IFRS.Report
Industry-Based Guidance Overview
How 77 SASB industry standards support IFRS S2 climate disclosure and entity-specific materiality judgments.
In 1987, a chemical engineer at DuPont named Stephanie Kwolek stared at a beaker of cloudy liquid and saw something no one else had: a fiber five times stronger than steel. She was not trying to invent Kevlar. She was trying to make lighter tires. The fiber she created ended up in bulletproof vests, firefighter suits, and spacecraft. The lesson was not about chemistry. It was about specificity — the right material for the right application.
That is the logic behind IFRS S2's industry-based guidance. Seventy-seven industries. Each with its own disclosure topics, its own metrics, its own evidence requirements. A commercial bank's material climate risks are not the same as a mining company's. A software company's carbon footprint looks nothing like an airline's. The ISSB codified the SASB Standards — originally developed for investor-focused sustainability reporting — into IFRS S2's industry guidance. The result is a set of standards that are specific to each industry's risk profile, not generic checklists that apply to everyone.
Under IFRS S2 §27–36, all companies must disclose Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions. But the industry-based guidance adds sector-specific metrics: financed emissions for banks, reserves disclosure for oil and gas, water stress for agriculture, data center energy for technology. Each industry has its own materiality map — a list of disclosure topics that matter for that sector. The guidance does not replace the general requirements. It sharpens them. Kwolek's fiber was not a universal solution. It was a specific one. That is what industry-based guidance does.
Industry guidance translates generic requirements into sector-specific disclosure — each industry has its own risk profile, metrics, and evidence expectations.
In Plain Language
IFRS S2 does not apply a single set of metrics to every company — it applies 77 different sets, one for each SASB industry. The ISSB codified the SASB Standards into IFRS S2's industry-based guidance in 2023, creating a framework where a commercial bank's material climate risks (financed emissions, credit exposure, insurance underwriting) are different from a mining company's (methane, water stress, mine closure) which are different from a technology company's (data center energy, semiconductor fabrication, e-waste). Under IFRS S2 §27–36, all companies must disclose Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions using the GHG Protocol. But the industry-based guidance adds sector-specific metrics: financed emissions for banks, reserves disclosure for oil and gas, water stress for agriculture, data center energy for technology — each industry has its own materiality map, its own disclosure topics, its own evidence requirements. IFRS S1 §54–59 permits entities to refer to ISSB pronouncements and other standard-setting bodies for guidance — the SASB Standards are those pronouncements for industry-specific disclosure. ISAE 3000 and ISSA 5000 provide the assurance framework: every industry-specific metric must be supported by source evidence that an assurance provider can verify, from the meter reading or supplier invoice through the calculation methodology to the final disclosed figure. These four requirements explain how to navigate that map — how to identify which sector-specific topics are material, how to map SASB topics to IFRS S2 paragraphs, what evidence standard each sector requires, and how to build an audit-ready disclosure framework.
- Industry guidance translates generic requirements into sector-specific disclosure — each industry has its own risk profile, metrics, and evidence expectations.
- The 77 SASB industries each have their own materiality map: disclosure topics that matter for that sector, not generic checklists that apply to everyone.
- The practical test is whether a disclosure reflects the specific risks of the industry — a bank's financed emissions look different from an airline's fleet efficiency.
Technical Requirements
- Sector risk profile analysis — IFRS S2: Each of the 77 SASB industries has a distinct climate risk profile — the first step in industry-based disclosure is identifying which sector-specific topics are material.
- SASB topic mapping methodology — IFRS S2: The ISSB codified SASB Standards into IFRS S2's industry-based guidance. Each industry has its own disclosure topics, metrics, and technical protocols.
- Evidence standard per sector — IFRS S1 §54–59: Entities may refer to ISSB pronouncements and other standard-setting bodies. Each industry's evidence standard maps to specific IFRS paragraphs and SASB metrics.
- Audit-ready disclosure framework — ISAE 3000 / ISSA 5000: Every industry-specific metric must be supported by source evidence that an assurance provider can verify — from the meter reading to the final disclosed figure.