Assurance

Assurance over GHG Disclosures

NZ SAE 1: Assurance Engagements over Greenhouse Gas Emissions Disclosures.

This standard has been developed to enable assurance over GHG disclosures in climate statements as required by the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 (as amended by the Financial Sector (Climate-related Disclosures and Other Matters) Amendment Act 2021).

NZ SAE 1 includes ethical, quality management and reporting requirements for the assurance practitioners undertaking assurance of GHG disclosures in climate statements. The standard allows the application of one of two internationally recognised standards by the assurance practitioners:

• International Standard on Assurance Engagements (New Zealand) 3410 Assurance Engagements on Greenhouse Gas Statements, which can be found on the XRB website here: ISAE (NZ) 3410; or
• ISO 14064-3:2019 Greenhouse gases — Part 3: Specification with guidance for the verification and validation of greenhouse gas statements. The standard is available for purchase here from the Standards NZ website.

This allows all competent and independent assurance practitioners to undertake the engagements. As the standard will be applied by financial and non-financial professionals, we encourage assurance practitioners to be curious about what they can learn from each other.

Temporary nature of the standard

We have deliberately developed this standard to be temporary in nature until more is known about the scope of assurance, any licensing regime, and whether the developing international standards will be locally relevant for the New Zealand regime. We will be evaluating the effectiveness of the standard over time and will ensure that the regime has appropriate standards or guidance in place. As further developments occur, we will engage with stakeholders to ensure a range of views are considered.

Support and guidance

The standard is accompanied with Basis for Conclusions which explains our approach and provide context for the most significant decisions we took during developing of the standard.

We will shortly prepare a short video that will provide an overview of the standards requirements.

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Voluntary assurance over other aspects of the climate statement

While the Act establishes a narrow scope for the mandatory assurance engagement, we understand that some entities may voluntarily seek assurance over other parts of the climate statement.

ISAE (NZ) 3000 (Revised) is the existing XRB assurance standard that applies to voluntary assurance engagements over other parts of or the climate statement. In 2021, we published the IAASB’s comprehensive guidance to support application ISAE 3000 (Revised) to Extended External Reporting (EER) Assurance Engagements along with a navigation tool to help point users to relevant chapters and illustrative examples.

We are interested to hear your views in relation to the application of existing assurance standards and guidance for voluntary assurance engagements over other aspects of the climate statement.