Sustainability Reports and Project News on Your Website: CMS Structure for Energy Companies

Author: Edip Kilinc, founder of Webwavers. Last updated: October 31, 2026.

Key takeaways A sustainability report, project news and press releases can be modeled in the Webflow CMS as linked collections that your communications team maintains itself. The statutory mandatory report runs through the management report and the audit, not through the website. Since the Omnibus, the CSRD applies only to companies with more than 1,000 employees and more than €450 million in net turnover (as of October 31, 2026).

• Report as a PDF plus an HTML summary, with an archive of all years
• Link projects, news and reports so municipalities, investors and private customers find their way in
• One evidence field in the CMS per environmental claim
• Approval workflow: editorial writes, one person approves

Table of contents

• CSRD and ESRS: the status after the Omnibus
• What this means for your website
• Report on the website: PDF, HTML or both?
• The CMS structure: collections for reports, projects and news
• Three audiences, three entry points
• Publishing press releases and project news yourself
• Substantiating environmental claims: rules from September 27, 2026
• Roles, approval and onboarding
• Checklist
• Common mistakes
• When you don't need an agency for this
• How we do it
• FAQ
• Conclusion

CSRD and ESRS: the status after the Omnibus

As of: October 31, 2026. The legal situation changes quickly, especially in Germany. This is not legal advice. Clarify the obligation for your company with your auditor or legal counsel. Many articles from 2023 to 2025 still describe the old situation with significantly more companies in scope and are no longer valid.

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD, Directive (EU) 2022/2464) requires certain companies to report on sustainability under the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS). Since 2025, it has been postponed and scaled back in several steps:

Date	What happens	Source
April 16, 2025	Stop-the-Clock Directive (EU) 2025/794 published. It postpones the reporting obligation for the second and third waves of companies	WPK, EU Commission
February 26, 2026	Omnibus Directive (EU) 2026/470 published in the Official Journal, in force since March 18, 2026	WPK, AKD
July 3, 2026	EU Commission adopts the revised ESRS as a delegated act (Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/1563), plus a voluntary standard (Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/1560)	WPK, Rödl
September 21, 2026	Both delegated acts published in the Official Journal	WPK
March 19, 2027	Deadline for transposing the CSRD changes into national law	Latham & Watkins

Who is affected? Under the Omnibus Directive, the CSRD applies to EU companies with more than 1,000 employees on annual average and more than €450 million in net turnover. For companies outside the EU, the threshold is net turnover of more than €450 million in the EU, plus an EU subsidiary or branch with more than €200 million in turnover. Listed medium-sized and small companies are exempt (AKD, Latham & Watkins). According to the overview from the German Chamber of Public Accountants (WPK), these thresholds apply from financial years beginning on or after January 1, 2027 (WPK).

What applies to the ESRS? According to Rödl, the revised standards must be applied from financial year 2027, with voluntary application possible for 2026. The Commission cites a reduction of mandatory data points of more than 60% (Rödl). Sector-specific standards are dropped: the Commission loses the power to adopt sector-specific ESRS and can issue guidelines instead. Assurance is only with limited assurance, and reasonable assurance falls away (AKD).

What does this mean for smaller companies? Companies with up to 1,000 employees that are not themselves subject to reporting can decline information requests from reporting business partners insofar as they go beyond the voluntary standard (value chain cap). Reporting companies may not contractually demand more extensive information obligations (AKD). For these companies, the Commission has adopted the voluntary standard (Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/1560) (EU Commission). Many energy start-ups are well below the thresholds. For them, customer requests for sustainability data are more a sales topic than a legal obligation.

And in Germany? According to the WPK, the CSRD has not yet been transposed into German law, and the transposition deadline of July 2024 was missed. Until then, companies previously in scope must continue to file a non-financial statement. The government draft dates from September 3, 2025, the first reading in the Bundestag took place on October 9, 2025, and at the end of March 2026 the governing coalition's parliamentary groups submitted an amendment motion that takes the Omnibus into account (WPK). A public hearing took place on April 13, 2026 (DRSC). According to an overview from csr-tools (last updated September 29, 2026), no second and third reading followed, and on August 27, 2026 the federal government replied that there was no official date for passage. The same article describes it as contentious that the amendment motion would apply the new rules retroactively to financial years from January 1, 2025 (csr-tools). Check whether the status has changed before every decision.

