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G&A Releases 15th Edition of Sustainability Reporting Trends
Largest U.S. Companies Stacking New Standards and Assuring More Data, Even as Reporting Ebbs
NEW YORK CITY, NY /ACCESS Newswire/ September 16, 2026 /Governance & Accountability Institute, Inc. (G&A), a leading corporate sustainability consulting and research firm, today released the 2026 edition of its annual Sustainability Reporting in Focus report. This research tracks corporate reporting practices by companies in the S&P 500® Index and the Russell 1000® Index for the reporting period 2025 – a year marked by uncertainty in the sustainability landscape.
Now in G&A’s 15th year of researching corporate reporting practices, long-range trends are presented in detail to illustrate the adoption of various reporting standards and frameworks. Findings for the past two years use an updated research methodology to reflect the latest corporate practices.
Corporate sustainability disclosure expanded steadily from 2011-2023, reaching the vast majority of the largest companies in the U.S. However, today’s report announces that in the past two years growth in reporting has stalled, although the percentage of reporters remained high, especially among the largest companies.
The latest research shows that in 2025, 86% of the Russell 1000, and 94% of the S&P 500, published sustainability disclosures, both slightly lower than in 2024. Reporting remained strong for the large majority of companies on these indices, despite dramatic change in the sustainability and regulatory landscape.
The drop in overall reporting, both in 2024 and 2025, was concentrated in the smaller half of the Russell 1000 Index, where reporting fell by 6.3 percentage points.
Who reported? (see infographic)
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Russell 1000: 86.0% of companies reported, down from 91.1% in 2024
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S&P 500: 93.9% of companies reported, down from 97.8% in 2024
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Smaller Half of Russell 1000: 78.2% of companies reported, down from 84.5% in 2024
Which reporting behaviors increased?
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More reporters – especially smaller companies – aligned with Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards
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More reporters also aligned with: the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Sustainability Disclosure Standards, the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD)
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More reporters responded to the CDP Water Security questionnaire
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Fewer reporters aligned with the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), though it remained the most widely used sustainability standard.
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Fewer reporters aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) – but TCFD alignment increased among the smaller companies on the Index
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Fewer reporters responded to the CDP Climate Change questionnaire.
