From measurement to improvement: How you can use CO₂-Key figures to optimize your sustainability reporting

|  March 27, 2023

🕓 Reading time 5 minutes

Table of contents

1. More transparency and credibility in sustainability reporting through CO₂-Key figures

2. Collection and management of CO₂-Data for a sustainability report

3. How do I integrate my CO₂-Data in the sustainability report?

4. National and international standards for CO₂-Reporting

5. Best practice for the sustainability report with CO₂-Key figures

1. More transparency and credibility in sustainability reporting through CO₂-Key figures

Sustainability reporting is intended to provide an overview of a company's sustainability performance, including its environmental impacts. One of the most important aspects of sustainability reporting is the Transparency. Through transparent and comprehensive reporting, the Stakeholder trust in the company strengthened become.

In order to make sustainability reporting transparent, it should, wherever possible, be based on Key figures One of the most important indicators for measuring a company’s environmental impact is the CO2 footprint. By measuring its carbon footprint, a company can quantify its emissions and highlight progress in reducing carbon emissions.

Due to their relevance for transparent sustainability reporting, CO2 figures are among the mandatory elements any mandatory sustainability reporting, whether for the CSRD, the EU taxonomy or the ESG rating.

2. Collection and management of CO₂-Data for a sustainability report

The lack of know-how in the area of sustainability indicators is a major challenge for many companies. Data collection and management therefore often requires external partners and software solutions.

For companies, the effort remains manageable with a reliable service provider, because a large part of the required Data already exists in accounting. The service provider identifies the associated data sources, has these transferred into the software and calculates the CO2 figures.

3. How do I integrate my CO₂-Data in the sustainability report?

The selection relevant key figures and KPIs for reporting requires special expertise. The standards provide a breakdown of emissions into three scopes These should be reflected in the reporting to ensure comparability across multiple fiscal years and with other companies.

Relevant KPIs for reporting are the Emissions per employee and per turnover. Depending on the industry, other individual KPIs may be useful, such as emissions per m2 of sales area in retail.

Ideally, the selection and formulation of the relevant CO2 data for sustainability reporting is already covered by the collecting service provider. Text modules can then be incorporated directly into your own report, for example in the form of a Climate protection-Chapter in the sustainability report.

4. National and international standards for CO₂-Reporting

In Germany there are various Standards and guidelines for corporate sustainability reporting. The most important ones include

• the standards of Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and
• the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard of the World Resources Institute (WRI)

Companies should consider these standards in their reporting to ensure that their sustainability reporting meets the current requirements and covers the relevant topics.

5. Best practice for the sustainability report with CO₂-Key figures

Engelhorn GmbH & Co KGaA, a fashion and sports retailer with a turnover of €202.3 million (2020) and 1,480 employees, is giving the topic Climate protection has been gaining more weight in recent years. The sustainability report published in 2022 examines the the company’s ecological footprint in detail, as well as the Change in CO2 indicators over several years.

The sustainability report creates Transparency for customers, employees and business partners, shows where the company stands, what measures have already been initiated and what still lies ahead if economic and ecological interests are to be combined in the future.

To the engelhorn sustainability report