Not another ESG framework.
A way to see what all the frameworks tell you about the business.
Companies already answer to regulations, reporting standards, target-setting methods, questionnaires, ratings and labels. Together these have transformed the quality of sustainability information. The Compass adds no new requirement and issues no new label. It reads what they have already produced, and asks what it proves about the business.
A rating summarises. The Compass shows its working.
ESG ratings were built to screen thousands of companies quickly, and they do it well. The price is compression. Six major raters, assessing the same companies, correlate at 0.54 on average — and more than half of that disagreement comes from measuring the same attribute differently, not from weighting it differently.1 The Compass makes the opposite trade: far fewer companies, and every finding open to inspection.
Exposure to ESG risks and how well they are managed, usually relative to industry peers. One construct, defined by the provider.
Whether sustainability is changing how the company is governed, invests, operates and creates value — and how far its own evidence supports each claim. Environmental and transition questions, in depth.
Company disclosure, combined with media, third-party datasets and questionnaires. Where data is missing, the provider estimates it or applies a default.
What the company itself has published: annual report, filings, sustainability statement, transition plan, annexes. No questionnaire. Nothing estimated — a gap is reported as a gap.
A letter or a number, updated periodically, with a summary of the method.
A sourced answer to every question: the finding, the document and page it rests on, a confidence grade, and one of four states — Proven Strength, Confirmed Gap, Unproven Claim, Disclosure Blind Spot. The company’s category is the headline, never the whole output.
In part. The method is published in outline. The rule applied to each indicator, and the evidence that triggered it, usually are not.
Yes. Every finding opens onto its source, so you can read the passage and disagree. The full framework — every question, the research behind it, how questions are weighted — is published under CC BY 4.0 in 2027.
The same grade for every reader. Enough to screen a company in or out; little on what to challenge, finance or change.
One set of results, read through each role’s own question: an investor’s thesis, a lender’s conditions, what investor relations and finance will be asked, which customer claims will hold, what the CSO changes next.
A rating is a verdict you have to trust. An alignment is an arithmetic you can check.
An alignment is how far a company’s published evidence meets the criteria, question by question and pillar by pillar. Each one is built from findings you can open — so you can redo the sum, and dispute any line of it.
1 Berg, Kölbel & Rigobon, “Aggregate Confusion: The Divergence of ESG Ratings”, Review of Finance 26(6), 2022. Pairwise correlations between six raters range from 0.38 to 0.71; measurement explains 56% of the divergence, scope 38%, weights 6%.
Every system answers its own question.
Six families of instrument, each built for a job it does well. None was built to say whether sustainability is changing the business. That question is the Compass’s — and it needs the other six to answer it.
ESG ratings
MSCI · Sustainalytics · ISS ESG · LSEG
What they do well
Coverage and speed. Thousands of issuers on one scale, built into indices and mandates. The fastest way to screen a universe.
Where the Compass differs
A rating compresses, and raters disagree on the result. The Compass keeps every finding separate and sourced, and says whether a gap is confirmed or simply not disclosed.
Used together
Screen with the rating. Run the Compass on the companies you keep, to see what the grade rests on — and what it leaves out.
Disclosure questionnaires
CDP · EcoVadis · S&P Global CSA
What they do well
Standard questions and a very large response base: more than 22,100 companies disclosed through CDP in 2025.2 Procurement and index inclusion run on them.
Where the Compass differs
They assess what a company submits, on the questionnaire owner’s questions. The Compass asks the company nothing. It reads what was published to the market, and checks the documents against each other.
Used together
A public questionnaire response is one more document the Compass reads, next to the annual report and the transition plan. Where they disagree, that is a finding.
Transition and climate benchmarks
TPI · Climate Action 100+ · SBTi · ACT
What they do well
They set the destination: is the target ambitious enough against a science-based pathway, and is there a plan behind it?
Where the Compass differs
Climate-only by design, and focused on the current target. The Compass asks whether the carbon route is raising pressure on water, land, materials or waste — and what became of the targets the company set before.
Used together
Their pathways are the yardstick. The Compass uses them to judge a target, then follows it into strategy, capital spending and results.
Reporting standards
CSRD / ESRS · ISSB · GRI · TCFD · TNFD
What they do well
They define what must be told, and how, so that disclosure is comparable and can be assured. They are the reason the evidence exists.
