• GRI and CDP launch a joint mapping tool linking GRI 2025 Climate Change and Energy Standards with CDP’s 2025 corporate questionnaire.
• The alignment aims to improve data quality, reduce duplication, and streamline global environmental reporting.
• The collaboration supports organizations reporting under both systems, enhancing transparency and comparability for investors and regulators.

Coordinating Frameworks for Consistent Climate Data

Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and CDP have released a new alignment tool connecting their respective climate and energy disclosure frameworks in a bid to simplify sustainability reporting for thousands of companies worldwide. The mapping, published ahead of a joint webinar on October 28, details how CDP’s 2025 corporate questionnaire aligns with the newly issued GRI Climate Change and Energy Standards.

The joint resource builds on a 2023 Memorandum of Understanding between GRI and CDP, aimed at harmonizing disclosure standards to reduce reporting burden and improve data usability. The mapping identifies where data points between GRI’s Climate Change 2025 (GRI 102) and Energy 2025 (GRI 103) correspond with CDP’s environmental metrics, supporting the principle of “write once, read many.”

With the proliferation of disclosure requirements globally—from the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) to the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB)—corporate reporters face growing pressure to meet multiple frameworks. The GRI-CDP mapping offers practical guidance to help organizations maintain consistency across reports, reducing duplication while ensuring that investors, regulators, and other stakeholders receive comparable, high-quality information.

Industry Demand for Simplified ESG Disclosure

GRI Director of Standards Harold Pauwels said the tool responds directly to companies’ calls for greater clarity. “This mapping tool is a new milestone in the cooperation of GRI and CDP, helping entities use the same data for different information purposes like the CDP questionnaire and GRI sustainability reporting,” he said. Pauwels noted that organizations implementing the new GRI Standards on Climate Change, Energy, and Biodiversity had expressed the need for alignment to ease the reporting process.

The mapping enables companies to cross-reference their environmental disclosures efficiently, improving the flow of consistent data to capital markets and regulators. This is especially significant as governments and standard setters increasingly link sustainability reporting to regulatory compliance and financial disclosures.

CDP’s Director of Climate, Amir Sokolowski, added that the tool advances the shared goal of credible and actionable climate data. “Through CDP, and with the support of this new tool, companies can report GRI-aligned data directly to stakeholders and the global market, easing the reporting burden while strengthening access to high-quality, comparable information,” he said. “By improving alignment and enhancing transparency, we can help turn data into action and accelerate the transition to an economy that works for people and planet.”

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Growing Interoperability in ESG Standards

The collaboration reflects a wider movement toward interoperability across sustainability frameworks. Regulators, standard setters, and disclosure bodies are increasingly emphasizing alignment to support coherent global reporting. The GRI-CDP effort parallels similar initiatives between GRI and the ISSB, as well as between CDP and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), all aimed at ensuring comparability across overlapping regimes.

GRI’s standards provide the most widely used global sustainability reporting framework, adopted by over 14,000 organizations. CDP, in turn, operates one of the largest independent environmental disclosure systems, with more than 24,800 companies representing two-thirds of global market capitalization disclosing through its platform in 2024. The new mapping seeks to bridge these widely adopted systems, strengthening confidence in ESG data used by investors, financial institutions, and policymakers.

Implications for Companies and Investors

For corporations, the mapping tool could reduce compliance costs and streamline workflows by consolidating data entry and verification processes. For investors and regulators, it promises more comparable and transparent climate data, improving the reliability of risk assessments, transition planning, and policy evaluation.

As ESG data becomes increasingly integrated into financial regulation and investment analysis, alignment efforts such as the GRI-CDP mapping will play a central role in building trust and efficiency across global reporting ecosystems.

The mapping will be officially introduced during the joint GRI-CDP webinar “Unlocking synergies to streamline climate disclosure” on October 28, which will provide practical guidance on applying the tool and feature expert insights from both organizations.

GRI and CDP say their collaboration will continue to evolve, with future work expected to address biodiversity and other environmental domains—further reinforcing global efforts to harmonize corporate sustainability reporting and make ESG data more decision-useful for markets worldwide.

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