IFRS S2 climate disclosures, section by section

The short version

This guide walks through IFRS S2's disclosure paragraphs. For the arithmetic behind the numbers you'd put in each one, see Scope 1, 2 and 3, explained and the organization footprint calculator.

IFRS S2 is not a calculation standard — it does not tell you how to compute an emission factor. It is a disclosure standard: a checklist of what an investor is entitled to see once you have the numbers. Read paragraph by paragraph, it groups into four familiar pillars — governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets — with the metrics pillar carrying the paragraphs (§29–§32) most organizations spend the most time on. This guide works through those paragraphs using the actual section structure a drafting template ships with, so you can see what a reviewer expects under each heading rather than guessing from the standard's prose alone.

The four pillars, briefly

Before the numbered paragraphs, IFRS S2 asks for narrative context in four areas:

• Governance — who at board and management level oversees climate-related risks and opportunities, and how often they review them.
• Strategy — the climate-related risks and opportunities the entity has identified, their effect on the business model and financial position, and resilience under different climate scenarios.
• Risk management — the process for identifying, assessing and managing climate-related risks, and how it is integrated into the entity's overall risk management.
• Metrics and targets — the quantified disclosures: emissions, targets, and the assumptions behind both. This is where §29 through §32 sit, and where the rest of this guide is spent.

A short SME report can often satisfy governance, strategy and risk management in a page or two each, provided the description is specific to the actual board and actual risks rather than boilerplate. The metrics pillar is where specificity matters most, because every figure is checkable against your own bills and invoices.

§29(a) — Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions

This is the paragraph everyone means when they say "the emissions number." It asks for four things, not one:

1. Absolute gross Scope 1 emissions, in metric tonnes CO2e.
2. Absolute gross Scope 2 emissions, both location-based and market-based, in metric tonnes CO2e.
3. Absolute gross Scope 3 emissions, disaggregated by GHG Protocol category, in metric tonnes CO2e.
4. Biogenic CO2 emissions, disclosed separately from the three figures above, not netted into them.

Each of "gross" and "absolute" is doing work. Gross means before any offsets, carbon credits, or removals are subtracted — those are disclosed separately if claimed at all, never used to reduce the reported emissions figure. Absolute means a total tonnage, not an intensity ratio (that appears elsewhere, closer to a GRI 305-4 style disclosure — see our GRI 305 guide for how the two frameworks diverge here).

The organizational boundary and consolidation approach also belongs in this section: equity share, financial control, or operational control. Most single-entity SMEs use operational control by default — you consolidate everything you operationally run, regardless of ownership percentage — but the report should say so explicitly rather than leaving it implied.

Where SMEs overcomplicate this: trying to produce a complete 15-category Scope 3 breakdown from a first year of data. The standard asks you to disaggregate by category and disclose materiality — it does not require every category to have a populated figure in year one. A report showing four well-evidenced categories (purchased goods, freight, business travel, waste) with the rest marked "screened, not yet material" reads as more credible than a spreadsheet with fifteen thin estimates, because a reviewer can see exactly where the confidence is and isn't.

§29(b) — Measurement approach, inputs and assumptions

Having stated the numbers, §29(b) asks how you got them. Three elements recur across most disclosures:

• The measurement approach — activity-based (quantity × emission factor, the method this site's calculators use throughout), spend-based (currency amount × an emission-per-dollar factor, used when only invoice totals are available), or supplier-specific (a factor obtained directly from a supplier's own disclosure).
• The emission factor database, named and versioned — "UK DEFRA/DESNZ 2025 conversion factors," "EMA Singapore Energy Statistics, 2024 data year," not just "standard factors." A reviewer needs to be able to look up the same source you used.
• Base year and recalculation policy — the year you compare future progress against, and the rule for when you'd restate it (a merger, divestment, or methodology change are the usual triggers).

Reporting period coverage sits here too: state whether the disclosed figures cover the full financial year, and if there's a gap — a supplier who didn't respond in time, a site acquired mid-year — say so and explain how it was handled, rather than silently omitting it.

§29(c) — Significant inputs and estimation uncertainty

Every emission factor is itself an estimate with an implicit confidence level, and §29(c) asks you to say which inputs carry the most uncertainty. In practice, this is usually a short paragraph: spend-based Scope 3 estimates carry more uncertainty than metered electricity; a single-year emission factor carries more uncertainty than a factor validated across several years; a factor sourced from a regional average (Ember's generation-intensity figures, for instance) carries more uncertainty than an official national statistic. The key discipline is traceability — every factor used must be attributable to a named source and version, which is why every calculation on this site prints its factor, source, and licence next to the result rather than a bare number.

