The Open Group Open Footprint™ Forum (OFP) is making significant progress in our standards work related to building a standard data model for emissions, and related open source tools to ease adoption.
With some significant regulations in place (including the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, or CSRD) and with adoption timelines for reporting already started, and with accelerated progress on regulations happening in various other geographies, it is important to get started on more effective emissions data management, and to ideally get ahead of this now. The Standards work of the OFP is critical to enabling more effective emissions data management, particularly for scope 3.
Notable progress has been and is being made by the The Open Group Open Footprint Forum in these areas:
- A white paper that provides an overview of the emissions area, regulations driving activity, and the work of the Open Footprint Forum has been created, and is in the final stages or approval/publication. Look for this white paper to be published in The Open Group library in the next month.
- The data model standard is now on its 3rd major iteration. The first version, released in May, 2021, provided coverage for scopes 1& 2 emissions, along with a demo platform. The second version, released in June, 2022, added support for scope 3, for WBCSD/PACT product carbon footprints, and initial reference schemas. The third version, slated for later in 2023, was recently frozen, and adds numerous updates including unit of measure conversion, support for assurance requirements, support for IRA act credits, support for other environmental parameters (e.g. NOx, and SOx), and more reference schemas. We expect to publish a snapshot of the data model standard for public consumption based upon this third release in late fall, 2023.
- Significant effort has been put into ensuring that the data model and other deliverables align with existing GHG standards and frameworks, including those from GHG Protocol, WBCSD/PACT, and PCAF.
- Numerous use cases are being explored and worked by Forum Members, including for emissions reporting, scope 3 emissions data sharing in value chains, CCUS, methane data management, data ingestion/data integration, utility usage recording, and software and IT infrastructure emissions management. These use cases will be applicable to various firms across many industries.
- Work is ongoing on reference API’s for data ingestion and data consumption.
- A business guide is being developed that will describe the emissions ecosystem, and how the data model standard will impact the various organizations and actors in the ecosystem.
We expect that The Open Group Summit October 30 – November 2 in Houston, Texas, USA “Delivering a Secure and Sustainable Tomorrow” will be where much of this work is formally announced, and when the deliverables will be made publicly available.
The Forum is also planning use case workshops in Munich and Chicago in early November, to publicly share the emissions data model with large organizations from many different industries, and test the fit for the data model in some of their specific use cases.
For information on these workshops, please reach out to Jim Hietala at j.hietala@opengroup.org.
As always, we encourage firms from all industries to consider getting involved in this important work. To learn more, and express your interest in getting involved as Members, please visit: https://www.opengroup.org/openfootprint-forum
Authors:
Jim Hietala, VP, Sustainability & Market Development, The Open Group
Heidi Karlsson, Forum Director, Open Footprint Forum
Sammy Lakshmanan, PWC, co-chair, Open Footprint Forum
Arjen Van De Voort, Intertek, co-chair Open Footprint Forum