In this article you can find the most commonly-used abbreviations in the context of climate and sustainability reporting, including acronyms and short descriptions.
EFRAG (European Financial Reporting Advisory Group): The EU organisation responsible for standardising financial and sustainability reporting.
CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive): EU regulation which requires large companies to do sustainability reporting. In Norway this affects about 1200 companies. Put into effect through a recent update for the Norwegian Accounting Act.
LSME (Sustainability Reporting for Listed SMEs): The upcoming EU regulation which requires listed small and medium sized companies to do sustainability reporting (only about 70 in Norway).
VSME (Voluntary Reporting Standard for SMEs): The upcoming EU standard for voluntary and simpler reporting for all non-listed small and medium sized companies (tens of thousands in Norway). See the EFRAG website.
In the most recent updates autumn 2024 the draft standard was simplified substantially, postponing the business partner reporting module.
ESRS (European Sustainability Reporting Standards): Set of reporting standards and guidelines that companies must follow to meet the requirements of the CSRD.
ESRS-LSME: (ESRS for Listed SMEs): The EU standard for simplified sustainability reporting for small and medium sized companies that are listed on the stock exchange. Might be useful for daughter company reporting to mother/consolidated group reporting.
ESEF (European Single Electronic Format): An established EU standard format for both financial and sustainability reporting. It serves many purposes, including the standardisation of XBRL.
XBRL/iXBRL: ((inline) eXtensible Business Reporting Language): Global standard for digital reporting. It is the standardized file format for electronically communicating financial and business data. Used for, among other things, CSRD reporting. Exists in both a purely machine-readable XML format and an inline-format which can also be viewed in a browser. XBRL-software (e.g., Arelle, CoreFiling) can allow us to experiment and create draft files.
ESRS XBRL Taxonomy (?) : Enables companies to digitally tag their sustainability reports in compliance with ESRS. Tagging rules will be adopted later but meanwhile we can apply provisional tags from ESRS. See the EFRAG website. Currently being implemented by Altinn for CSRD reporting file upload in 2025.
SAF-T (Standard Audit File-Tax): An electronic exchange standard in XML file format to report business transactional data between companies and external parties such as tax administrations, auditing systems and others.. Luckily, it can be exported from any accounting system. The new v1.3 standard valid from 2025 can be found on Skatteetaten.
CSDDD (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive): Upcoming EU legislation requiring due diligence from large companies to prevent adverse human rights and environmental impacts from their value chain (like the Norwegian Transparency Act but stricter). Will be a powerful driver for sustainability reporting from small suppliers to large purchasers.
SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises): Companies that are NEITHER defined as micro or large in the Accounting Act. Meaning they fulfill none or just one of these three criteria for large companies (yes it's hard to wrap your head around):
- balance sheet total: NOK 290 million
- sales revenue: NOK 580 million
- average number of employees in the financial year: 250 full-time equivalents
GHG Protocol (Greenhouse Gas Protocol): Provides tools, standards and guidance to measure and track greenhouse gas emissions.
ERP system (Enterprise Resource Planning system): Any IT system used by companies to keep control of their resources, like accounts and inventories.
NACE (European Classification of Economic Activities): European Union’s industry standard classification system for economic activities. It is a four-digit classification providing the framework for classifying economic activities in the EU.