We analyze the early impact of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) based on the first 100 reports. We find that CSRD-compliant reports are significantly longer, with notable increases in content related to climate, workforce, and governance.

The most substantial increases occurred among companies that had low sustainability reporting levels in 2023, suggesting the CSRD has a particularly strong impact on under-reporting firms. Firms that previously issued separate sustainability reports showed smaller increases, indicating that prior experience moderates the degree of change. Reporting volume grew especially for topics considered material by industry benchmarks.

We also reveal that the nature of sustainability reports is changing: they now exhibit more negative sentiment, greater textual complexity, and increased use of standardized language, tables, and numbers, while relying less on images. This shift points toward more formalized, data-driven, and potentially more critical sustainability communications.

The analysis uses word2vec-based topic modeling to identify content associated with the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), providing quantitative insights into how reporting has evolved under the new regulation.

Check out the full report here!