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Industry insight

Sustainability reporting requirements continue to evolve:

• European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS): The European Parliament's Omnibus I Directive — which recently went into force — finalizes new scope thresholds. It does not, however, finalize the simplified ESRS themselves; the European Commission has until mid-September to formally adopt the simplified Standards, unless Parliament raises an objection during the scrutiny period — at which point the deadline could extend a few more months.

  Looking to prepare for the simplified ESRS? As mentioned last month, you can download the ESRS Transition Accelerator from the Marketplace to review changes from the ESRS Delegated Act of 2023 and update your Sustainability Program based on the draft simplified Standards.

• California Air Resources Board (CARB): While an active injunction continues to prevent the enforcement of Senate Bill (SB) 261: Climate-related Financial Risks, SB253: Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act remains active, with a reporting deadline of August 10, 2026. CARB aligned the scope of these laws with the California Tax Code, which includes entities with significant economic activity in California — regardless of whether they also have facilities or employees in the state. For more details, register for CARB's virtual public workshop scheduled for March 23!

  GHG emissions reporting still required. While 2026 enables "good-faith" reporting, requirements for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions remain in effect and are not affected by any current court stays.

Looking for more insight? Workiva has Industry Principals dedicated to gathering and sharing Sustainability & Carbon knowledge and expertise! For more insight, follow them — Alyssa Zucker for Carbon, Esther Toth for EMEA & APAC, and Mark Mellen for North America & APAC — on LinkedIn.

What's next

Speaking of changes, if you collect metric values through connected source files, Sustainability Program will no longer automatically update Completed values with edits to their connected sources. Instead, for added data integrity, your Program will soon save — or snapshot — the values as of their Completed status. Should a source value change after its connected metric value or its task is Completed, an alert will appear for the metric value, on both the metric and the source file's Sustainability or Tasks panel. 

Want more alerts? A Program Owner will be able to enable email notifications from Program settings to inform Task Owners and Program Owners when source values connected to Completed values change.

To easily find Completed values in Sustainability Program that differ from their connected source value, you'll also soon be able to run a Health check from Program overview.

To update a Completed metric value with its changed source value, you can reset the metric value or its task; otherwise, the metric retains the value as of its completion for added data integrity.

Coming soon! This feature — which is currently in Feature Preview — is slated to release in April.

Want to stay current? Follow What's new in Sustainability Reporting!

On the calendar

April 2, join Pro Groups and Workiva co-founder Joe Howell and Workiva Pro Groups Executive Advisor Steve Soter for the Building Career Resilience webinar. At this candid fireside chat, learn timeless principles and enduring strategies you can use to stay resilient, visible, and prepared for what's next in your career as AI and regulatory changes rapidly reshape reporting roles. In uncertain times, careers are strongest when built on connection, community, and adaptability! Register now

Share your thoughts

The Workiva Community provides opportunities to engage with and learn from subject-matter experts (SMEs), advisory partners, and other sustainability reporters. Join the conversation in these threads:

• Community Connect: Sustainability, to learn from industry professionals and peers as you collaborate and share insights, challenges, and solutions.
• Sustainability Management, to discuss best practices and experiences with sustainability reporting, in general and within the Workiva Platform
• What's new in Sustainability, to learn the latest enhancements of Sustainability Reporting features like Sustainability Program and Sustainability Explorer
• Sustainability Feedback, to share and support ideas on how to improve Sustainability Management features
• Beverage Breaks, to learn directly from SMEs, partners, and other experienced sustainability reporters

Questions?

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