deal with reporting requirements in multiple jurisdictions. For example, a multinational company might have subsidiaries in jurisdictions requiring ISSB reporting, other entities subject to the CSRD, as well as US operations covered by state-level requirements. For industries such as financial services, sector-specific regulations may also require sustainability disclosures. To meet these overlapping requirements as efficiently as possible, companies need to pay close attention to interoperability by considering the ways disclosure frameworks overlap and differ, as well as common data foundations.

More than a third of the companies represented in our survey had already published sustainability statements, mostly under the CSRD. Many of these companies pointed to several factors that, in retrospect, would have improved the reporting process: more effective use of technology, earlier confirmation of the availability and completeness of data, increased staff resources, and greater cross-functional collaboration. 

When it comes to cross-functional collaboration, the functions that need to be involved depend, in part, on the reporting framework in question. HR involvement was higher at companies reporting under the CSRD, reflecting the workforce disclosures that can be required under the EU directive. Involving the HR function can be beneficial, as collecting this data helps organisations better understand how equitable, healthy and resilient their workforce is.

When asked about assurance, more than a third (37%) of companies that had already reported pointed to earlier engagement with an assurance practitioner as another factor that would have improved their readiness.

Companies at earlier stages of the reporting and assurance journey should take note. Repeatable, high-quality reporting can only be achieved by committing meaningful resources across multiple functions, supported by investments in technology. Isolated sustainability reporting teams armed only with spreadsheets will struggle. 

As noted, a large majority of companies that have already reported say they gained value, beyond compliance, from the data and insights collected for reporting purposes. About a quarter (28%) say they saw significant value. Digging into the management practices of this subset reveals important lessons on how to link sustainability reporting to value creation.

• Companies seeing significant value are more likely to use sustainability data and insights to inform business decisions. For example, more than a third (38%) are using this information to a large or very large extent to inform business strategy, versus about a tenth (11%) among those not seeing significant value. The same pattern holds true when it comes to using the information to a large or very large extent to inform decisions related to compliance with other regulations (48% vs 15%), risk management (38% vs 13%), supply chain transformation (28% vs 7%), corporate finance/investment (22% vs 5%) and workforce transformation (20% vs 5%).
  
  At the other end of the spectrum, most companies seeing no value beyond compliance from the data and insights collected during the reporting process say they’re not using it at all to inform decisions in any area of the business.
• Companies obtaining significant value are more likely to have increased investment in sustainability reporting over the last year. More than half (56%) say they significantly increased resources over this period, versus a quarter (26%) for all survey respondents. Similarly, 40% had increased investment of senior leadership time, compared to 16% for all respondents.
  
  Once again, there are lessons here for companies at earlier stages of their reporting journey. Based on our experience working with clients globally, value is created when sustainability data and insights are used to inform business decisions widely across the enterprise. This won’t happen without senior executive attention and resources to build new processes and systems.
   

Many companies are buying or building technology tools and infrastructure for efficient, repeatable reporting. Among those that have already reported, respondents say technology adoption has increased over the last year, with more than half now using central sustainability data storage, carbon calculation and disclosure management tools. 

While technology adoption is clearly progressing, companies won’t realise the full benefits of sustainability reporting without core systems in place. For example, storing sustainability information centrally not only ensures data and insights are pulled from an accurate and audit-ready source but also helps executives use the information in other ways, such as decisions related to capital investment, supply chain planning or mitigation of physical climate risks.

Use of AI for sustainability reporting almost tripled to 28%, from 11% last year. The most common AI use cases related to drafting/summarising disclosures; identifying risks and opportunities; and collecting, integrating and validating data from multiple systems. For each of the use cases we asked about, many more respondents were at the stage of exploring or piloting AI tools, versus the later step of embedding them into workflows. This finding highlights the fact that most organisations are still at an early stage of adopting the technology for sustainability reporting.

The question facing all companies is whether they’ll continue to gradually build out their technology stack around the same combination of AI tools and use cases or consider leapfrogging to a future state built around agentic AI. In principle, companies can combine centralised data storage with a network of AI agents to significantly increase efficiency and agility across reporting workflows. Perhaps counterintuitively, most companies’ relative lack of technological maturity in sustainability reporting (compared to, for example, functional areas such as finance or operations) makes a transition to such a future state more feasible because there are fewer legacy systems to replace.

Changes of direction this year by regulators have, without a doubt, slowed the momentum towards statutory sustainability reporting. But the overall trend to increase reporting remains unchanged. Many companies have, in fact, accelerated reporting by investing more leadership time and resources as well as building out their technology stack. 

For some, this reflects a recognition that they face current or imminent reporting obligations in multiple jurisdictions, perhaps through the adoption of ISSB standards by countries they operate in or, in the US, under state laws. Pressure from stakeholders (including investors and others) adds further motivation. Our survey also highlights the large number of companies driven by the belief that sustainability data and insights can be a value-adding input to decision-making across the business.

Executives in any of these situations face the same fundamental questions:  

• Are we putting in place 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 processes and systems for the long haul and understanding the potential of AI tools to do much more than summarise documents.

• Do we have a model for cross-functional collaboration that not only supports reporting readiness but also puts sustainability data and insights to work? This means incorporating sustainability information into decision-making processes including risk, supply chain, workforce, strategy and investment.

• Do we have the right senior leaders involved? It’s no coincidence that companies getting significant value from sustainability data and insights produced for reporting purposes are more likely to have increased investment of senior leadership time spent on the issue. It takes serious engagement by top leaders to understand opportunities for value creation that may be revealed through the reporting process.

It took decades for regulators, investors and companies globally to align on the fundamentals of financial reporting. It’s hardly surprising, then, that the early stages of the sustainability reporting journey have seen shifting priorities, timelines and disclosure requirements across jurisdictions. For business leaders, what matters in this context is staying aware of these changes while also keeping focussed on the bigger goal: preserving and creating value in a world where sustainability is increasingly material to a company’s performance.