As night follows day it is inevitable that climate change reporting is set to be one of the biggest challenges to confront finance directors. Annual reports and accounts are a logical place for companies to report on their contribution towards combating climate change. Of all the special interest groups that have tried to engineer reports for their own particular purpose, it is hard to see how the call of the environmental campaigners can be resisted.

The question for FDs with a major responsibility for producing annual reports is what climate change reporting will look like and how onerous it will be to achieve.
Developments in sustainability reporting are fast-paced. And so far there has been no attempt to codify best practice from standard setters. Indeed, word from the International Accounting Standards Board is that it declines to see producing guidance on reporting for climate change as its responsibility.

But even without input from the IASB, measuring the impact of business on climate change is the next logical development. Within two decades, the first movement to produce reports on environmental impacts has moved through a number of phases: impact on society and economies; the concept of the ‘triple bottom line’; external verification to provide assurance over completeness of reporting; and now, moving to metrics to assess impacts on climate change. The companies most concerned with climate change reporting are high- or medium-impact sectors. But with so much pressure from governments and consumers it seems all companies that report will need to disclose standard climate change information to prove their green credentials.

Set out in a discussion paper Improving Climate Change Reporting, accountancy body ACCA suggested that companies need to look at climate change across a range of measures. At the top level, corporates should formulate and articulate a climate change policy explaining the general principles and framework to which the companies will work, including high-level objectives to achieve emissions reductions. Next, companies should be starting to address the challenge of reporting on product impacts: companies whose products give rise to significant carbon emissions need to report and allocate responsibility for them more clearly. ACCA says there is little material available explaining the monetary savings associated with improved energy efficiency and no common methodology on inter-product comparisons of efficiency.

Companies are being challenged to improve accessibility of climate change information. In particular, the report suggests that climate change has to be communicated as a key business issue, explaining climate change’s overall impact on the organisation. The discussion paper challenges business to set and communicate climate change targets, following consultation with stakeholders ensuring that they are “credible and in line with peer company efforts”. Performance metrics need to be thought about ­ for example, manufacturers should use an emissions-per-product-figure as a comparative metric, rather than emissions-per-turnover. Finally, the work in this area needs verification. Two standards already exist on climate change assurance standards, but as the importance of climate change disclosures increases, a reasonable level of assurance will be needed for both data and narrative information. Companies will have to factor this into budgeting and planning processes and stakeholders will need educating on the nature of the assurance being given.

As part of the discussion paper, 42 UK companies which have a reputation as leading environmental reporters were surveyed. Among these leaders, 89% provided some form of carbon data in their reporting and more than half had this verified independently. However, while 57% disclosed short- or medium-term targets for carbon emissions, only 43% provided long-term (over five years) targets and no company disclosed any product targets.

Some companies may be handling particular issues well, but the research could not find a single company reporting evenly across all the key climate change issues ­ especially those relating to product impacts and initiatives to reduce carbon emissions. And reporting, even at this patchy level, is not widely practised or monitored.

The possibility of severe and irreversible climate change threatens us all and is impossible to ignore. Inevitably annual reports will be used to raise awareness and increase knowledge. As with the rest of this sensitive and still controversial issue there is much work to do. But bringing transparency and clarity should lead to improvements in environmental performance. The financial markets should be able to assess risks to long-term shareholder value and so allocate more effectively resources in ways that mitigate the threats of global climate change. It seems inevitable that FDs ­ whether they like it or not ­ will be expected to play a major part in this work and will, therefore, once again be in the vanguard of fundamental changes in reporting corporate performance.