What this means for your website

Three cases come up frequently in energy companies:

Case	What happens on the website
You are subject to reporting (over 1,000 employees and over €450 million in net turnover)	The mandatory report is produced in the management report, with an audit. The website shows reports, key figures and context, but it is not the mandatory medium. You clarify the form of disclosure with your auditor
You are not subject to reporting, but you are a supplier or partner of companies that are	Customers request data. One page with key figures, certificates and contacts answers that once for everyone
You are a start-up or mid-sized and report voluntarily	The website is your most important medium. This is where it is decided whether you come across as credible, so structure and evidence count

The CSRD amends, among other things, the Accounting Directive 2013/34/EU (EUR-Lex, Directive (EU) 2022/2464). Under the structure of the directive, the sustainability report belongs in the management report. The website can complement it and make it easier to find. If you wonder whether a specific form on the website is mandatory, ask your auditor.

Report on the website: PDF, HTML or both?

Our recommendation is a combination of both, for three reasons:

1. PDF as the document. The PDF is the citable, archivable version. Google can index PDF files (Google Search Central, Indexable file types). So the report can be found even without an HTML page.
2. HTML as the entry point. A report page summarizes key messages, targets and key figures as normal text and links to the PDF. People on their phones, search engines and AI systems capture text on a page more easily than a file with a hundred pages.
3. Archive instead of replacement. Earlier reports stay online, with the year and the reporting standard. A report that disappears with every new year looks incomplete and breaks links.

Key figures with care. When the website shows key figures from the report, such as emissions, energy consumption or share of renewable energy, the result of the report is the authoritative source. A key figure on the website that deviates from the audited report is a problem. That is why every key figure in the CMS should carry a reference to the report, year and page. When the report is updated, the key figures are changed in the same working step.

The CMS structure: collections for reports, projects and news

For an energy website, the following structure has proven itself (our practical recommendation):

Collection	Key fields	Linked to
Reports	Title, year, standard (e.g. ESRS or voluntary standard), version, summary, PDF, status	Key figures, projects
Key figures	Label, value, unit, year, report, page in the report, evidence	Reports
Projects	Name, location, technology, status, description, images, figures with approval	Technologies, news, reports
News and press releases	Title, date, teaser, text, press contact, images with credit, downloads	Projects, technologies
Technologies or topics	Name, short explanation	Projects, news
Certificates and evidence	Standard, body, scope, validity, file	Locations, reports
Contacts	Name, role, contact details, responsibility	News, projects

The separation has practical reasons. A project gets a page on which its news, reports and key figures appear automatically. A press release shows which project it belongs to and leads back to the background. That helps visitors who want to dig deep, and it helps search engines, because the relationships are present in the HTML as links.

For datasheets, certificates and references in industry, a similar logic applies, described in detail in the guide Datasheets and certificates on industrial websites.

Three audiences, three entry points

Energy companies often address municipalities, investors and private customers on the same website. The groups look for different things. Separate entry points have proven effective.

Audience	What they look for	Entry point on the website
Municipalities and municipal utilities	Experience in planning and implementation, fixed contacts, traceable references	"For municipalities" page with projects, process, contact person
Investors and financiers	Business model, projects, team, reports	"For investors" page with project data, reports, key figures
Private customers	Clear explanation, prices or offers, trust	"For private customers" page with simple texts, references, contact

For municipalities, timing can matter. Municipal heat planning had to be submitted by June 30, 2026 for municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, smaller municipalities have until June 30, 2028, and the BDEW (German Association of Energy and Water Industries) stresses that implementation follows planning (Solarserver, June 30, 2026). The EY/BDEW municipal utilities study 2024 (100 utilities) names digitalization, heat planning and skilled-worker recruitment as the most important topics for 87% of respondents (BDEW, June 4, 2024). If you want to reach municipalities, you need content that picks up these questions and stays maintainable in the CMS, because deadlines and funding conditions change. More on how decision makers see this is in the guide Outbound is saturated in the energy sector.

Whether you serve private customers and municipalities on one website or build separate sites depends on size. One website with clear entry points is often enough. If the groups need very different brands or names, separate sites make more sense.

Publishing press releases and project news yourself

The communications team should be able to publish announcements without developers. That works when news is built as a collection and a few rules are set in the CMS.

Fields per announcement:

1. Title and teaser (two sentences that are understandable even without the rest)
2. Date and place (dateline)
3. Main text with clear structure
4. Link to the project and the technology
5. Press contact as a link to the contacts collection
6. "About the company" boilerplate as a reusable text field
7. Press images with image credit and usage notice
8. Status: draft, in review, published

Workflow:

1. The editorial team creates the announcement as a draft.
2. A second person checks figures, environmental claims and approvals.
3. A third role, or the same approver, publishes.

In Webflow, this can be controlled through roles. According to the Webflow help center, Content Editors can create, edit, delete and import CMS items, and they can publish if the "Can publish" option is enabled. They cannot create new collections, change CMS settings or make design changes (Webflow Help, Edit site content as a content editor). A person without publishing rights can prepare drafts, and a second person approves. How roles, seats and onboarding work in detail is covered in the guide Maintaining the Webflow CMS yourself.

