TCFD framework · pillars, recommendations, documents
TCFD framework: the four pillars and the recommendations
The TCFD framework rests on four pillars, governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets, each with one recommendation.
Beneath the recommendations sit eleven recommended disclosures, and how to write each is on TCFD disclosures.
Which UK rule makes you use the framework is on TCFD reporting requirements.
The architecture
TCFD framework: four pillars, four recommendations
The Final Report calls the four pillars “thematic areas that represent core elements of how organizations operate”.
Each has one recommendation, quoted here in full from the Task Force’s own text.
Read the detailed guidance and references
| Pillar | The recommendation, verbatim |
|---|---|
| Governance | Disclose the organization’s governance around climate-related risks and opportunities. |
| Strategy | Disclose the actual and potential impacts of climate-related risks and opportunities on the organization’s businesses, strategy, and financial planning where such information is material. |
| Risk management | Disclose how the organization identifies, assesses, and manages climate-related risks. |
| Metrics and targets | Disclose the metrics and targets used to assess and manage relevant climate-related risks and opportunities where such information is material. |
Two layers, not one
The four recommendations are the headline duty; the eleven recommended disclosures are the content beneath them.
“Four recommendations” and “eleven disclosures” describe the same framework at two depths, which is why both numbers circulate.
Voluntary by design
The FSB’s 2017 release describes the aim as “voluntary, consistent disclosure recommendations”.
Every duty to follow the framework came later, from a national rule that adopted it — in the UK, the listing rules, the Companies Act and the pension regulations.
The Final Report calls the four pillars “thematic areas that represent core elements of how organizations operate”.
Each has one recommendation, quoted here in full from the Task Force’s own text.
Four connected pillars
Strategy
Four connected pillars
Risk management
Four connected pillars
Metrics and targets
The eleven
The eleven disclosures beneath the four recommendations
The eleven are short, and they are what a regulator or an assurer maps a report against.
How to write each of them, with examples, is on TCFD disclosures.
Governance has two: the board’s oversight, and management’s role.
Read the detailed guidance and references
Strategy has three: the risks and opportunities over the short, medium and long term; their impact on businesses, strategy and financial planning; and the resilience of the strategy under different scenarios, including a 2°C or lower scenario.
Risk management has three: identifying and assessing, managing, and integration into overall risk management.
Metrics and targets has three: the metrics used, Scope 1, Scope 2 and, if appropriate, Scope 3 emissions, and the targets used with performance against them.
Use the filters to see the text by pillar, or to separate the disclosures whose recommendation carries the words “where such information is material” from those whose recommendation does not.
The eleven, filtered
Pillar
Materiality wording on the recommendation
- Governance (a)
Describe the board’s oversight of climate-related risks and opportunities.
No materiality wording on this pillar. UK SRS S2 governance begins at ¶5.
- Governance (b)
Describe management’s role in assessing and managing climate-related risks and opportunities.
No materiality wording on this pillar.
- Strategy (a)
Describe the climate-related risks and opportunities the organization has identified over the short, medium, and long term.
The recommendation carries “where such information is material”. UK SRS S2 strategy begins at ¶8.
- Strategy (b)
Describe the impact of climate-related risks and opportunities on the organization’s businesses, strategy, and financial planning.
Material-gated through the recommendation.
- Strategy (c)
Describe the resilience of the organization’s strategy, taking into consideration different climate-related scenarios, including a 2°C or lower scenario.
The 2016 draft lacked “resilience” and “or lower”. UK SRS S2 ¶22 asks for an approach commensurate with the entity’s circumstances.
- Risk management (a)
Describe the organization’s processes for identifying and assessing climate-related risks.
No materiality wording on this pillar. UK SRS S2 risk management begins at ¶24.
- Risk management (b)
Describe the organization’s processes for managing climate-related risks.
No materiality wording on this pillar.
- Risk management (c)
Describe how processes for identifying, assessing, and managing climate-related risks are integrated into the organization’s overall risk management.
No materiality wording on this pillar.
- Metrics and targets (a)
Disclose the metrics used by the organization to assess climate-related risks and opportunities in line with its strategy and risk management process.
