AASB S2 climate disclosure
Produce the physical risk evidence behind an AASB S2 disclosure — governance, strategy, risk management, metrics and targets — from a site list and Australia's open data.
Industries
Corporate reporters
Group 2 entities reporting from FY2026-27 need site-level physical risk evidence under two climate scenarios. Here is how to produce it without an enterprise platform seat.
If you meet at least two of the Group 2 size thresholds — consolidated revenue of $200 million or more, gross assets of $500 million or more, 250 or more employees — you are a Group 2 reporter, and if your year ends in June your first reporting period has already started. Most companies in that bracket have a sustainability lead, a finance team, and no in-house climate scientist. That is the seat this page is written for.
The part that stalls
The governance and risk management pillars are describable. Your board committee exists, your risk register exists, and writing them up is work but not mystery. Strategy and metrics are where projects stop, because both require you to say which of your assets are exposed to material physical risk, under at least two climate scenarios, and to be able to answer how you know.
That is not a reporting question. It is a spatial data question: take every site you occupy, resolve it to a parcel, intersect it with flood, bushfire, coastal and heat layers, and do it again under a different emissions pathway.
What the assessment produces
Take our site register, score every location against flood, bushfire, coastal and heat under SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5 at 2030, 2050 and 2070, and give me the metrics table plus a methodology appendix.
| Hazard | Sites exposed | 2050 SSP2-4.5 | 2050 SSP5-8.5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Riverine flood | 14 / 112 | Moderate | High |
| Bushfire | 9 / 112 | Moderate | High |
| Extreme heat | 38 / 112 | High | High |
| No usable study | 7 / 112 | — | — |
g_nafcadastrensw_flood_studiesga_bushfiredea_coastlinescmip6siloThe table is illustrative — the shape of the output, not a published assessment. The last row is the one that gets a report through review. Australian flood mapping is uneven — some councils have detailed probabilistic studies, others have nothing digitised — and an assessment that quietly interpolates across those gaps is the kind of thing an assurance provider finds. Sites without a usable study are reported as unassessed, with the reason.
Underneath the table sits the methodology appendix: every dataset named, with its vintage, custodian, licence and the transformation applied. That document is what your auditor reads, and it is the difference between a number you can defend and a score you cannot.
Build, buy or engage
The enterprise climate risk platforms are excellent and priced for banks and listed property trusts. At mid-cap scale the seat cost is hard to justify for an annual exercise. Building it internally means someone on your team learning to handle CMIP6 NetCDF files and state flood geodatabases. Engaging a consultancy works and is the default, but you pay to rebuild the same evidence base each year and you rarely get to keep it.
The fourth option is to own the evidence base and buy judgement where you need it. Run the assessment yourself, keep the appendix, and hand your adviser a starting point instead of a blank page.
Year two is the real test
The first disclosure is a project. The second is a comparison — what changed, and why. If the first year's assessment was a PDF from a consultant, the second year starts from scratch. If it was a reproducible run with its datasets and parameters recorded, the second year is the same query against newer data, and the change is explainable rather than embarrassing.
Frequently asked
We are Group 2. When is our first report due?
Annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 July 2026, so FY2026-27 for a June year-end. The physical risk work needs to be done during the period, not after it, because the disclosure describes assessments you actually made.
Which scenarios satisfy the requirement?
At least two, one consistent with the most ambitious temperature goal in the Paris Agreement and one high scenario that ASIC's Regulatory Guide 280 expects to be consistent with warming of at least 2.5 degrees. Most Australian reporters pair SSP1-1.9 or SSP1-2.6 with SSP5-8.5, and both ends are available at 2030, 2050 and 2070 horizons.
What if we lease rather than own our sites?
The assessment does not care about tenure. It runs on locations. Leased premises, owned assets, supplier sites and distribution points all screen the same way, and the exposure table can be split by tenure so the strategy narrative can treat them differently.
Do we still need a consultant?
Probably, for the parts that are judgement — materiality, financial effect, the resilience narrative, board reporting. What changes is that they start from an evidence base instead of billing to build one.
Related
solutions solutions Physical climate risk assessment
Asset-level physical climate risk screening across flood, bushfire, coastal recession and extreme heat, using Australian open hazard data and CMIP6 scenarios.
guides The AASB S2 checklist for Group 2 reporters
A practical checklist for Group 2 entities preparing their first AASB S2 disclosure, covering scope, scenarios, physical risk evidence and the documentation an auditor will ask for.
industries Accounting and advisory firms
Deliver AASB S2 physical risk assessments across a client book without hiring a climate science team, with a method and audit trail you can stand behind.
See it run on your portfolio
Zenancy is in private preview with Group 2 reporters and their advisers.
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