The HBAR Foundation Partners with Capitals Coalition to Advance Standards for CSRD-Compliant Climate Reporting on the Hedera Guardian

The HBAR Foundation (THF) is excited to announce the awarding of a grant to the Capitals Coalition, a global initiative aimed at redefining value to enhance decision-making processes by integrating natural, social, human, and produced capital to the launch of a new Global Digital Single Market Data Alliance (DSMDA). The Alliance, a new initiative of the Coalition’s Digital Sustainability Disclosures Project (DSD Project), aims to revolutionize and tokenize the global framework for digital sustainability data exchange and reporting. 

These funds will help launch a standards-development initiative to empower climate-related reporting under the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) using the Hedera Guardian. With this collaboration, Capitals Coalition will enable Guardian users, including enterprise reporting applications, to input climate data in the XBRL format, ensuring alignment with CSRD’s European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and enabling the CSRD  limited assurance  requirements in sustainability reporting to be met. The ESRS requires companies to obtain limited assurance on their sustainability information. Since the CSRD anticipates a potential transition towards reasonable assurance in the future, the intention is to gradually elevate the level of assurance, aligning sustainability reporting with the higher standards commonly applied in financial auditing.‍

Expanding the Use of the Hedera Guardian as a Rules Engine for Corporate Reporting

Hedera Guardian serves as a dynamic rules engine, offering digitized, open-source workflows that allow multiple parties to apply standardized greenhouse gas (GHG) methodologies, including those for audits and verification, across complex reporting landscapes that can vary widely by jurisdiction. By embedding these standards into the Guardian’s workflows, the Capitals Coalition will help Guardian users to build transparent, traceable, and auditable records of climate actions, directly connected to various parts of the value chain.

This approach opens new possibilities for companies engaging in Scope 3 emissions reporting, particularly in areas like value chain and supply chain emissions. Using the Hedera Guardian’s tokenization capabilities and its ability to manage multiple, independently auditable workflows, users can now reference and build on climate data from upstream and downstream sources, offering comprehensive insights into emissions at each stage of the value chain. This interconnected record-keeping enhances Scope 3 accounting by connecting every entity’s climate data and emissions accounting to broader supply chain impacts.

‍Enabling Consistent, Assurable Climate Data for Global Standards and Stakeholders

Using Guardian's rules engine, companies can structure and manage their emissions data in XBRL-compliant formats, aligning with ESRS in the initial phase. This framework enhances the clarity and accuracy of sustainability data for auditors, facilitating verification and traceability of emissions across the reporting life cycle. These capabilities are essential for meeting CSRD requirements for limited assurance, paving the way toward reasonable assurance and enabling organizations to deliver reliable, verifiable data that regulators and stakeholders can trust with confidence.

This initiative by THF and Capitals Coalition’s Digitalizing Sustainability Data Project (DSD) is poised to advance the quality of climate disclosures significantly, enabling companies across sectors to align with evolving regulatory demands while fostering transparency in their environmental commitments. By facilitating an ecosystem that connects sustainability data across a company’s value chain, this project will support organizations in delivering credible, assured reports that drive responsible environmental action and a sustainable future.

If you are interested in joining this working group and contributing to this dialogue, please feel free to register here. Applications close January 15th https://forms.gle/oX5THSJZBJFKwdQ89.

“Empowering organizations with the tools to deliver transparent, traceable, and verifiable climate data is not just about meeting regulatory requirements—it's about building trust and driving actionable change,” said Liv Watson, Senior Advisor, Capitals Coalition, and Founder of the DSD Project. “This collaboration with the HBAR Foundation represents a pivotal step in aligning corporate climate reporting with the rigor and assurance needed to shape a sustainable future."

“Our partnership addresses the critical challenges of fragmented data systems and inefficient reporting processes head-on,” said Hania Othman, Director Sustainable Impact, The HBAR Foundation. “By integrating the Guardian with XBRL standards, we are building a unified digital framework that transforms sustainability disclosures, elevating them to the same level of rigor, trust, and usability as financial reporting. This is about more than compliance, businesses will be able to leverage trusted data as a strategic driver of transparency, efficiency, and long-term value across their operations and value chains.”