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Industry insight

Last month, the European Commission (EC) formally adopted the revised European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). Part of the broader Omnibus I simplification package, the revised Standards streamline sustainability reporting and reduce administrative burden. 

The revised Delegated Act and its Annex have been transmitted to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (EU) for a scrutiny period of two-to-four months prior to their formal application. According to the EC, the revised Standards are "shorter and clearer, add new flexibilities, and streamline key processes" — reducing "mandatory datapoints by over 60% and the total number of datapoints by 70%" — compared to the ESRS Delegated Act of 2023.

Transition options

The revised Standards officially apply to financial years that begin on or after January 1, 2027. For financial years starting in 2026, Wave-one companies — those already subject to the reporting requirements — can do one of the following:

• Keep current ESRS as-is: Continue to apply the existing ESRS — as amended by Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/1416 — unchanged.
• Fully adopt revised ESRS: Apply the full set of the revised Standards early.
• Apply current ESRS with targeted reliefs: Apply the existing Standards, but with a set of reliefs defined in Annex 1 of the revised ESRS — including a top-down approach to double-materiality assessment (DMA), limitations on undue cost and effort, and a separate presentation of Taxonomy disclosures. 

Whichever you choose, clearly state which version of ESRS you apply in your sustainability statement.

Key changes

If your company started to align with earlier iterations of the ESRS — such as the draft simplified Standards — the final revised Standards introduce these key shifts:

• Clarified materiality rules. The revised ESRS specify that undertakings "shall not" report information that is not material, moving away from previous language that said companies were simply "not required" to do so.

• Extended phase-in reliefs, for anticipated financial effects information specifically:

  • Wave-one undertakings — reporting for financial years that start 2024-2026 —  may omit all anticipated financial effects information for years prior to 2028, and quantitative anticipated financial effects information for years prior to 2030.
  • Other undertakings — reporting for financial years that start in 2027 — may omit all anticipated financial effects information for their first two years of reporting, and quantitative anticipated financial effects information for their first four years.

  Some reporting still required. You must still report specific climate-related physical and transition risk information, per ESRS E1: Climate Change Disclosure Requirement 1-11, paragraphs 39(a)(b) and 40(a)(b).

• Global interoperability. The revised ESRS improve consistency with other EU legislation and take into account interoperability with global sustainability reporting standards. 

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 new & next

For European Sustainability Reporting Standards

If your Sustainability Explorer includes the ESRS, you can soon explore the new revised Standards as a Pending version; the ESRS Delegated Act of 2023 will remain the Current version, while simplified ESRS — introduced earlier in the year — will appear as an Archived version.

In addition, Sustainability Reporting Advanced workspaces with both ESRS and Workiva AI enabled will soon feature AI-assisted analysis and reporting based on the revised ESRS:

• Revised ESRS Intelligence, as an additional knowledge base to help clarify and analyze the requirements of the revised Standards. While this will replace the Simplified ESRS knowledge base, you can continue to use the ESRS knowledge base, such as for AI-assisted comparisons of the revised Standards and the Delegated Act of 2023.
• Sustainability Disclosure Agent for Revised ESRS, to help prepare Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)-ready reporting with AI-assisted compliance scorecards, action items, and disclosure narratives, based on requirements of the revised Standards — now with enhanced focus on mandatory requirements and better understanding of what's optional context

To further help ease adoption of the revised ESRS, look for additional updates to come later:

• New ESRS Transition Accelerator, to help update your Sustainability Program based on the revised Standards. With this Spreadsheet template, you'll be able to review what changed with the revised ESRS — compared to either the Delegated Act of 2023 or the draft simplified Standards of 2025 — and then identify any metrics impacted by the changes and how to adjust them accordingly.
• New DMA Update and Import templates, to help prepare your double-materiality assessment (DMA) templates in Assessments for the new topics and disclosure requirements of the revised ESRS
• Updated Gap Assessment template — based on the revised Standards — available upon request

For Carbon

If you use Carbon, you can now adopt Hybrid methodology V2 to update purchased goods and services emissions calculations with the latest methodology and audit-ready visibility into source data. V2 applies spend-based emission factors at the organization-level based on CDP's publicly-available emissions and revenue data. To learn more, view Measure purchases.

V1 is still available for years prior to 2026; V2 is recommended for years not yet reported publicly.

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

On the calendar

September 14-16, join leaders across sustainability, finance, audit, and risk in Las Vegas, NV for Workiva Amplify 2026! 

This year includes a packed Sustainability agenda, with breakout sessions that include:

• Building assurance-ready sustainability reporting, with perspectives from the Big 4 assurance providers — Deloitte, PwC, KPMP LLP, and Ernst & Young (EY) — in what they look for in data, controls, evidence, and documentation across different sustainability reporting frameworks.
• Many jurisdictions, one source of truth, where CBRE Group Inc. and Embark discuss their partnership and how they implemented a CSRD solution, mapped sustainability metrics to the ESRS, and designed data collection across hundreds of global entities to support their reporting requirements in one connected environment.
• The future of Sustainability Management in the Workiva Platform, as Workiva Product Managers walk through the roadmap of Sustainability Reporting and Carbon, highlighting upcoming innovations to help you stay ahead of a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape.

Register today!

Share your thoughts

The Workiva Community provides opportunities to engage with and learn from subject-matter experts (SMEs), advisory partners, and other sustainability reporters. For example:

• Join Sustainability Management to learn and share best practices and experiences with sustainability reporting — in general and within the Workiva Platform — through discussion threads, including where you can share how your team is approaching the 2026 CDP Questionnaire!
• Follow What's New in Sustainability for details about the latest — and upcoming — features for your Sustainability Reporting solution, including the ability to export responses from CDP Questionnaire to a Document.

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