Timing for announcements. Press releases live on timeliness. Plan a workflow that runs in a few steps without developers, and keep the required fields lean enough that they don't slow anyone down.

Substantiating environmental claims: rules from September 27, 2026

Project news and reports contain many environmental claims. New rules apply to them. The Third Act Amending the UWG (German Unfair Competition Act) transposes EU Directive 2024/825 and applies for the most part from September 27, 2026. According to a summary from the IHK Schwerin (Chamber of Commerce and Industry), general environmental claims such as "sustainable" or "eco-friendly" are not permitted without proof unless they are specified on the same medium. Product-related climate-neutrality claims based on offsetting are largely impermissible under the new rules, and statements about future environmental performance need a detailed, verifiable implementation plan (IHK Schwerin).

A specialist summary notes that the new blacklist prohibitions apply only in dealings with consumers, while the ban on misleading practices under § 5 UWG also applies between businesses. In 2024, the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) held the term "climate neutral" in a trade journal to be misleading, and according to the BGH the explanation must appear in the advertisement itself (industrie-fachwissen.de). If you serve private customers, the stricter consumer rules apply.

What this means for the CMS:

• Every environmental claim in news and projects gets an evidence field: source, year, reference to the report or measurement.
• A required field "Evidence checked by" with a date makes the approval traceable.
• General words like "sustainable" appear in headlines and teasers only with specification on the same medium.
• Target statements (for example "climate neutral by 2035") point to the plan that supports them.

This does not replace a legal review. But it makes sure someone can answer the question "Where does this come from?" in day-to-day work.

Roles, approval and onboarding

Three things decide whether maintenance works in everyday life:

1. Role allocation. Who creates drafts, who reviews, who publishes? That should not be the same person.
2. Required fields and help texts. Date, project, press contact and evidence are mandatory. One sentence of help per field saves follow-up questions.
3. Short instructions per task. "Create a new press release", "Upload a report", "Update a key figure", each one page with screenshots.

Plan a personal training session at launch. How long it takes and what it covers is something you set with your implementation partner in the project.

Checklist

1. Clarify the obligation: is your company subject to CSRD reporting, indirectly affected or reporting voluntarily? Align with your auditor.
2. Define audiences: municipalities, investors, private customers, skilled workers.
3. Define the report format: PDF plus HTML summary, archive of prior years.
4. Define collections: reports, key figures, projects, news, technologies, certificates, contacts.
5. Define fields and required fields, plan an evidence field per environmental claim.
6. Clarify roles and the approval workflow.
7. Set up a press release template and boilerplate.
8. Clarify image credits and usage rights.
9. Decide on multilingual support: which content in which language, with separate URLs and hreflang.
10. Migrate legacy content: capture existing PDFs and announcements, set up redirects.
11. Onboarding and short instructions for the communications team.
12. Review after three months: are announcements linked, evidence maintained, key figures up to date?

Common mistakes

• Website as a substitute for the mandatory report. The report is produced in the management report, with an audit. The website complements it.
• Outdated CSRD status. Articles from 2023 to 2025 still cite the old thresholds and deadlines.
• Report only as a PDF. Without an HTML entry point, visitors and search systems see little.
• Key figures without a source. A figure that doesn't match the report is worse than none.
• Blanket "sustainable". Since September 27, 2026 a legal risk, with or without consumers.
• News without links. Announcements stand alone, and nobody finds the project behind them.
• One person does everything. Without the four-eyes principle, errors end up on the site.
• Leaving legacy content behind. Older reports and announcements disappear in the relaunch, and links lead nowhere.

When you don't need an agency for this

You don't need an agency if your website shows only a handful of announcements a year and an existing system already handles a blog or news list cleanly. In that case, it is enough to keep reports as PDFs on one page and to date the announcements.

For very extensive reports that are meant to appear as an interactive online report with data visualization, there is specialized reporting software and ESG tools. They cover data collection, audit trails and publication, which a website CMS does not. The website then embeds the result. Depending on the existing system, WordPress, TYPO3 or a headless solution may fit better than Webflow. We build with all of these systems and advise neutrally.

How we do it

We work according to the process on our process page: a no-obligation initial conversation, a questionnaire with 34 questions, a strategy session, three moodboards and the first three sections in Figma, followed by the homepage and subpages with one feedback round per milestone. Launch includes personal training so your team can maintain content itself. You also get a dedicated project manager and your own Slack channel.

For energy companies, the Energy industry page describes a project and reference database as CMS collections that the team maintains itself, separate entry points for investors, municipalities, partners and customers, and multilingual support with separate URLs. One example of linked content is the NEXUS website (2025): according to the project page, content, data and vision are technically linked with each other, and the site serves as a communication instrument for investors, partners and public institutions. (NEXUS project). Our focus is the CMS structure for reports and project news. The page Branding for energy and sustainability covers the brand side.

