The ESG Data Convergence Initiative (EDCI) is a consortium of private equity general and limited partners whose goal is to create a critical mass of meaningful, performance-based sustainability data from private companies by converging on a standardized set of sustainability metrics for companies in the private markets. The data collected allows GPs and portfolio companies to benchmark their current position and assess progress toward sustainability improvements, while enabling greater transparency and more comparable portfolio information for LPs. As more PE investors join the initiative, the data quality and richness of insights arising from the benchmark and annual survey will only continue to grow in accuracy and usefulness.

If you are interested in learning more:

• Please visit the EDCI website for more information about the initiative, including how to participate.
• Feel free to contact the EDCI with any questions at info@esgdc.org.

To create the ESG Data Convergence Initiative (EDCI) benchmark, participating private equity general partners (GPs) gathered sustainability metrics from their underlying portfolio companies and shared them with BCG in its role as the benchmarking partner to the initiative. BCG’s Expand Research benchmarking team then reviewed and validated the data before aggregating it centrally into the final benchmark.

In our inaugural analysis from 2022, the EDCI data set included 105 PE firms and nearly 2,000 portfolio companies. Building on that momentum, the 2023 data set nearly doubled to about 185 PE firms and 4,300 portfolio companies. This year, the EDCI data set expanded to approximately 260 PE firms and 6,200 portfolio companies contributing more than 150,000 data points to the initiative. Portfolio companies in this year’s benchmark generate over $2 trillion in revenue from approximately 77 countries and 76 industries.

The increased participation has resulted in an even more diverse set of companies in the private markets across regions, sectors, and company size, allowing for a closer comparison with the universe of publicly traded companies. While coverage of the US and Europe remained strong, responses from companies in other regions also grew significantly, especially Asia-Pacific, which submitted data from more than double the number of portfolio companies compared with last year.

In addition, the proportion of companies contributing multiple years of data increased to 62%, while the vast majority of GPs also provided data from a greater proportion of their portfolio companies. This suggests that the EDCI continues to be instrumental in encouraging the collection, tracking, and reporting of consistent sustainability metrics.

The data set for the publicly traded companies referenced in the report was drawn from approximately 6,300 comparable public companies across major stock exchanges, sourced from Refinitiv. Companies with market caps above $2 billion were excluded to allow for a more accurate comparison with the EDCI benchmark; still, the two data sets are not entirely equivalent. As Exhibit 1 shows, the average private company in the EDCI data set is somewhat smaller, and more likely to be in the technology and services industries, than the average public company.

Private companies’ overall submission rate for sustainability metrics rose to an average of 70% this year, up from 67% last year. (See Exhibit 2.) Response rates on environmental metrics continued to trail those regarding social issues, most likely because of the difficulty and complexity involved in collecting this data. Still, the submission rates of these metrics continued to rise, particularly regarding Scope 3 emissions, which rose nearly 10 percentage points. Approximately 60% of portfolio companies submitted data about the new metrics designed by the EDCI to track progress on decarbonization and net zero commitments introduced this year, an encouraging result for new metrics.


The EDCI benchmark has been shared with all participating general and limited partners for their internal use through an online platform, with firms able to conduct their own customized analysis of the benchmark data. For 2024, a number of additional features have been added to the online platform to make the data as useful as possible for premium EDCI members. These include the ability to analyze the benchmark at more granular subsector levels, visualize portfolio performance via a heatmap against benchmarks, share data among GPs and LPs directly within the platform, and visualize the benchmark on their own third-party tech platforms, among others

EDCI Member Survey

This year’s report also includes insights from our annual EDCI member survey, which captures anonymous feedback from our GP and LP members on a range of topics, including LP expectations for working with PE funds and how GPs are responding. The survey elicited more than 230 responses this year—170 from GPs and 67 from LPs—more than half the EDCI’s membership. Much like the overall membership demographics, respondents were split relatively evenly between small, medium, and large firms, while 51% were headquartered in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 41% in the Americas, and 8% in the Asia- Pacific region. (See Exhibit 3.)