Sustainability

In the EU, Directive (EU) 2026/470, the Omnibus I directive, narrows the CSRD from financial years starting on or after 1 January 2027 to undertakings that exceed a net turnover of EUR 450 million and an average of 1,000 employees¹. The Commission adopted a delegated act revising the European Sustainability Reporting Standards on 3 July 2026². Companies that remain in scope still report under the ESRS, built on a double materiality assessment, but many that were preparing will no longer be obliged to report.

Elsewhere the direction is toward the ISSB baseline. The UK government has published UK SRS S1 and S2 for voluntary use while the Financial Conduct Authority considers requirements for listed companies³, and other jurisdictions are adopting the ISSB standards on their own timetables⁴. In the US, the SEC voted on 27 March 2025 to end its defense of its climate disclosure rules, which were already stayed during litigation⁵. Our ESG reporting offering names SEC climate disclosure among the regimes it covers; we now treat it as background, not as an operative requirement.

What did not change is the commercial pressure. Large customers still need supplier emissions for their own inventories, lenders still price sustainability-linked facilities on measured performance, and floods, heat and water stress affect operations whatever the reporting rules say. For most companies the question has shifted from compliance by a deadline to building data and decisions that serve several audiences at once.

Much of the effort in sustainability work is data handling, and that is where technology earns its place. Document extraction can read utility bills, fuel invoices and supplier questionnaires; pipelines can pull activity data from ERP, procurement and meter systems; a calculation layer can apply versioned emission factors consistently across years. Our ESG data architecture guide sets out how those pieces fit together so an assurer can trace every figure.

Some problems need records that several organizations trust. For environmental assets, ColdAI deploys and operates Hedera's open-source Guardian platform for issuers, registries and corporate buyers, covered on our Sustainability Studio page⁶. Lifecycle tracking for certificates and carbon credits sits under Certificates and Carbon Credits, and product-level material and footprint data is the subject of our digital product passport use case. This page does not repeat that material; it is where those tools connect to strategy and reporting.

Technology does not decide what is material, how ambitious a target should be or which trade-off between cost and impact a board should accept. Those judgments need evidence, stakeholder input and accountable owners. Our role is to give the people making them better data and clearer options, not to automate the decisions away.

A credible target starts from a baseline that has been calculated with documented methods and will survive restatement. It covers the emissions that actually dominate the footprint, which for many companies means value-chain emissions rather than their own sites, and it comes with a plan that names projects, owners, budgets and dates, so that the target is a management commitment rather than a communications line.

Many companies use the Science Based Targets initiative to validate climate targets. The SBTi has published Version 2.0 of its Corporate Net-Zero Standard; Version 1.3.1 remains the framework for validation throughout 2026, and companies may submit under either version from the first quarter of 2027⁷. If you are setting or renewing targets now, decide which version to work toward before modeling pathways, because the choice affects boundaries and timing.

Credibility also depends on how targets connect to money. Our sustainable finance work covers green bond frameworks and sustainability-linked financing⁸; both require use-of-proceeds or KPI definitions that match how you measure performance internally, which is one more reason to fix the data model early.