Common ESG & Sustainability Reporting Deadlines Across the UK and Ireland

GRESB, SEAI M&R, SECR, TCFD, CSRD.

There is an increasing number of reporting frameworks being introduced year on year. Many organisations, businesses and EnergyElephant customers are required to or are advised to adhere to one or more of these reporting mandates. These frameworks provide an analytical basepoint of ESG benchmarks that organisations and businesses can use to compare themselves to their peers and competitors. We have compiled a guide of common reporting frameworks and their deadlines, that span across the UK and Ireland.

GRESB

GRESB stands for Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark, their assessments capture information regarding ESG performance and sustainability best practices for real estate and infrastructure funds, companies and assets. The assessments are guided by what investors and the industry consider to be material issues in the sustainability performance of real asset investments and are aligned with international reporting frameworks, such as GRI, PRI, SASB, DJSI, TCFD recommendations, the Paris Climate Agreement, UN SDGs, region and country specific disclosure guidelines and regulations.

The GRESB Portal will be open for the 2022 reporting period on April 1. The 2022 Assessment timeline is as follows:

March 1: Assessment reference guides will become available
April 1: GRESB Portal opens
June 1: Deadline to request a Response Check
July 1: GRESB Portal closes for the 2022 Assessment
September 1: Preliminary results are provided to participants
October 3: Release of the 2022 GRESB Results

SEAI M&R

The SEAI M&R assessment is aimed at public bodies and schools in Ireland, they must monitor and report their energy performance annually under this framework. The results and data are available to the public through an online portal. The online system also provides a scorecard that presents a snapshot of the school’s progress to date and online access to the school's annual electricity and natural gas consumption data.

The 2022 assessment timetable is detailed below:

6 December 2021: M&R system open for data entry
28 January 2022:  Meter data deadline
1 April 2022: Provisional scorecard available
29 April 2022: Final data deadline
10 June 2022: Notification of DVAs
9 September 2022: Post-DVA deadline
10 September 2022: Final scorecard available
December 2022: Annual Report 2022 on Public Sector Energy Efficiency Performance.

SECR

SECR Reporting refers to the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting Framework and is intended to encourage organisations to implement energy efficiency measures, in the UK. Roughly 11,900 large companies in the UK are required to report on their energy use and carbon emissions as part of their annual reporting. The SECR scheme provides templates to help businesses report accurately and efficiently on their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions (Scope 3 is voluntary but advised).

SECR is annual and forms a part of financial year reporting, therefore, the deadline for a organisations individual SECR report depends on what financial year the organisation uses. As an example, if the usual reporting year is 1 April to 31 March, the next SECR report should cover the period 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022.

TCFD

The TCFD is the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, created by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) in 2015. The TCFD have developed a framework that aims to develop consistent and comparable climate-related financial risk disclosures for use by public companies and other organisations. It provides guidance on how organisations should monitor and report their climate-related metrics, targets and decarbonisation strategies to ensure that the risks and opportunities are accounted for.

The TCFD was initially a voluntary set of recommendations, however, many governments and jurisdictions are enacting laws and policies to embed the recommendations into mandatory legislation and regulation. This includes the European Union. The United Kingdom are also mandating climate risk disclosures in line with the TCFD by 2023 and 2025 respectively. Public companies, large private companies and LLPs will have to disclose climate-related financial information in line with the four overarching pillars of the TCFD recommendations (Governance, Strategy, Risk Management, Metrics & Targets) on a mandatory basis within the UK from April 2022.

However, the TCFD does not have a reporting deadline. Organisations can choose when to report under the TCFD recommendations. (This does not apply to large pensions schemes of £5Bn+ in the UK, they will have a proposed deadline, i.e. for a large scheme with a year end of 31 December 2021, the deadline will be 31 July 2022.)

CSRD

The CSRD stands for the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. It is a new EU legislation amending the existing reporting requirements of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD). It will mandate that all large companies to publish regular reports on their environmental and social impact activities. The reporting requirements will apply to all large EU companies and all listed companies, including listed small and medium-sized enterprises which encompasses roughly 49,000 companies across the EU. It is the first time that the European Commission has defined a common reporting framework for non-financial data.

It is expected that the draft CSRD will be finalised an adopted by the European Parliament and Council by December 1^st 2022. This means that large companies will be required to start reporting under the CSRD from January 1^st 2023. Companies will be required to submit their report aligning with the CSRD on 1 January 2024, for the 2023 financial year.

Many of these frameworks discussed have already been mandated with others soon to be enacted into legislation and implemented. The management and monitoring of climate-related data, in particular energy and carbon data is key to ensuring that your company will be able to seamlessly adapt to these reporting frameworks. Preparation is essential, start gathering your ESG data now to make certain you are ready for any regulatory disclosures you may face in the coming months.