Sustainability Reporting Benchmarking Insights

2024 marked the first year where large EU companies were required to report under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), establishing a new benchmark for transparency and accountability in ESG metrics. Since this is uncharted territory for many, it's incredibly relevant to compare best practices and benchmark to understand where each reporting company stands and how they can improve.

At Deloitte, we’re committed to supporting the Danish business community on their ESG journeys. That's why we've conducted a comprehensive analysis of ESG reporting from the 35 Danish Large Cap companies, pulling from 100 ESG datapoints derived from their annual reports, corporate governance reports, and remuneration reports for the financial year ending 31 December 2024.

Our benchmarking report highlights many interesting insights, including these:

• Early Reporting: All 35 Danish Large Cap CSRD reporters published their annual reports by 12 March 2025, ahead of many EU counterparts.
• Compliance vs Strategy: While 2024 reporting focused heavily on compliance, the next phase should emphasize strategic actions for sustainability and climate transition.
• Competences: 49% of companies have established ESG committees at board or executive levels.
• Climate Bonus: The median of actual climate bonus of expensed total remuneration to Executive Management is 1.8% for 2024.
• Controls: 54% have included an assessment of the maturity of the control environment related to CSRD.
• Climate: 74% considered both physical and transition risks in their climate scenario analyses. Only 31% disclosed their transition plans for climate change mitigation and adaptation, with several companies still in the planning phase.
• Employees: The median percentage of gender pay gap was 12%. We have observed that gender pay gap disclosures varies a lot.
• Discrimination: Incidents of discrimination vary a lot, also in terms of degree of transparency, indicating that many companies need to strengthen their processes for data robustness.