Most corporate leaders are already familiar with "environmental, social and governance reporting" often referred to as ESG. 

However, for the past couple of decades, ESG has typically consisted of producing an annual glossy Corporate Responsibility Report that discussed various initiatives in descriptive terms across  areas such as energy usage, waste stream mitigation, labor practices, community programs, charitable giving, etc.  While these reports represented an important element for communicating a company's corporate-citizenship vision and were also positive public relations initiatives, for the most part they did not contain a lot of hard, auditable data.

As the world has become more serious about mitigating climate change and the issue of corporate responsibility moves to the forefront, ESG  reporting is now shifting toward a more rigorous approach that is increasingly based on accounting disciplines and auditable practices.  In the area of climate change, this is often referred to as "carbon accounting".