FAQ

Who builds us a website with a simple CMS where we can maintain press releases and project news ourselves?

Make sure the agency plans collections for news, projects and reports, clarifies roles and approval, and trains the team at launch. Ask what Content Editors may and may not do in the CMS. References with energy clients show whether the agency knows the audiences.

Do we have to publish our sustainability report on the website?

The mandatory report under the CSRD belongs in the management report and is audited. Whether and in what form it must additionally appear on the website is something you clarify with your auditor. As a practical recommendation: PDF plus an HTML summary, so the report is findable and readable.

What applies to the CSRD in 2026 after the Omnibus?

The Omnibus Directive (EU) 2026/470, published on February 26, 2026 and in force since March 18, 2026, limits the CSRD to companies with more than 1,000 employees and more than €450 million in net turnover. The revised ESRS are mandatory from financial year 2027. In Germany, the CSRD had not yet been transposed as of October 31, 2026. Check the current status.

How do we address municipalities, investors and private customers on one website?

With separate entry points. Municipalities look for experience, references and fixed contacts, investors for the business model, projects and reports, private customers for clear explanations. All three pages draw on the same projects and announcements in the CMS.

Is a PDF enough, or should the report appear as a web page?

Both make sense. The PDF is the archivable version, and the HTML page is the entry point with key messages and key figures. Google can index PDF files, but a page with text is easier to capture and read.

Do we even need a sustainability report as a start-up?

If you are below the thresholds, you are not subject to reporting. Customers and investors still ask for data. For companies with up to 1,000 employees, the EU Commission has adopted a voluntary standard (Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/1560), which you can use as a basis. Check what your customers actually require.

What rules apply to environmental claims in project news?

Since September 27, 2026, the new UWG rules mostly apply: general environmental claims need proof or specification on the same medium, and product-related climate-neutrality claims based on offsetting are largely impermissible. In B2B, the ban on misleading practices remains. An evidence field per claim in the CMS makes review easier. It does not replace legal advice.

Conclusion

For sustainability reports and project news, the website is the shop window, while the mandatory report is produced elsewhere. If you report, you need a structure in which reports, key figures, projects and announcements are linked, and an editorial team that works with roles, required fields and evidence. The legal framework changed significantly in 2025 and 2026: fewer companies affected, leaner standards, and in Germany a legislative status that is still open. So plan the structure to grow with the changes, and keep figures and legal notes in the CMS rather than in the page text.

Support with the CMS structure for reports and news: If you want to plan this for your energy website, take a look at our page on web development or write to us via contact.

Sources

• WPK: Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), Nachhaltigkeitskompass (Sustainability Compass)
• EU-Kommission: Corporate sustainability reporting (EU Commission)
• AKD: Omnibus I, Änderungen der CSRD (Richtlinie im Amtsblatt am 26.02.2026) (Omnibus I, changes to the CSRD, directive in the Official Journal on February 26, 2026)
• Latham & Watkins: EU Sustainability Omnibus Published in the Official Journal
• EUR-Lex: Richtlinie (EU) 2026/470 (Omnibus) (Directive (EU) 2026/470)
• EUR-Lex: Richtlinie (EU) 2022/2464 (CSRD) (Directive (EU) 2022/2464)
• Rödl: Veröffentlichung der überarbeiteten ESRS als delegierter Rechtsakt (03.07.2026) (Publication of the revised ESRS as a delegated act, July 3, 2026)
• DRSC: CSRD-Umsetzungsgesetz, öffentliche Anhörung und Änderungsantrag (01.04.2026) (CSRD Implementation Act, public hearing and amendment motion, April 1, 2026)
• csr-tools: CSRD-Umsetzung in Deutschland, Stand 29.09.2026 (CSRD implementation in Germany, as of September 29, 2026)
• IHK Schwerin: Greenwashing, neue Regeln im UWG ab 27.09.2026 (Greenwashing, new UWG rules from September 27, 2026)
• industrie-fachwissen.de: Greenwashing-Verbot ab 27. September 2026 im B2B (Greenwashing ban in B2B from September 27, 2026)
• Google Search Central: Indexierbare Dateitypen (Indexable file types)
• Webflow Hilfe: Edit site content as a content editor (Webflow Help)
• BDEW: EY/BDEW Stadtwerkestudie 2024, Pressemitteilung (EY/BDEW municipal utilities study 2024, press release)
• Solarserver: Kommunale Wärmeplanung, Großstädte haben geliefert (30.06.2026) (Municipal heat planning, large cities have delivered, June 30, 2026)
• Webwavers: Process
• Webwavers: Energy industry page
• Webwavers: NEXUS project