On June 26, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) announced new climate and energy reporting standards recognizing that an escalating climate crisis calls for integrated and global solutions. The new Climate Change and Energy Standards enable organizations to take accountability for their impacts and accelerate climate action. Both standards are based on scientific and authoritative global instruments on climate change and are fully aligned with the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol streamlining reporting for companies, while ensuring there is decision-useful and highly relevant information that meets the needs of a wide range of stakeholders.
GRI 102: Climate Change mandates that organizations prioritize significant reductions in GHG emissions as their primary mitigation strategy. This standard establishes rigorous reporting requirements based on science-based targets and global climate goals, integrating “just transition” metrics to address the impacts on workers, local communities, and Indigenous Peoples.
GRI 103: Energy comprehensively addresses an organization’s energy-related impacts and activities mandating disclosures on decarbonization efforts, the utilization of renewable and non-renewable energy, and the specific locations and methods of energy reductions. This standard establishes responsible energy consumption as a central component of an organization’s climate change mitigation strategy.
Key Features of GRI’s New Climate and Energy Standards
- Enhanced scope: The new standards go beyond just GHG emissions and energy consumption to include the broader social impacts of climate change and energy management, including reporting on “just transition” principles that cover impacts on workers, local communities, and Indigenous Peoples.
- Transition planning: Companies are now required to disclose their climate mitigation transition plans which include science-aligned targets, policies, actions, and progress toward phasing out fossil fuels.
- Climate adaptation: The standards also require disclosures related to climate change adaptation plans and how organizations are addressing climate risks.
- Comprehensive energy reporting: The new Energy standard requires reporting on energy consumption and generation, including upstream and downstream value chain energy use, and emphasizes policies and commitments for transitioning to a decarbonized economy.
- Alignment with other frameworks: A significant focus of the new standards is interoperability and alignment with other major reporting frameworks, particularly the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures, and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). This means companies can potentially use a single set of GHG emissions disclosures to meet requirements across multiple standards.
The interoperability means companies can provide “information to investors and a broader range of stakeholders about their climate-related impacts, risks, and opportunities in an efficient manner,” said Sue Lloyd, vice-chair of the ISSB.
Enhanced Scope: Beyond Emissions and Energy
Twenty-five years ago, the first GRI climate change standard was introduced and is one of the most widely used voluntary reporting methods with around 14,000 companies around the world using the standards (65% using its climate and energy standards). These new standards will be effective for reports or other materials published on or after January 1, 2027, and a pilot program is anticipated before the end of 2025. The updates aim to provide more comprehensive, comparable, and decision-useful information for a wide range of stakeholders, reflecting the increasing demand for transparency around climate action and its social implications.
XBRL-Based Digital Reporting for Sustainability
In addition to the new standards, GRI released a new digital resource on June 19, called the GRI Sustainability Taxonomy, that companies can use for online data collection and filing. The format for that tool is aligned with similar ones for the European Sustainability Reporting Standards and for standards from the ISSB. The GRI sustainability taxonomy will be based on XBRL (standardized format for organizing and exchanging business information) to enable organizations to issue reports in a digital format, meaning entities will be able to apply digital tags to reported information using the GRI Standards. Sustainability data can then be quickly and easily utilized for research and comparison with existing sustainability information.
Additional advantages include:
- Automatic validation: This ensures sustainability reports are submitted in “accordance with” or “with reference to” the GRI Standards.
- Opportunities for interoperability: This facilitates using the same data across various reporting standards in the future.
- Direct filing with GRI: Organizations can submit XBRL reports via our portal or using a dedicated webform. After validation, an approver must authorize the filings.
- Integration and testing for tool developers: allows GRI software partners to integrate the Taxonomy into reporting tools, with access to a “sandbox” environment for testing.
Conclusion
GRI’s new Climate Change and Energy Standards, which take effect on January 1, 2027, mark a crucial and definitive advance in global corporate accountability. These standards require thorough, science-based disclosures on GHG emissions, energy consumption, transition plans, and the essential “just transition” social impacts. This motivates organizations to move beyond meager aspirations toward measurable climate action.
Significantly, the standards’ compatibility with major frameworks like the ISSB and ESRS, strengthened by the new XBRL-based GRI Sustainability Taxonomy, creates a unified and efficient global reporting system. This coordinated effort simplifies disclosure for companies while providing comparable and actionable information that investors, regulators, and a wide range of stakeholders need to deliver real solutions to the worsening climate crisis. The message is clear: robust, transparent, and aligned climate reporting is no longer a choice, but a requirement for responsible global business.
If your company needs help navigating the ever-changing landscape of climate reporting standards and frameworks, please contact Canopy Edge for an initial consultation to find out more about how our team of experts can provide assistance.
