Strategy

Publication of sustainability reports has dropped by half this year

Adobe, Citigroup and General Motors are among those that have yet to file in 2025. Read More

By Jim Giles July 16, 2025

Uber sign on its headquarters building in San Francisco, California,

Uber is among hundreds of companies to delay publication of its sustainability report. Credit: Shutterstock.

Key Takeaways:

- The findings come from a Conference Board survey of the 3,000 largest U.S. companies.

- Likely reasons include the need to reframe sustainability communications due to the Trump administration’s attacks on climate action.

- Companies will file later in the year rather than not at all, the researcher behind the study predicted.

Just 432 large U.S. companies filed sustainability reports during the first half of 2025, a sharp drop from the 831 that did so during the same period last year.

The finding comes from an analysis of the 3,000 largest U.S. companies (by revenue) carried out by The Conference Board, a business-oriented think tank, and its data partner, ESGAUGE. Companies that published sustainability reports in the first half of 2024 but have not done so this year include Adobe, Citigroup, General Motors, Mastercard and Uber, according to the board’s analysis.

The organization described the trend as a “strategic recalibration” of corporate ESG priorities rather than a wholesale retreat from sustainability reporting.

“There’s been such a shift this year in the U.S.,” said Andrew Jones, principal researcher at the board’s Governance and Sustainability Center. “The new administration has a very different kind of mandate when it comes to climate change and environmental issues and DEI. That’s introduced new risk dynamics.”

Previous studies by the Conference Board concerning company thinking on sustainability provide details of that new dynamics, added Jones. A survey published of 125 executives working on ESG, published in May, found that many are reframing how they communicate ESG issues and adding additional layers of review.

*Source: Sustainability Under Scrutiny: Corporate ESG in an Uncertain Policy Environment, The Conference Board, May 2025*

Concerns about ESG communication are particularly strong when it comes to climate; another question from the same survey revealed that this topic topped the list of issue areas that executives expected to attract scrutiny.

In addition to the situation in the U.S., companies may also have changed plans due to uncertainties around the future of the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

Jones said the low number of reports likely reflects delays in publication rather than an abandonment.

“I think a lot of these companies will file sustainability reports,” he said. “They’re seeing where the environment goes. Perhaps they’re looking at some of their peers and competitors, and seeing what they do, particularly how they approach the DEI issue.”

Trellis contacted 10 companies that are late in filing their reports, including those named above, and will update this story when they respond.