Any company starting its sustainability journey quickly hits the same wall: there is no single ESG reporting standard, but a crowded landscape of overlapping frameworks. GRI, the CSRD and its ESRS, the legacy TCFD and the newer ISSB standards all promise to structure how organisations disclose their environmental, social and governance performance, yet they differ in purpose, audience and legal force. Understanding these ESG reporting frameworks is no longer optional: more than thirty jurisdictions have adopted or are close to adopting a common global baseline [1]. This article maps the four that matter most, explains the single dividing line that separates them, and shows what recent regulatory simplification means for companies, including those in media and entertainment.
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Why so many ESG reporting frameworks exist
ESG reporting frameworks emerged from different communities answering different questions. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), one of the most established and widely used, took a broad multi-stakeholder approach centred on a company’s impact on society and the environment [2]. The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) focused narrowly on climate risk for investors, while the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) built sector-specific standards for investor decision-making [2]. Each was voluntary, and each served a genuine need, which is precisely why organisations ended up juggling several at once.
Two forces have since reshaped the field. The European Union turned disclosure into law through the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), backed by the mandatory European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). In parallel, the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) published its first standards, IFRS S1 for general sustainability disclosures and IFRS S2 for climate, aiming to become a single global baseline that national regulators can adopt [4]. The result is a landscape moving from fragmentation toward consolidation, but not yet unified, so companies still need to know how the pieces fit and how they connect to underlying greenhouse gas accounting.
GRI, CSRD, TCFD and ISSB compared
The four frameworks differ on who must use them, whom they serve and how much of the ESG spectrum they cover. The table below sets out the core distinctions that determine which apply to a given organisation.
| Dimension | GRI | CSRD / ESRS | TCFD | ISSB (IFRS S1/S2) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Voluntary standard | Mandatory EU law | Voluntary (now retired) | Voluntary global baseline |
| Primary audience | All stakeholders | All stakeholders and regulators | Investors and lenders | Investors and capital markets |
| Scope of topics | Full ESG and impacts | Full ESG, ten topical standards | Climate risk only | Sustainability, with a climate standard |
| Materiality | Impact materiality | Double materiality | Financial materiality | Financial materiality |
| Legal force | None, market-driven | Legally binding in the EU | None, market-driven | Depends on national adoption |
| Assurance | Optional | Mandatory, limited then reasonable | Not specified | Set by adopting jurisdiction |
| Governance body | GRI (independent) | EFRAG for the EU | Disbanded, folded into IFRS | IFRS Foundation |
| Geographic reach | Global | EU, plus non-EU groups above thresholds | Global (legacy) | Global baseline |
| Relationship to others | Basis for much of ESRS | Builds on GRI and TCFD | Absorbed by ISSB | Consolidates SASB and TCFD |
| Reporting output | Standalone or integrated report | Management report, digital tagging | Climate disclosures | Financial-report-aligned disclosures |
| Data required | Impact metrics and context | Full ESG datapoints, value chain | Scenario analysis, risk | Financial-relevant sustainability data |
| Best described as | The impact reference | The binding EU rulebook | The climate-risk pioneer | The investor global baseline |
The retirement of the TCFD is a good illustration of how the field is consolidating. Having concluded that it had embedded climate risk into mainstream reporting, the TCFD was formally disbanded and its monitoring responsibilities transferred to the IFRS Foundation. IFRS S2 now fully integrates the TCFD recommendations, so companies applying the ISSB climate standard no longer need to apply TCFD separately [4].
Single versus double materiality: the real dividing line
Beneath the acronyms, one concept separates these ESG reporting frameworks more than any other: materiality. It defines which topics a company is actually required to disclose, and the frameworks split into two camps.
The ISSB standards, like the TCFD and SASB before them, use financial materiality: a topic must be reported if it could affect the company’s financial performance, cash flows or access to capital. The lens points inward, at risks and opportunities to the business [3].
The EU’s CSRD and ESRS require double materiality. A topic must be disclosed if it is material from a financial perspective or from an impact perspective, meaning it has a significant positive or negative effect on people and the environment, regardless of financial consequence [8]. In practice a company must assess sustainability issues from both directions and disclose anything material from either [8]. This is more demanding: it requires structured stakeholder engagement and broader data gathering, but it also produces a fuller picture. A useful consequence is that a company doing ESRS properly generates ISSB-aligned disclosures as a subset, because the financial dimension is already covered [3].
