How ESG Reporting in the EU Is Building a Sustainable Economy

While the headlines about European Union (EU) sustainability regulations are awash with topics like high-level negotiations about the omnibus, industry pushback, and political intrigue, ESG advisors in the EU are helping businesses to understand their reporting responsibilities and to get on with their everyday work.

Malte Øster is a senior ESG advisor at SustainX in Copenhagen, Denmark, specializing in CSRD/ESRS (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive/European Sustainability Reporting Standards) reporting in the EU. He has extensive experience working on ESRS-aligned double materiality assessments and data gap analyses, including writing one of the first ESRS-aligned sustainability statements. Øster spoke with 3E in January about the turbulent developments in the world of EU sustainability regulations and how they might impact the way businesses conduct their reporting.

Øster’s role is to help businesses turn abstract regulatory concepts into real reporting on the CSRD.

“The first step is the double materiality assessments,” said Øster, “which is determining which sustainability matters to report on. Then data gap assessments, which is evaluating whether the company’s data maturity is sufficient to meet the requirements of CSRD.”