The proposal for the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD): towards better environmental data in sustainability reporting

On April 21, 2021, the European Commission adopted a proposal for a Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) to amend Directive 2014/95/ EU, known as the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD), transposed in Italy in 2016. It aims to make the relevant provisions more consistent with the European Green Deal and The Action Plan on Sustainable Finance. The proposed directive provides for new features, including the development of new mandatory European reporting standards and the improvement of data quality. In the new mandatory standards released over the next 2 years, there will be a reference to a comprehensive environmental footprint, and new environmental aspects to detect and communicate are introduced. The concept of the life cycle and the use of impact categories related to life cycle assessment are becoming increasingly popular within sustainability reports. Therefore, it might be interesting to understand the role of life cycle-based tools in non-financial reporting concerning environmental performance. This study aims to analyze the innovations expected in the CSRD and to understand how the new reporting standards can improve the quality of environmental data, their com-parability, and what role life cycle-based tools will play in sustainability reporting.