Convergence, interoperability and what the Omnibus changed
The direction of travel is toward alignment rather than an ever-growing pile of standards. The IFRS Foundation and EFRAG published joint interoperability guidance demonstrating a high level of alignment on climate disclosure between the ESRS and the ISSB standards, so that data reported once can serve both [5]. ISSB standards themselves consolidate SASB and TCFD under a single umbrella, and the ESRS build on GRI and TCFD concepts [3]. Convergence is real, but incomplete, which is why many large organisations still map across several frameworks at once.
The most consequential recent shift is the EU’s simplification package, known as the Omnibus. The Amendment Directive (EU) 2026/470 significantly narrows the CSRD, and the Council has signed it off [9]. Reporting now applies only to EU companies with more than 1,000 employees and more than EUR 450 million in net turnover, a change that reduces the number of companies in scope dramatically [7]. Companies that had begun reporting but fall below the revised thresholds move out of scope for the affected financial years, subject to national transposition [6]. For sustainability teams the message is twofold: the binding perimeter is smaller, but the underlying expectation, verified data prepared with the right sustainability reporting software, has not gone away. Buyers, investors and value-chain partners continue to ask for it whether or not the law compels a given company.
What ESG reporting frameworks mean for media and entertainment
Media groups, broadcasters and production companies sit squarely inside this landscape. The largest are directly in scope of the CSRD, and even those below the revised thresholds face impact-materiality questions through their value chains, from the studios and freelancers they hire to the suppliers behind sets, travel and post-production.
Film and television groups
For an audiovisual group, a double materiality assessment surfaces issues that a purely financial lens would miss: the energy burned by temporary power on location, the mobility of large travelling crews, and the working conditions across a fragmented freelance workforce. Most of this impact sits in indirect, value-chain categories, the same pattern seen when mapping the emission scopes of an audiovisual production. Consolidating it across dozens of entities is a genuine operational challenge. Banijay Entertainment, for example, uses TheGreenshot to aggregate greenhouse gas accounting across more than 130 creative entities and generate project-level reports that feed group disclosure case study.
Events and live productions
Live events face the same reporting logic on a compressed timeline. A festival or corporate event must account for on-site energy, audience and crew travel, local suppliers and waste, and increasingly must present that data in a form consistent with recognised frameworks. The recurring lesson from production studios is that reliable primary data, not generic averages, is what makes a disclosure credible under any framework. Sector-adapted tools close the gap between messy operational reality and the structured datapoints these standards demand.
GreenPro, the carbon tracking tool from TheGreenshot, automates the collection of that data for productions and events. It produces footprints aligned with Albert, Ecoprod, the GHG Protocol and CSRD, without manual entry, so the numbers feeding an ESG report are auditable from the source. Learn more about GreenPro
Conclusion
The ESG reporting frameworks landscape is consolidating, but it is not yet a single standard. GRI remains the impact reference, the CSRD and ESRS form the binding EU rulebook built on double materiality, the TCFD lives on inside IFRS S2, and the ISSB standards are becoming the investor-focused global baseline. The dividing line that matters most is materiality: whether a company reports only what affects its finances, or also what it does to people and the planet. Recent simplification has narrowed who is legally obliged to report, but it has not reduced the market and value-chain pressure for credible, verified disclosure. For every organisation, including those in audiovisual production, the practical priority is the same: build reliable primary data once, and let it serve whichever framework applies.
FAQ
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Going further with TheGreenshot
Whichever ESG reporting framework applies, its output is only as trustworthy as the data underneath it, and in production environments that data is buried in invoices, travel logs and supplier records. GreenPro, the carbon tracking platform from TheGreenshot, turns that raw material into structured, auditable numbers. It uses OCR invoice scanning and AI categorisation to convert production expenditure into activity data, then into certified footprints aligned with Albert, Ecoprod, the GHG Protocol and CSRD, with real-time dashboards and no manual entry. For media groups mapping across double materiality and multiple standards, it provides the reliable primary data those frameworks demand at the source. A short walkthrough shows how it slots into an existing reporting cycle.
Our carbon experts help production studios frame strategy, train teams and track results, tailored to operational constraints.