Material-gated through the recommendation. The 2021 guidance adds seven cross-industry metric categories. UK SRS S2 metrics begin at ¶27.
- Metrics and targets (b)
Disclose Scope 1, Scope 2, and, if appropriate, Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and the related risks.
October 2021: GHG emissions independent of a materiality assessment. UK SRS S2 ¶29(a)(i)(3) requires Scope 3, with the untimed ¶C4 relief.
- Metrics and targets (c)
Describe the targets used by the organization to manage climate-related risks and opportunities and performance against targets.
Material-gated through the recommendation.
11 of 11 shown.
Text: TCFD Final Report, June 2017, Figure 4, p.
14.
UK SRS S2 paragraph references: DBT, 25 February 2026.
Materiality
The materiality wording sits on two pillars only
The phrase “where such information is material” appears on the strategy and metrics and targets recommendations, and nowhere else.
So a sentence that says “TCFD applies where material” describes half of the framework.
Read the detailed guidance and references
The Final Report also recommended that the disclosures be made in mainstream annual financial filings, which is where every UK rule that adopted the framework puts them.
October 2021 added a wrinkle: the Annex asks organisations to disclose their GHG emissions “independent of a materiality assessment”, while the metrics and targets recommendation above that disclosure still carries the materiality wording.
Its guidance for disclosure (b) is precise: organisations “should provide their Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions independent of a materiality assessment, and, if appropriate, Scope 3”, and “All organizations should consider disclosing Scope 3 GHG emissions.”
The guidance overrode the gate for one disclosure without amending the recommendation that contains it, and both readings have textual support.
The successor standards resolved it their own way: IFRS S2 and UK SRS S2 apply a single materiality test across the whole report, set out in UK SRS S1, which our UK SRS S1 page explains.
| Pillar | Recommendation wording | After October 2021 |
|---|---|---|
| Governance | No gate | Unchanged |
| Strategy | “where such information is material” | Unchanged |
| Risk management | No gate | Unchanged |
| Metrics and targets | “where such information is material” | GHG emissions asked for independent of materiality |
Read the disclosure lens
Governance
Read the disclosure lens
Risk process
Read the disclosure lens
Strategy and metrics
Read the disclosure lens
Local law
The principles
Seven principles for effective disclosure
The UK government’s TCFD-aligned guidance for public sector annual reports repeats the same seven, which is a fair sign of how durable they have been.
Read the detailed guidance and references
| Disclosures should… | What it rules out | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | represent relevant information | Generic text that would fit any company |
| 2 | be specific and complete | A pillar covered in one sentence |
| 3 | be clear, balanced, and understandable | Opportunities without the matching risks |
| 4 | be consistent over time | Changing horizons or boundaries without saying so |
| 5 | be comparable among companies within a sector, industry, or portfolio | Bespoke metrics with no common base |
| 6 | be reliable, verifiable, and objective | Conclusions without the inputs that produced them |
| 7 | be provided on a timely basis | Climate reporting on a different cycle from the accounts |
Beneath the eleven sit seven principles, which the Task Force asked preparers to “consider … as they develop their climate-related financial disclosures”.
They are the quality bar a reviewer reads against.
Useful information
Relevant and specific
Useful information
Clear and complete
Useful information
Consistent and comparable
Useful information
Reliable and timely
The risk vocabulary
Transition risk, physical risk and where they land
The Final Report “divided climate-related risks into two major categories”: risks related to the transition to a lower-carbon economy, and risks related to the physical impacts of climate change.
Transition risk runs through four channels: policy and legal change, technology, market shifts in supply and demand, and reputation.
Read the detailed guidance and references
Physical risk is either acute — event-driven, such as more severe floods or storms — or chronic, meaning longer-term shifts such as sustained higher temperatures and rising sea levels.
The report pairs each risk with its potential financial impact, and points preparers to four categories: revenues, expenditures, assets and liabilities, and capital and financing.
That pairing is the framework’s central idea: a climate risk is reported because of what it does to the numbers, not as an environmental statement.
