New EU taxonomy based on the Green Deal
Not only European energy is to become increasingly green, so will the financial statements. Based on the EU's Green Deal, there have been initial EU taxonomy requirements since the beginning of the year. The requirements affect all providers of financial market products, as well as companies that have to publish a non-financial statement.
The EU's goal is to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030. For this step to be collectively achievable, more sustainable investments are needed. But who actually defines sustainability?
In order for European companies to start from a common ground when it comes to sustainability, the EU taxonomy was adopted in 2020. This contains 6 fundamental environmental goals, including the mitigation of climate change.
In order to make the energy sector more sustainable as well, a new decision was adopted on the 9th of March, 2022. The decision is to bring certain gas and nuclear activities in line with the environmental objectives.
Now that the first preparations for the next annual financial statements are slowly starting, many companies are faced with the task of incorporating the new regulations of the EU taxonomy into their reports. In conversation with some AMANA customers, who use our disclosure management tool SmartNotes, some difficulties in the implementation have emerged:
- The newly added tables of the EU taxonomy contain a high number of columns, which make a reasonable presentation difficult.
- It may be us, but we find the vertical alignment of some column headings is rather difficult to read.
- Due to the high number of columns, the tables are very wide. A display in portrait format is therefore no longer an option for many people.
- In order for the tables to fit into the overall layout, very simple table templates of the EU taxonomy have to be transferred to the company’s own corporate design. That could be difficult under certain circumstances.
- Following on from the previous point, there are also the column headings of varying lengths, which make the overall appearance of the tables look cluttered.
The basis of the two tables is a table of the EU taxonomy
After our exchange, we tried to find solutions and implement a few of the tables ourselves. You can see the results below.
The basis of both tables is a table of the EU taxonomy. In our first example we use the SmartNotes layout robot, it helps us to apply our corporate design to our new tables without much effort. However, the tables do not only carry our layout, but we have changed their structure.
As the trend has been towards online reporting for a number of years, we wanted our presentation to avoid having to adjust our screens or make the next trip to the orthopedic surgeon, so we did away with the vertical alignment of the column headers.
Since the EU taxonomy templates tend to be rather wide in principle and we are now adding further to their width by switching to horizontal column headings, we decided to split the formerly contiguous table into two tables in terms of content. The split allowed us to easily apply our layout to the table.
Reporting sheet: Proportion of turnover from goods or services linked to taxonomy-compliant economic activities - Disclosure for the year 2022
Here again, we have separated the formerly contiguous table into two tables in terms of content and have dispensed with the vertical font alignment due to the space created.
Reporting sheet: Proportion of turnover from goods or services linked to taxonomy-compliant economic activities - Disclosure for the year 2022
Since we have created both examples in SmartNotes, the basis of the tables is an Excel file. We would like to make this available to you below. Download now!
If you need any further suggestions or support in setting up the new tables, please contact us and we will be happy to help.