Powered Sustainability

Sustainability reporting is gaining more attention and more importance. It is also becoming increasingly regulated in some jurisdictions. To complicate matters further, the nature of reporting on sustainability requirements changes depending on the audience – regulators, stakeholders and internal managers – all need different information at differing frequencies to fulfil their sustainability roles effectively.

Many of these environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) reporting and sustainability functions and roles lack a coherent and technology-driven service delivery model. This results in lost efficiencies, increased risks, and missed opportunities to accelerate compliance with reporting requirements such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and demonstrate strategic value.

Powered Sustainability enhances the success rate of technology-based improvements to address challenges such as:

Navigating the complexities of ESG reporting, including regulations (both future-mandated and voluntary), rating agencies, and investor expectations;
Implementing the double materiality model mandated by CSRD and identifying material factors for the business;
Defining the roles corporations play in reporting and leveraging it for financial and non-financial gains; and
Managing and utilizing environmental data for reporting and understanding its business-improvement potential.

Our KPMG ESG Assurance Report of 2023 indicated that 66% of large firms must now report ESG data or will be required to soon. Only 25% of these firms indicate they have the ESG policies, skills, and systems in place to be ready for ESG assurance.

Powered Sustainability addresses these challenges by enabling your sustainability reporting and functions to be more responsive, resilient and competitive through robust, scalable and trustworthy data management and the use of our KPMG ESG Target Operating Model.

A recent report from the United Nations shows that we are struggling to meet our Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Why? One reason is that organizations are not using enough objective data to graft our actions onto and support our policies.

Challenges

We’ve noticed that many organizations struggle to comprehend various regulations, including reporting requirements, timelines, and frequency. Additionally, they often seek clarity on potential overlaps between different regulations (e.g., CSRD, TCFD, SEC) and whether reporting efficiencies can be achieved by addressing them collectively.

Determining what is material to their business and operations poses another challenge. They need guidance on tracking and understanding material factors effectively.

ESG data, often fragmented and scattered across organizational and external boundaries, presents further obstacles. Organizations lack clarity on where this data resides and what has already been captured and available.

With numerous service providers and tools available in the market, selecting the most suitable ones to ensure they are fit-for-purpose can be challenging.

How KPMG can help

Translate your sustainability strategy into SMART goals and performance indicators aligned with regulatory requirements to clearly measure progress toward your ambitions and ensure compliance. A clear framework enables efficient resource allocation leading to impactful initiatives.
Assess data availability and quality through data cartography, developing action plans to enhance trust and completeness of reported results. As reporting requirements intensify, robust data tracking processes are essential to uphold trust in reported results.
Implement structured manual input processes with review steps and quality checks to ensure trust and completeness of difficult-to-automate data. While automated data gathering is preferred, manual data capture supported by governance processes provides a pragmatic alternative.
Integrate various (semi-)automated data streams into actionable dashboards for monitoring progress and identifying improvement opportunities. Continuous performance tracking enhances stakeholder engagement and reduces lead time in implementing improvement initiatives.
Design and deploy an effective operating model with roles & responsibilities, governance, processes and internal controls.

Our Trusted Sustainability Insights solution is set-up in a scalable way. By standardizing the data model supporting the dashboards, it can efficiently be rolled-out with reporting on different KPI’s or sustainability topics. The Azure SQL DB is configured to support the standardized data model and can be connected with automated data feeds via Data Factory. Trusted Sustainability Insights accelerates the implementation of sustainability dashboards, while leaving room to tailor the solution to your specific needs.