The European Commission (EC) has launched a consultation to finalize new guidelines for large listed companies reporting climate-related information.
It proposes ways to assess how climate change can impact the financial performance of companies and how firms can have positive and negative impacts on the climate.
The new guidelines, intended for use by large listed companies with more than 500 employees, builds on the report published last month by the Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance.
Valdis Dombrovskis, EC vice president responsible for financial stability, financial services and capital markets union, says in a statement: ‘Company reporting of climate information has improved in recent years and some European companies are world leaders in this field. But the scale and urgency of the climate crisis means we rapidly need more companies to disclose more comprehensive and more comparable information.
‘I strongly encourage companies and other organizations to respond to this consultation to help us make these guidelines as impactful as possible.’
Once finalized, the new guidelines on climate reporting, expected to be published by the end of June, will supplement the existing guidelines on non-financial reporting that the EC published in 2017.
