GRI Releases New Climate Change and Energy Topic Standards
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), one of the world’s leading sustainability reporting standards, has recently published updates to their Climate Change and Energy Topic Standards to align with internationally agreed best practice and latest guidance on climate change-related disclosures. The aim of the revision to these standards is to incorporate new issues and to reflect stakeholder expectations associated with reporting climate change-related impacts that go beyond energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting, in line with recent global attention and increased reporting requirements. As part of this project, the content in the following GRI energy and climate change-related disclosures were reviewed:
GRI 302: Energy 2016,
GRI 305: Emissions 2016 (Disclosure 305-1 to 305-5), and
GRI 201: Economic Performance 2016 (Disclosure 201-2)
The aim of the revised energy and climate-change related disclosures was to enable organisations to disclose publicly:
Its most significant impacts on climate change and how they manage these impacts, and
Its climate-related impacts beyond energy and GHG emissions to potentially include climate resilience, adaption, and transition.
Alignment to Other Sustainability Standards
The GRI sought to align with global and jurisdictional standards, most notably with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the now disbanded Task Force for Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). GRI have aligned to these financial materiality standards by developing new disclosures to broaden the scope to include impact areas such as climate-related transition, resilience and adaption strategies.
Additionally, alongside the release of the new standards, the GRI and IFRS Foundation published a joint statement that illustrates how GRI 102 and IFRS S2 can be used together to report one set of GHG emissions disclosures to meet both standards. The GHG emissions must be measured in accordance with the GHG Protocol, and the location of the disclosure should be referenced in their GRI content index.
GRI 102 Climate Change and GRI 103 Energy Topic Standards Structure
In addition to the topic disclosures within each Topic Standard, the updates to the standards have brought in the inclusion of topic management disclosures. Topic management disclosures are designed to supplement information required to be disclosed as part of GRI 3 Material Topics, such as how an organisation is managing the material topic. The topic management disclosures for Climate Change include 102-1 Transition plan for climate change mitigation and 102-2Climate change adaptation plan, while Energy includes 103-1Energy policies and commitments. These topic management disclosures look at more forward-looking information relevant to an organisation’s strategy in managing climate-related risks and opportunities, as well as its transition plan in responding to these material topics.
How Can You Prepare?
The GRI Climate Change and Energy Topic Standards updates represent a significant step change in the disclosure of information material to stakeholders, aligned to current best practice reporting requirements. As with all additions to the GRI, it will take time for these changes to come into effect (GRI 102 Climate Change 2025 and GRI 103 Energy 2025 standards are effective 1 January 2027). It’s expected that voluntary alignment to these revisions will occur prior to this date.
If you need assistance with understanding how these standards will impact your organisation or knowing what to do next, contact us at Greenbase. With almost 30 years of environmental and sustainability reporting experience, we are here to guide and assist you with navigating the sustainability reporting landscape.
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