The same two-way split carries into IFRS S2 and UK SRS S2, and into the UK Companies Act duty, whose disclosure (d) asks for the principal climate-related risks and opportunities.
| Type | Categories in the Final Report |
|---|---|
| Transition risk | Policy and legal · Technology · Market · Reputation |
| Physical risk | Acute (event-driven) · Chronic (longer-term shifts) |
| Financial impact | Revenues · Expenditures · Assets and liabilities · Capital and financing |
From hazard to business
Transition
From hazard to business
Opportunities
From hazard to business
Financial effect
Metrics
The seven cross-industry metric categories
The categories are not additions to the metrics and targets recommendation; the guidance describes them as metrics that were already part of the recommended disclosures, organised for comparability.
The emissions arithmetic behind the first category is the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, explained on our GHG Protocol page.
Read the detailed guidance and references
Foundation and exposure
GHG emissions — the foundational data, Scope 1, 2 and 3.
Transition risks — the amount and extent of assets or business activities vulnerable to them.
Physical risks — the same measure for physical exposure.
Climate-related opportunities — revenue, assets or activities aligned with them.
Response and incentives
Capital deployment — future expenditure, financing or investment addressing the risks and opportunities.
Internal carbon prices — where one is used in decisions.
Remuneration — how climate considerations feed into pay.
The guidance says the categories “do not prescribe the exact metrics and units of measure to be used”.
The October 2021 metrics guidance calls metrics the “connective tissue” between the recommendations, and names seven categories “that all organizations should disclose”, where data and methodologies allow.
Measure the connection
Exposure
Measure the connection
Response
Measure the connection
Performance
The document trail
Which TCFD document says what
Five documents carry the framework, and two near-identical file names on fsb.org separate the Annex from the metrics guidance.
The site that hosts them is frozen at November 2023.
Read the detailed guidance and references
| Document | Date | What it holds | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Final Report — Recommendations of the TCFD | June 2017 | The four recommendations, the eleven disclosures, the risk categories | The text to cite |
| Consultation draft | 14 December 2016 | An earlier wording: no “resilience”, no “or lower” in strategy (c) | Superseded; do not quote |
| 2017 Annex, Implementing the Recommendations | June 2017 | Guidance for all sectors and supplements for banks, insurers, asset owners, asset managers, and four non-financial groups | Superseded by the 2021 Annex |
| 2021 Annex, Implementing the Recommendations | October 2021 | Updated guidance for all sectors and sector supplements; the seven principles | Current, frozen |
| Guidance on Metrics, Targets, and Transition Plans | October 2021 | Seven metric categories, targets, transition plans | Current, frozen |
The December 2016 consultation draft is hosted on fsb.org and may be encountered when searching for “TCFD recommendations pdf”; verify the version before quoting.
Its strategy (c) reads “the potential impact of different scenarios, including a 2°C scenario” — a wording the Final Report replaced.
The Annexes add supplemental guidance for the financial sector — banks, insurance companies, asset owners and asset managers — and for non-financial groups: energy; transportation; materials and buildings; and agriculture, food and forest products.
Five documents carry the framework, and two near-identical file names on fsb.org separate the Annex from the metrics guidance.
The site that hosts them is frozen at November 2023.
Use the right document
2017 final report
Use the right document
Metrics guidance
Use the right document
Owner archive
Where the pillars went
From TCFD to IFRS S2 and UK SRS S2
The Task Force disbanded on 12 October 2023, and the framework’s four pillars carried forward into the ISSB’s IFRS S2.
The IFRS Foundation’s own word on ISSB and TCFD is “consistent with”: IFRS S2 is consistent with the four recommendations and eleven disclosures and then asks for more, including industry-based metrics, planned use of carbon credits and financed emissions.
Read the detailed guidance and references
UK SRS S2, published by the Department for Business and Trade on 25 February 2026 (publication page), follows IFRS S2 with a small number of UK amendments set out in the government’s response.
The recommendations became requirements, but not always stricter ones: ¶22 lets an entity choose scenario analysis “commensurate with the entity’s circumstances”.
For UK listed companies the FCA’s final rules, PS26/19, replace the TCFD-aligned statement with UK SRS on a comply-or-explain basis for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027; the consultation that led there is on the FCA’s CP26/5 page.
