Revolutionising CSRD Compliance: How Web3 and XBRL Transform Sustainability Reporting
As sustainability reporting moves rapidly towards investor-grade expectations, organisations face growing pressure to provide accurate, auditable, and machine-readable data. A recent expert webinar examined how organisations can address today’s sustainability data challenges by combining distributed ledger technology (DLT), the Hedera Guardian, and XBRL. The session unpacked the main ideas from From Data Problem to Data Precision: A Business Case and Blueprint for Impact, a strategic roadmap for modernising sustainability reporting. The panel featured Wes Geisenberger (Hedera Foundation), Juan Ignacio Ibáñez (Exponential Science), and Liv Apneseth Watson (Global Digital Single Market Alliance), and was moderated by Katherine Atkin (Global Digital Single Market Alliance).
The Data Problem: Fragmented, Unverifiable, Costly
Today, most organisations rely on spreadsheets, PDFs, and manual processes to manage climate and sustainability data. This creates fragmented, unauditable datasets that are difficult to verify or compare. As sustainability metrics increasingly sit within financial filings, this lack of provenance poses significant assurance and liability risks. Auditors must be able to trace information back to the source, including how and when each value was generated. Without this, assurance becomes extremely challenging.
What the Blueprint Proposes
The blueprint calls for a shift towards systems that combine three complementary components:
- DLT for secure provenance,
- Hedera Guardian for methodology-level control and automation, and
- XBRL for machine-readable disclosures that regulators can process at scale.
Together, these elements form the technical foundation for credible sustainability reporting. They allow data to be captured once, with full provenance, and reused across multiple regulatory frameworks. This addresses a core challenge identified in the webinar: organisations currently duplicate effort across different reporting regimes because their underlying data is not standardised and not machine-readable.
Why Provenance Matters
Panellists emphasised that regulators and auditors ultimately need to answer a simple question: “Who said what when?” DLT provides a verifiable audit trail for every data point, while the Guardian ensures that approved methodologies are applied consistently across sites and suppliers. This reduces errors, avoids the mixing of incompatible assumptions, and supports sustainability metrics that can withstand higher levels of assurance. It also reduces internal friction, since multiple parties can contribute to a shared, trusted record without exposing internal systems.
XBRL as the Reporting Backbone
XBRL remains the global standard for machine-readable regulatory reporting. The blueprint highlights its role in enabling a “create once, report to many” approach, where a single dataset can populate disclosures for CSRD, ISSB, MiCA sustainability requirements, and other frameworks. The webinar reinforced that machine readability and provenance must work together to meet future reporting and assurance obligations. Machine readability alone cannot deliver audit readiness, and provenance alone does not support regulatory automation.
Preparing for CSRD and Future Assurance
The panellists encouraged organisations to begin evaluating systems that apply methodology-based rigour rather than relying on retrospective estimates or narrative reporting. With assurance levels set to increase over the coming years, companies will need evidence of how each value was produced, not just the final numbers. The combination of DLT, Guardian workflows, and XBRL aligns closely with these requirements and offers a pathway to reducing long-term compliance costs while improving data reliability.
The Path Forward
The discussion concluded with the blueprint’s central message: the core technologies already exist. The remaining challenge is industry coordination. Alignment between corporates, auditors, technology vendors, and regulators will be essential to realise the efficiencies of provenance-enabled, machine-readable sustainability reporting.
For organisations preparing for CSRD, ESRS, ISSB, and MiCA disclosures, adopting future-proof data systems is no longer optional. It is a necessary step towards achieving credible, comparable, and verifiable sustainability information.
Watch the recording of the panel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTxJ4-p7YE8
If you would like to contribute to the blueprint, please share your suggestions here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12wgrUqb00DUiuPXLUtba7WJwCJtnK1JasDzoMwaP9yA/edit?tab=t.agqsc23vd0fi