Where the Compass differs
A standard settles whether a topic is reported. The Compass asks what the report shows. Regulation determines what a company is obliged to tell you. It has no bearing on what is true.
Used together
The Compass reads the report the standard produced. Each question is mapped to the standards it draws on, so a finding leads back to the datapoint behind it.
Certifications and labels
B Corp · ISO 14001 · product ecolabels
What they do well
A signal anyone can read: a published threshold, met or not, usually audited. A customer or a tender can rely on it without reading further.
Where the Compass differs
A label confirms a threshold was met at the audit. It does not show direction, or how the company compares with peers that never applied. The Compass can assess any company that publishes reports.
Used together
A certification is a claim like any other. The Compass records it, then looks for the operating evidence behind it.
Value and impact-monetisation models
IFVI · impact-weighted accounts · Upright · value-bridge models
What they do well
They put impact into money, with published value factors or product-level science. Finance gets a unit it already works in.
Where the Compass differs
They produce the figure. The Compass tests the claim behind it: how far each value claim is proven — stated, evidenced, measured, quantified in money, attributed.
Used together
The Compass is the evidence layer underneath. A monetised figure is only as reliable as the disclosure it was built from; the Compass says how reliable that is.
Sustainability Compass
Builds on all six
How deeply is sustainability integrated into the business — and how does that translate into impact, resilience and value creation?
2 CDP, Scores and A Lists, 2025. Frameworks and providers are named for comparison only; the Compass is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.
It does not replace what you already report against.
The frameworks are the foundations; the Compass is the assessment layer above them. It has integrated the major frameworks and their best practices — ESRS, ISSB, TCFD, TNFD, GRI, SBTi and other transition and environmental standards — into one reading of the business.
Sustainability Compass
Connects them to the business: how deeply sustainability is integrated, and what that means for impact, resilience and value.
Provide the language
What to report, how to report it, and how climate and nature risks are governed and managed.
GRI · CSRD / ESRS · ISSB (IFRS S1–S2) · TCFD · TNFD · GHG Protocol
Provide the evidence
What the company has actually published about its performance, its plans and its practices.
Annual and sustainability reports · transition plans · financial statements · CDP responses
Provides the thresholds and pathways
What a credible target, a credible transition and a sustainable activity look like.
SBTi · SBTN · EU Taxonomy · ACT · TPI · Climate Action 100+
Is the growth strategy aligned with the sustainability targets?
Draws on IFRS S2 · ESRS · TCFD · Climate Action 100+ · TPI
Every question is mapped back to the standards and evidence it rests on. None is an isolated definition of good practice.
We did not invent another sustainability language.
We built on the best available ones, and created a way to read what they collectively say about a company.
What a company publishes. What the Compass asks next.
Disclosure and performance are not the same thing. A company can report impeccably and still have sustainability only loosely connected to its decisions. The evidence that settles the question usually sits in different documents — so the Compass reads them together.
Disclose its emissions.
Are emissions falling while the business grows — and is that lower intensity, or lower absolute pressure?
Publish sustainability targets.
Are those targets connected to strategy, investment and growth — and what happened to the previous ones?
Announce a net-zero commitment.
Is there a documented plan: milestones, actions, Scope 1–3 coverage and a credible treatment of residual emissions?
Describe sustainable innovation.
Which specific products, services and processes meet sustainability-linked demand — and what revenue do they carry?
Say sustainability is part of its strategy.
Is it visible in the business model, the capital plan and the growth plan — with evidence, not general statements?
Issue a green or sustainability-linked bond.
Does the instrument have the features of credible sustainable finance, or only the label?
If you already report under CSRD
No questionnaire. No data request.
The Compass reads your sustainability statement, annual report and transition plan as published. The work you have done for compliance is the input.
See your report the way it will be read.
By an investor’s analyst, a lender, a customer’s procurement team — including where two of your own documents disagree, and how named peers answer the same questions.
A view that does not depend on scope.
Reporting obligations are narrowing in Europe and widening in Asia. What the business is exposed to does not move when a rule moves, and that is what the Compass reads.
The unit of analysis is no longer the sustainability report. It is the business.
That is why the Compass sits on top of existing frameworks, rather than next to them.
Bring us a company. We will show you what it can prove.
Tell us which decision you are trying to make, and we will run it.