The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has started development of a taxonomy for the eXtensible Business Reporting Language, which holds the promise of automating the disclosure of sustainability data.

GRI and Deloitte have signed an agreement outlining the project, which would include publication of an XBRL taxonomy vering the GRI’s G3 and G3.1 reporting guidelines.

And in related news today, the GRI has announced ten global sponsors of its next generation of reporting guidelines, G4. The mpanies are Ala, Enel, GE, Goldman Sachs, Natura, Shell, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC.

The GRI plans to publish G4 in 2013 using a multi-stakeholder nsultation process. Diverse expert Working Groups and approval procres will ensure that G4’s guidance reflects the broadest possible stakeholder input, GRI says.

The global sponsors announced today will be part of The Global G4 nsortium, which will advise GRI on ics to nsider in the development of G4, to help ensure it addresses the most important current and future challenges in the rporate reporting field.

GRI and Deloitte said the taxonomy they are developing will enable mpanies to tag their sustainability data in reports, which will help investors, auditors and other users to aess and mpare GRI data more easily and quickly. The two anizations said the taxonomy will also help anizations improve the quality and integrity of their sustainability performance data.

XBRL is an open-source language for the electronic mmunication of business and financial data, and its potential for sustainability reporting has been under discussion for some time. Some mmentators have said that the use of XBRL in sustainability reporting will push many mpanies to start integrating their financial and CSR reports, and uld push sustainability onto the CFO’s plate.

“We are experiencing a major shift towards electronic information delivery,” said Cees de Boer, CFO and O of Deloitte in the herlands. “This development is already very important in financial reporting and is increasingly being used for both numerical and textual non-financial information.

“With the shift towards integrated reporting, the XBRL standard bemes a crucial enabler for information architectures and the design of reporting standards.”

Deloitte said it will be a pilot user of the new taxonomy, since it already uses XBRL for its financial reporting and plans to use it for sustainability reporting.

In more related news, a study by CSRHub has found that mpanies mmitted to using the GRI’s reporting standards are rated as having better CSR performance than those that don’t. The ratings were drawn from CSRHub’s rporate social responsibility rating system, which aggregates data from more than 100 sources.

The publisher found that GRI-nforming mpanies achieved an average sre of 53.7, mpared to 50.1 for those that released CSR reports but did not mmit to GRI standards. The difference persisted across 12 categories of performance.