Energy consumption refers to the total energy used by individuals, businesses, industries, transportation, and every aspect of society.

Total energy consumption by the end-use sectors includes their primary energy use, purchased electricity, and electrical system energy losses (energy conversion and other losses associated with the generation, transmission, and distribution of purchased electricity) and other energy losses.

The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) represent complementary facets of the global effort to standardize sustainability reporting. The ISSB provides a global baseline for sustainability and climate-related disclosures through its S1 and S2 standards, focusing on general sustainability issues and specific climate impacts, respectively. These standards aim to enhance transparency, consistency, and comparability in reporting across all sectors. SASB, now integrated under the IFRS Foundation alongside ISSB, complements this by offering industry-specific frameworks that identify material sustainability issues relevant to different sectors, providing detailed metrics for companies to measure and report their sustainability performance. Together, ISSB's broad principles and SASB's detailed industry guidance aim to streamline sustainability reporting, making it more relevant and actionable for stakeholders worldwide.

The ESRS standards are reporting standards for sustainability within the EU. The ESRS standards are an integral part of the CSRD, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive of the European Parliament and the Council. This means that the ESRS reporting standards are mandatory. The adoption of the first set of 12 standards by the Commission is considered a significant step to promote sustainable practices and transparency in companies and to contribute to their comparability. This is because the new reporting requirements herald major changes in sustainability reporting and these will affect around 50,000 companies based in the EU. However, subsidiaries, branches abroad and companies that carry out a large part of their business activities in the EU area may also be indirectly affected, which is why the scope of impact can be significantly broader.

IFRS S1 General Requirements for Disclosure of Sustainability-related Financial Information provides a set of disclosure requirements designed to enable companies to communicate to investors about the sustainability-related risks and opportunities they face over the short, medium, and long term.

The objective of IFRS S2 is to require an entity to disclose information about its climate-related risks and opportunities that is useful to users of general-purpose financial reports in making decisions relating to providing resources to the entity.

Meeting the international climate and development objectives requires a massive reallocation of capital towards low-carbon technologies, including renewables, as well as the mobilisation of all available capital sources. USD 131 trillion will need to flow into the energy system by 2050, prioritising technology avenues compatible with the 1.5 ॰C pathway.

The Integrated Reporting Framework defines integrated reporting as ‘a process founded on integrated thinking that results in a periodic integrated report by an organisation about value creation over time and related communications regarding aspects of value creation.’