Telecoms

For listed telecoms operators, ESG scores are a commercial reality. Institutional investors, index providers, and ESG screening tools use LSEG and Bloomberg scores to assess climate and governance risk — and because both agencies derive their scores entirely from public disclosure, a gap between actual sustainability performance and what is publicly reported translates directly into a lower score. Structured disclosure improvement — identifying what data already exists but is not being reported, and filling genuine data gaps — is the fastest path to score improvement for most telecoms organizations and typically requires less internal effort than commonly assumed.

CDP Climate scoring for telecoms requires Scope 2 market-based accounting — renewable energy certificates, PPAs, and direct renewable procurement — alongside energy consumption data at infrastructure level and a transition plan that goes beyond aspirational net-zero statements to the specifics of energy efficiency investment and renewable sourcing. CSRD applies to telecoms organizations with EU operations above the defined revenue and employee thresholds introduced under the Omnibus I Directive — and for listed telecoms groups, IFRS S2 is bringing climate risk into the core financial report, requiring physical and transition risk assessment that most telecoms organizations have not yet systematically produced. The combination of investor-driven ESG score expectations, CDP disclosure requirements, and regulatory obligations under CSRD and IFRS S2 means that telecoms sustainability needs to be managed as a coherent system — not a collection of separate annual exercises.