Extract data from ESG and sustainability reports

A sustainability report is where a company states its environmental, social, and governance performance, and it is read by people who need the numbers rather than the narrative. An ESG analyst building a rating, a procurement team screening a supplier, and an investment data vendor feeding a screen all pull the same metrics from reports built on the major frameworks, the GRI Standards, the European Union's ESRS under the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, and the ISSB IFRS sustainability standards: the greenhouse gas emissions split across Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3, water consumption, waste generated and the share recycled, the renewable energy percentage, the workforce and diversity figures, the health and safety rate, and the board composition and executive pay ratio. A report covering the fiscal year ending 2025-12-31 for a named organization carries dozens of these figures across a document that can run 120 pages. Numbers hide in tables, prose, and infographics, and the units and scopes have to stay attached. Emissions are stated in metric tons of CO2 equivalent and split by scope, and mixing Scope 2 with Scope 3 overstates a footprint badly, so each figure has to keep its scope. Water is in cubic meters, waste in metric tons, and a recycled percentage is meaningless without the total it applies to. Safety figures are lost-time injury frequency rates per million hours worked, diversity figures are percentages of a defined population, and the executive compensation ratio compares the highest pay to the median. Whether the report is third-party assured, and at what level, changes how much weight an analyst gives the numbers. Talonic reads the sustainability report and returns the reporting organization and period, the frameworks and assurance status, and the environmental, social, and governance metrics as typed fields with their units and scopes intact, plus the emissions and metric time series as structured tables. A Northwind Robotics Inc. report published 2026-04-30 for the year ending 2025-12-31, stating Scope 1 emissions of 42,000 tCO2e, Scope 2 of 18,500 tCO2e, Scope 3 of 210,000 tCO2e, a 62 percent renewable energy share, and a lost-time injury rate of 1.8, assured to a limited level by Ashford & Vance LLP, loads into a rating model with each metric tied to its unit rather than transcribed from a page. Verification is out of scope: the report is structured as stated, not assured.

What gets extracted from ESG and sustainability reports

How extraction works for ESG and sustainability reports

Sustainability reports are published as designed PDFs, and because no single layout governs them, the same metric appears in a table on one report, an infographic on another, and a sentence on a third. Talonic classifies the report and maps it to the sustainability schema in the Field Registry, which separates the reporting organization and period from the environmental, social, and governance metric blocks and the supporting time-series tables. Greenhouse gas emissions are kept split across Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 in metric tons of CO2 equivalent, water is kept in cubic meters and waste in metric tons, and each metric carries its explicit unit so a recycled percentage stays bound to the total it applies to. The reporting frameworks, GRI, ESRS, and the ISSB IFRS S1 and S2 standards, and the assurance provider and level are captured as their own fields, and the emissions and resource-consumption tables return as structured rows by year and scope. Analysts and data teams verify an emissions figure or a safety rate against the source report through the confidence score and pixel-region pointer each value carries under DIN SPEC 91491. Assurance remains the job of an independent provider; the extraction does not verify, recompute, or assure the figures.

Sample extraction

An annual sustainability report for a mid-cap manufacturer

{
  "document_number": "ESG-2025-NWRB",
  "reporting_organization": "Northwind Robotics Inc.",
  "reporting_period_start": "2025-01-01",
  "reporting_period_end": "2025-12-31",
  "publication_date": "2026-04-30",
  "reporting_standards": [
    "GRI",
    "ESRS",
    "IFRS S2"
  ],
  "assurance.third_party_verified": true,
  "assurance.verification_provider": "Ashford & Vance LLP",
  "assurance.assurance_level": "limited",
  "environmental.greenhouse_gas_emissions_scope1": 42000,
  "environmental.greenhouse_gas_emissions_scope2": 18500,
  "environmental.greenhouse_gas_emissions_scope3": 210000,
  "environmental.water_consumption": 340000,
  "environmental.waste_recycled_percentage": 71,
  "environmental.renewable_energy_percentage": 62,
  "social.employee_count": 4200,
  "social.diversity.women_in_management_percentage": 38,
  "social.health_safety_lost_time_rate": 1.8,
  "governance.board_size": 9,
  "governance.board_diversity.independent_members": 7,
  "governance.executive_compensation_ratio": 84,
  "greenhouse_gas_emissions": [
    {
      "year": 2025,
      "scope": "Scope 1",
      "category": "Stationary combustion",
      "emissions_mtco2e": 42000
    },
    {
      "year": 2025,
      "scope": "Scope 2",
      "category": "Purchased electricity",
      "emissions_mtco2e": 18500
    }
  ]
}

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