Workiva's Sustainability Management features — like Sustainability Program, Sustainability Explorer, and Carbon — help simplify the ever-evolving requirements of mandatory sustainability disclosures from California Climate legislation, US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).

California Climate

To help prepare for the Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (SB 253), Carbon enables the data collection, calculation, and validation of Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This includes alignment with the GHG Protocol and preparation for third-party assurance.

As for the Climate-related Financial Risk Act (SB 261), Sustainability Explorer provides recommendations from multiple frameworks — including the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and International Financial Reporting Standards Sustainability Disclosure Standards (IFRS SDS) — to enable the disclosure of financially-material climate-related risks and opportunities.

CSRD

To support the requirements of CSRD, Sustainability Explorer also includes the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), which enables companies to report on a wide range of sustainability topics — including climate change, emissions, and reduction targets. With ESRS enabled in Explorer, you can also perform a Readiness Assessment to document reporting decisions and resolve data collection gaps for ESRS.

You can supplement your Sustainability Reporting workspace with additional tools to conduct double-materiality assessments — central to CSRD compliance — to identify both impact- and financial-materiality, to perform gap analysis to compare existing disclosures to ESRS disclosures, and to track your progress toward readiness.

Sustainability Program helps streamline the data collection of both quantitative and qualitative values, supported by integration powered by 60+ connectors in Chains.

All of this on top of the real-time collaboration, version control, transparent audit trail, and assurance of the Workiva Platform. The Platform also supports the creation of highly-designed sustainability reports, XHTML export, and XBRL tagging in accordance with ESRS, Article 8 XBRL, ESEF, and other taxonomies.

SEC Climate Disclosure Rules

With its XBRL tagging, the Workiva Platform enables compliance the digital reporting requirements of SEC regulations — including for climate disclosures. To help address key aspects of the SEC rule, you can use the Platform to disclose material climate-related risks, their impact on strategy and financial performance, and your company's mitigation and adaptation activities.

The Platform also supports the assurance requirements for Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions, and the need for robust controls over sustainability reporting per the Institute of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability (ICRS) — similar to the Internal Control over Financial Reporting (ICFR). This is crucial for the financial statement footnotes related to climate impacts, which will be subject to existing financial statement audit requirements.

To help ensure consistency across various disclosures — from your annual sustainability report to your financial statement's footnotes and Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) — the Platform eases collaboration across your Finance, Sustainability, and Audit teams.

In general

The Workiva Platform enables data management, reporting, and assurance across multiple global and regional requirements — including the broader global harmonization of standards by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) and its regional adoption like the Australian Sustainability Reporting Standards (ASRS). Regardless of your specific requirements, the Platform provides a controlled, secure, audit-ready, and shared environment for your Finance, Sustainability, Risk, and Legal teams. You also have transparency throughout the reporting process — crucial for regulatory assurance — with data lineage; audit trails; and Governance, Risk, & Compliance (GRC).

To help streamline reporting across multiple mandates, Sustainability Explorer includes a wide variety of recognized frameworks and standards — TCFD, CDP (formerly Carbon Disclosure Project), IFRS, Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), and others — and highlights relationships across their disclosures.

For enhanced efficiency, the Platform enables real-time collaboration across teams, automates data collection, and — with Workiva AI — can help draft, analyze, and review content. With connected Spreadsheets and Documents, you can also maintain control of data review and validation to help ensure accuracy and consistency.