ESG Essentials · 1.1

ESG Essentials is a pragmatic starter set of Environmental, Social, and Governance disclosures: the questions investors, customers, and partners increasingly ask, without the weight of a full ESG audit. It is Keel-authored content, every requirement written in Keel’s own words, whose social-responsibility coverage was checked against the core subjects of ISO 26000:2010, ISO’s guidance on social responsibility, used as a checklist for what a responsible-business baseline should think about. ISO 26000 states no requirements of its own, so nobody is ever certified against it; ESG Essentials gives you requirements you can evidence and score.

Is ISO 26000 certifiable? Why there is nothing to certify against, and what to run instead

25+

requirements in Keel’s authored baseline

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Scope

How much of the standard Keel models

Keel-defined scope

This is a Keel-defined composite rather than a published standard, so there is no external leaf count it could be complete or incomplete against. Keel sets the scope, and the requirement count below is Keel’s own baseline.

Authored in Keel: 25+ requirements
Defined by the standard: Not applicable: no external standard

What Keel scores here, and what it does not

Keel publishes this for every framework it ships, complete or not, so a readiness percentage can be read against a denominator you can see. Compare every framework

Who it is for

Who needs ESG Essentials?

Companies fielding ESG questions in procurement or diligence
Teams building a credible baseline before a formal framework
Founders who want governance and sustainability documented, not improvised

What Keel does

How Keel helps with ESG Essentials

A curated ESG disclosure set you can adopt incrementally
The same evidence engine you use for security, applied to ESG
A shareable posture so you can answer ESG asks quickly

Collect once, comply everywhere

ESG Essentials shares canonical controls with SOC 2, SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) Section 404 and ISO/IEC 27001 and others in the catalog. Implement one of those controls and it counts toward every framework it satisfies, so adding ESG Essentials rarely means starting from scratch.

Shares canonical controls with

ISO/IEC 27001 shares canonical controls
CIS Critical Security Controls shares canonical controls
PCI DSS shares canonical controls
SOC 2 shares canonical controls
SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) Section 404 shares canonical controls
NIST Cybersecurity Framework shares canonical controls
NIST SP 800-53 shares canonical controls
FedRAMP Rev5 Class B shares canonical controls
FedRAMP Rev5 Class C shares canonical controls
FedRAMP Rev5 Class D shares canonical controls
FedRAMP 20x shares canonical controls
FedRAMP Consolidated Rules no shared canonical controls
NIST SP 800-171 shares canonical controls
HIPAA shares canonical controls
GDPR shares canonical controls
COPPA shares canonical controls
Google Play Families no shared canonical controls
Amazon Appstore Child-Directed Apps no shared canonical controls
Apple App Store Kids Category no shared canonical controls
PIPEDA shares canonical controls
ISO 9001 shares canonical controls
AI Governance Essentials shares canonical controls
ISO/IEC 42001 shares canonical controls
NIST AI Risk Management Framework shares canonical controls
EU AI Act no shared canonical controls
US Employment Law - Federal Baseline shares canonical controls

A framework is lit when at least one canonical control satisfies both ESG Essentials and that framework. Unlit means none of them do, which is an absence rather than a judgment about that standard.

Other frameworks: ISO/IEC 27001 · CIS Critical Security Controls · PCI DSS · SOC 2 · SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) Section 404 · NIST Cybersecurity Framework · All frameworks