§29(d) — Activity data sources and data quality

This paragraph is about the inputs, not the factors: where did the kWh, the litres, the tonne-kilometres come from? Utility bills, fuel-card statements, and supplier invoices are the strongest sources because they're independently issued and dated. Where activity data comes from suppliers directly — a supplier's own reported emissions rather than your own spend estimate of them — §29(d) asks you to note the supplier engagement and response rate: how many suppliers you asked, how many responded with primary data, and how the rest were estimated.

§30 — Financed emissions

§30 applies specifically to financial institutions — banks, insurers, asset managers — who are asked to disclose financed emissions (the emissions of the companies and projects they lend to or invest in, GHG Protocol Category 15) using PCAF or an equivalent methodology. Almost no SME needs a populated §30 section. What most non-financial organizations do need is a one-line materiality screening statement: something like "the entity does not provide financing, lending or investment services and this disclosure is not material" — which satisfies the paragraph without inventing numbers that don't apply to the business.

§32 — Climate-related targets

If the organization has set (or plans to set) a climate target — net zero by a given year, a percentage reduction, a renewable-energy commitment — §32 asks for four specific things about it:

• The scope and GHG boundary the target covers (does it include Scope 3? all of it, or specific categories?).
• The baseline year the target is measured against.
• Whether it is absolute (a fixed tonnage) or intensity-based (per unit of revenue, headcount, or output).
• Interim milestones on the way to the target year, not just the end-state number.

An organization with no formal target yet can say so — §32 does not compel target-setting, only disclosure of the target's structure if one exists.

Transition relief, in general terms

IFRS S2 includes limited first-year reliefs for entities newly applying the standard, such as phasing Scope 3 disclosure in after Scope 1 and 2 are established. The specific duration and conditions of any relief depend on how the jurisdiction or exchange adopting IFRS S2 has built it into local rules — this guide deliberately does not restate specific dates here, because the applicable timeline is set by your regulator's adoption decision, not by the base standard. SGX-listed issuers should refer to SGX's own published timeline; see our SGX climate reporting deadlines guide for that detail rather than relying on the general IFRS text.

A worked example: filling in §29(a)

A 60-person logistics firm preparing its first IFRS S2-aligned disclosure has already run its numbers through the organization footprint calculator and the freight calculator:

• Scope 1 (fleet diesel): 34.2 tCO2e
• Scope 2, location-based (Singapore grid, 0.4020 kgCO2e/kWh): 18.6 tCO2e
• Scope 2, market-based: identical to location-based — no RECs or PPAs held
• Scope 3, four categories with data (purchased goods, upstream freight, business travel, waste): 142.7 tCO2e
• Biogenic CO2: not applicable — no biomass or biofuel combustion

The §29(a) section states each figure with its category breakdown, notes that Scope 3 covers four of fifteen categories with the remainder screened and assessed as immaterial for a firm of this size and activity profile, and confirms market-based equals location-based because no contractual instruments are held. That is a complete, honest §29(a) disclosure — not because every category has a number, but because every category has a stated status.

How a drafting tool maps to this

A report editor that binds live data to a document — rather than a static Word template you fill in by hand — means the four figures under §29(a) update automatically as new bills and invoices are processed, instead of someone copying a stale number from last quarter's spreadsheet into this quarter's draft. The IFRS S2 section structure above is exactly the scaffold such a tool would start you from: each numbered paragraph as its own section, with the emissions figures wired to the same calculation engine that powers the calculators on this site, so the number in the report and the number a reviewer could reproduce independently are the same number.

What this walkthrough doesn't cover

• Assurance. IFRS S2 disclosure and third-party assurance are separate steps; a well-drafted §29 section is not the same as an audited one.
• Full governance, strategy and risk-management drafting. This guide focuses on the metrics paragraphs; the three narrative pillars need their own board- and risk-register-specific content that no template can supply generically.
• Jurisdiction-specific adoption details. Exactly how IFRS S2 is incorporated into local listing rules or law varies by market — always check your own regulator's adoption text, not the base IFRS standard alone.
• Sector-specific SASB-derived metrics. IFRS S2 references industry-based disclosure requirements for some sectors beyond the cross-industry metrics covered here.

Sources

• IFRS Foundation — IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures: ifrs.org
• GHG Protocol — Corporate Standard and Scope 3 Standard (category definitions referenced throughout §29(a)): ghgprotocol.org
• SGX RegCo — sustainability reporting requirements: sgx.com/regulation
• PCAF — Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (financed-emissions methodology referenced at §30): carbonaccountingfinancials.com