The succession, rule by rule, is on TCFD and UK SRS; the international standard on IFRS S2; and the UK duties that still name the framework on TCFD UK requirements and TCFD reporting requirements.
The status of the Task Force itself, and every UK rule that still uses its shape, is on the TCFD page.
| Pillar | UK SRS S2 begins at |
|---|---|
| Governance | ¶5 |
| Strategy | ¶8 (scenario analysis ¶22) |
| Risk management | ¶24 |
| Metrics and targets | ¶27 (Scope 3 ¶29(a)(i)(3); relief ¶C4) |
Framework and successors
ISSB
Framework and successors
UK SRS
Framework and successors
Law
How UK rules point at it
Which version UK rules refer to
UK rules that adopted the framework had to say which document they meant, and they chose the 2017 text.
The FCA’s Glossary defines the TCFD Recommendations and Recommended Disclosures as the four recommendations and eleven disclosures in Figure 4 of the Final Report.
Read the detailed guidance and references
When it extended its listing rule in December 2021, the FCA said its Glossary “continues to reference the TCFD Final Report as published by the TCFD in June 2017”, which “remains the relevant version” (PS21/23).
At the same time it added the October 2021 Annex and the metrics, targets and transition plans guidance to its guidance provisions, for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2022.
So for a UK listed company the eleven are the test, and the 2021 guidance is what the FCA expects a company to consider when deciding whether its disclosures are consistent with them.
The listing rule itself, and its replacement by UK SRS from 2027, are on TCFD UK requirements.
- 1
Framework
Eleven recommendations available for use.
- 2
Legal route
Check listing rules, company law, financial-firm or pension requirements.
- 3
Disclosure
Apply that route’s content, statement and reporting dates.
Test yourself
Six claims about the framework, true or false
Each of these turns on a single document, and the wrong document still ranks well in search.
The answers name the document that decides each one.
Read the detailed guidance and references
The pair most worth getting right are the counts — four and eleven — and the materiality wording, which sits on two pillars rather than four.
Six claims about the TCFD framework
“There are eleven TCFD recommendations.”
“Every TCFD recommendation applies “where material”.”
“The 2021 update rewrote strategy (c).”
“Strategy (c) asks about “a 2°C or lower scenario”.”
“Physical risk is split into acute and chronic.”
“The FCA’s rules define the TCFD recommendations by the 2021 Annex.”
6 claims.
Choose true or false for each.
Check the claim
Guidance
Check the claim
Successor
The document timeline
A framework, and its later legal uses
Publication, guidance, organisational closure and local legal application are different milestones.
- December 201501
- June 201702
Final recommendations published
Four pillars and eleven recommended disclosures. - October 202103
Implementation guidance updated
The Annex and metrics guidance support application. - October 202304
- 202405
ISSB monitoring takes over
The IFRS Foundation monitors corporate climate disclosures. - 2027 periods06
An illustrative reporting sequence
Make the pillars work as one chain
Use the framework to organise evidence, then map the result to the applicable legal requirements.
- 01 / Govern01
- 02 / Identify02
Assess risks and opportunities
Record physical and transition exposures and relevant horizons. - 03 / Test03
Connect strategy and resilience
Use scenarios and evidence to explain implications. - 04 / Measure04
- 05 / Review05
Check the eleven answers
Review completeness, consistency and the local legal statement.
Frequently asked
The TCFD framework, answered
What is the TCFD framework?
It is the set of recommendations the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures published in its June 2017 Final Report: four recommendations, one for each of governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets, supported by eleven recommended disclosures, seven principles for effective disclosure and implementation guidance for all sectors and for specific ones.
What are the 4 pillars of TCFD?
Governance, strategy, risk management, and metrics and targets.
The Task Force called them four thematic areas that represent core elements of how organisations operate, and each carries one recommendation.
What are the 11 TCFD recommended disclosures?
Governance: (a) board oversight and (b) management’s role.
Strategy: (a) risks and opportunities over the short, medium and long term, (b) their impact on businesses, strategy and financial planning, (c) resilience under different scenarios including a 2°C or lower scenario.
