Governance & Accountability Institute, Inc. (G&A) has released its 2025 Sustainability Reporting in Focus report, revealing that corporate sustainability disclosure has become an almost universal practice among major U.S. companies.
According to the findings, 94% of Russell 1000 companies issued sustainability reports in 2024, up slightly from 93% in 2023. Within the S&P 500, reporting reached a record 99%, while mid-cap firms—those with market capitalisations between $2 billion and $4 billion—saw the sharpest increase, with 90% now publishing reports compared with 87% a year earlier.
The 14th edition of G&A’s annual research examines disclosure trends across the S&P 500 and Russell 1000 indices, analysing the use of frameworks such as GRI, SASB, TCFD and the UN SDGs, as well as newer standards like IFRS, ESRS and TNFD. It also tracks developments in external assurance, CDP participation and sector-specific patterns across all 11 GICS® sectors.
SASB remained the most commonly used reporting standard, cited by 82% of Russell 1000 reporters—up from 81% in 2023 and just 12% in 2019. Adoption of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework also rose to 65% in 2024, compared with 60% the previous year and only 4% in 2019.
Louis Coppola, G&A’s Executive Vice President and Co-Founder, said: “Over the past 14 years, our research has shown that America’s largest public companies adopted sustainability reporting as a best practice because stakeholders demanded it, not because regulators required it. While policies may shift in Washington or Brussels, the fundamental reasons for sustainability reporting do not: the process helps leaders sharpen strategy, strengthen resilience, understand risk, allocate capital, create value and build trust.”
Hank Boerner, G&A’s Chairman and Chief Strategist, added: “At the heart of sustainability disclosure is a better understanding of risk and reward – something investors and stakeholders deeply appreciate. Despite the anti-ESG pushback in some quarters, Corporate America continues to innovate and push forward with more detailed and informative reporting. Companies on the leading edge of this trend are well positioned for the shift from voluntary to mandatory sustainability reporting across more jurisdictions.”
