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Industry insight

Earlier this month, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) provided filing guidance for California Senate Bill 253 (SB253) — or Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act — for its deadline of November 10, 2026.

To file for SB253, you can submit one of these through CARB's Voluntary Reporting Intake Form or climatedisclosure@arb.ca.gov:

• CARB's draft Scope 1 & 2 template
• Scope 1 & 2 emissions data already disclosed through an existing annual report or another program or voluntary initiative
• A statement of non-reporting, if your company wasn't collecting data as of December 5, 2024

Workiva can simplify SB253! If your workspace has Workiva AI enabled, it can help draft a SB253 submission based on Scope 1 & 2 emissions data referenced in file, such as in your sustainability report or downloaded from Workiva Carbon. Workiva Marketplace will also soon include an SB253 Submission Template to help ease Scope 1 & 2 disclosures for CARB — stay tuned! 

No public disclosure required. CARB will make all uploaded reports public but won't require public disclosure of your Scope 1 & 2 emissions. No need to post the data on your website or disclose in a report — just submit it to CARB!

While limited assurance is required by statute, CARB is exercising first-year enforcement discretion and will accept submissions for 2026 with or without assurance. Similarly, your methodologies, data sources, emission factors, organizational boundaries, and disaggregated emissions by category and gas are optional — but encouraged — for 2026.

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

For European Sustainability Reporting Standards

If you have a Sustainability Reporting Advanced workspace with both Workiva AI and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) enabled, you can now take advantage of new features to help simplify the revised ESRS adopted by the European Commission (EC).

• Revised ESRS Intelligence. With the Revised ESRS knowledge base, you can prompt Workiva AI to help summarize or clarify disclosure requirements of the revised Standards. You can also add both the Revised ESRS and ESRS knowledge bases to help explain differences between the revised ESRS and the ESRS Delegated Act of 2023.
  
• Sustainability Disclosure Agent for Revised ESRS. Workiva AI can now assess how selected content in a Document meets disclosure requirements of the revised ESRS. In its response, the Agent provides:
  • Compliance scorecard, to determine how well the content meets the specified requirements
  • Action items, to help resolve any gaps identified
  • Referenced guidance, for clarity of how the Agent derived its scorecard
  • Disclosure narrative, to help ease compliance with the requirements

To learn more, view Use Workiva AI with European Sustainability Reporting Standards.

For Carbon

If you use Carbon, you can now:

• Add custom emission factors, if those for your region or reporting methodology aren't already available. Unlike custom sources, you can break out custom factors by constituent gas, apply them in bulk across locations, and use them for both location- and market-based calculations. To learn more, view Add custom factors.
  
• Update your 2026 CDP submission with quantitative metrics from Carbon — such as operational boundary, emissions, energy, waste, and water data. To learn more, view Workiva Carbon reporting module.
• Visualize emissions data as various charts, tables, and pivot tables, such as for use in reports created in Documents or Presentations. These visuals stay connected to their source data, so you can simply refresh their connections for the latest from Carbon. To learn more, view Create and edit visualizations (Carbon).
  
• Export Transport & Distribution emissions audit details — including activities, calculations, Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol context, factors, and conversions — as a comma-separated values (CSV) file. To learn more, view Measure transportation and distribution.

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

On the calendar

September 24 or 30 — Join Workiva's sustainability experts for Navigating Revised ESRS: What's New & Workiva Product Roadmap. During this Workiva Community Beverage Break, you'll learn a high-level overview of the revised ESRS and how to ease their adoption with recent enhancements — including Revised ESRS Intelligence and Sustainability Disclosure Agent. 

Two sessions to accommodate all time zones — register today!

Share your thoughts

In addition to informational Beverage Breaks, the Workiva Community provides a chance to share your experience and insight and learn from other sustainability experts. For example:

• Sustainability Management, where you can share how your team is approaching the 2026 CDP Questionnaire and learn about Workiva Carbon's Hybrid V2 methodology
• What's New in Sustainability, for a heads up on new and upcoming enhancements, including updates for the revised ESRS and the ability to export your CDP Questionnaire to a Document

Learn more in the Workiva Community!

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