Guide · XBRL & ESRS
This is a technical explanation of how an ESRS E1 climate disclosure is expressed in XBRL — the machine-readable format — using the taxonomy published by EFRAG. It is about mechanics, not obligations: what a tagged concept is, how dimensional data is tagged, and what validating an instance against the taxonomy actually tells you.
EFRAG — the body that develops the ESRS — publishes an XBRL taxonomy that defines the reportable concepts and their structure. Tagging an E1 disclosure means mapping each figure to the correct concept in that taxonomy, under its namespace and entry point.
Some E1 figures map to a single flat concept (e.g. a gross scope total). Others are inherently dimensional — a value sits on an axis with members (for example a per-scope or per-category breakdown) — and must be tagged with that dimensional context, not flattened, or the qualifier that gives the number meaning is lost.
Each fact carries a unit (GHG facts in tCO₂e, energy in kWh, monetary in a currency) and a context (the entity and the reporting period). Getting these right is what makes a number machine-readable and comparable, not just present.
What validation proves — precisely
An XBRL instance can be validated against the official taxonomy with a tool such as Arelle. Passing with zero structural errors proves the tagged concepts are known to the taxonomy, with the right period type, units and contexts. It does not, on its own, prove the disclosure is complete — the taxonomy’s own completeness assertions span many topics, so a valid structure and a complete filing are different claims. Being clear about that distinction is part of tagging honestly.
How Terrametri does it
Terrametri produces the XBRL from the same export path the product uses and validates it against the official EFRAG taxonomy — only officially reconciled concepts are emitted, and a datapoint with no official counterpart is reported as an unmapped warning rather than tagged to the wrong concept. See CSRD / ESRS E1 reporting for the disclosure itself.
General technical information, citing EFRAG/ESRS as the authority for the taxonomy — not legal advice.
We’ll generate and validate an ESRS E1 XBRL instance on data that looks like yours.