Risk management: (a) identifying and assessing, (b) managing, (c) integration into overall risk management.
Metrics and targets: (a) metrics, (b) Scope 1, Scope 2 and, if appropriate, Scope 3 emissions, (c) targets and performance.
Which TCFD recommendations are subject to materiality?
The strategy and metrics and targets recommendations carry the words “where such information is material”.
Governance and risk management carry no materiality wording.
The October 2021 guidance separately asks organisations to disclose GHG emissions independent of a materiality assessment.
What are the seven TCFD principles for effective disclosure?
Disclosures should represent relevant information; be specific and complete; be clear, balanced and understandable; be consistent over time; be comparable among companies within a sector, industry or portfolio; be reliable, verifiable and objective; and be provided on a timely basis.
Was the TCFD framework updated in 2021?
The guidance was; the recommendations were not.
The October 2021 Annex says the Task Force has not modified its four overarching recommendations or the eleven recommended disclosures, but has updated the guidance for all sectors and asks for GHG emissions independent of a materiality assessment.
What are TCFD transition and physical risks?
The Final Report divides climate-related risks into transition risks — policy and legal, technology, market and reputation — and physical risks, which are acute (event-driven, such as floods) or chronic (longer-term shifts such as rising temperatures and sea levels).
Is the TCFD framework still used after the Task Force disbanded?
Yes.
The Task Force disbanded on 12 October 2023, but IFRS S2 and UK SRS S2 keep its four pillars, the Companies Act climate disclosures follow its shape, and the FCA’s entity reports for large asset managers and the pension trustees’ reports still refer to it.
The FCA’s listing rule stops referring to it for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027.
Sources
Primary sources
Every figure, date and status on this page traces to the instrument’s owner.
Secondary commentary is never the source for a number.
- TCFD (Financial Stability Board)Final Report — Recommendations of the TCFD, June 2017, Figures 2 and 4
The four recommendations and eleven disclosures verbatim; the transition and physical risk categories.
- Task Force on Climate-related Financial DisclosuresRecommendations
The live text of the eleven, and the seven principles for effective disclosure.
- TCFD (Financial Stability Board)Implementing the Recommendations — October 2021 Annex
Supersedes the 2017 Annex; the “has not modified” sentence at §A.1.
- TCFD (Financial Stability Board)Guidance on Metrics, Targets, and Transition Plans, October 2021
Seven cross-industry metric categories; metrics as the “connective tissue”.
- Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosuresfsb-tcfd.org — the disbanding notice
Disbanded 12 October 2023; site frozen from November 2023.
- Financial Stability BoardRecommendations of the TCFD — press release, 29 June 2017
The Task Force was established in December 2015; the recommendations are voluntary.
- Financial Stability BoardAnnual progress report on climate-related disclosures, October 2023
The end of the Task Force’s work and the hand-over of monitoring.
- IFRS FoundationISSB and TCFD
IFRS S2 is “consistent with” the four recommendations and eleven disclosures, with additional requirements.
- IFRS FoundationIFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures
The international standard built on the four pillars.
- Department for Business and TradeUK SRS S1 and UK SRS S2 — publication page
Published 25 February 2026 for voluntary use.
- Department for Business and TradeUK SRS S2 (PDF), ¶¶5, 8, 22, 24, 27, 29 and C4
Where each pillar begins in the UK standard.
- FCA HandbookESG 2.1 — TCFD documents the FCA treats as relevant
Names the Final Report, the Annex, the Technical Supplement, the risk management guidance and the metrics guidance.
- GHG ProtocolCorporate Accounting and Reporting Standard
The measurement basis for metrics and targets (b).
- FCA HandbookGlossary: TCFD Recommendations and Recommended Disclosures
Defined by Figure 4 of the June 2017 Final Report.
- Financial Conduct AuthorityPS21/23 (PDF)
The 2017 Final Report “remains the relevant version”; 2021 guidance referenced from 2022.
More on TCFD in the UK: TCFD · TCFD disclosures · TCFD reporting requirements · FCA TCFD rule · TCFD and UK SRS · step-by-step TCFD to UK SRS migration · climate-related financial disclosures · TCFD reporting software