Open-source partnership will improve access to supply chain emissions data; aiding sustainability reporting

Open-source partnership will improve access to supply chain emissions data; aiding sustainability reporting

Platform creates incentives for organisations to ramp up sustainability initiatives and accurately report data

A new open-source partnership will dramatically ease access to supply chain emissions data and boost sustainability reporting across the ICT and technology sector.

With UK Government departments required to ensure their supply chains are fully transparent and aligned with domestic sustainability goals, this new collaboration provides businesses with the tools to deliver accurate data, whilst reducing administrative burdens. This will aid organisations and enable them to meet specific deliverables expected to be announced as part of the updated Government Digital Sustainability Strategy later in 2025.

Currently, accessing a company's emissions data requires manually reviewing detailed sustainability reports, with no guarantee that the relevant information is available. This approach presents significant barriers and prevents organisations from easily benchmarking data, automatically calculating emissions from suppliers, or effectively tracking carbon reduction progress, ultimately blocking the acceleration of industry-wide climate action.

The new partnership combines the non-profit Green Web Foundation's carbon.txt project - which establishes a standardised location for companies to publish sustainability data - with software consultancy, Scott Logic's Technology Carbon Standard (TCS) Schema, which provides the structure for organising that data.

Together, this provides a complete system for discovering and using digital emissions data and enabling automatic supply chain calculations, which collectively advance digital carbon transparency and create incentives for companies to more accurately report their data.

Oliver Cronk, Technology Director and Sustainable Technology lead at Scott Logic, comments:

“This has been an entrenched and embedded problem for several years. The ICT sector now consumes approximately 4% of all global electricity, but most organisations have lacked clear methods to measure or share information about their digital carbon emissions. This has led to arduous and manual work being required to review multiple documents and identify the right data, which has dramatically slowed sustainability reporting.”

“However, we now have a solution; carbon.txt solves the 'where to find it' element, whilst the Technology Carbon Standard Schema solves the 'how to structure it' issue. Together, they create a complete system for discovering and using digital emissions data. This means that, rather than relying on rough estimates based on financial spend, companies can now gather precise emissions data directly from suppliers' published carbon.txt files, which dramatically streamlines the process and supports faster and more accurate reporting.”

Hannah Smith, Director of Operations at Green Web Foundation, also comments:

“The partnership creates real incentives for suppliers to proactively reduce their actual emissions rather than simply claiming they have, with the technology acting as infrastructure for accountability. Both Green Web Foundation and Scott Logic recognise that the ICT and technology sectors have the expertise to lead on climate transparency, and we believe that the combined solution provides the foundation for organisations to move beyond current limitations in digital emissions reporting. The entire system is open source and designed for immediate implementation. Companies can begin with whatever emissions data they currently possess, document their methodologies clearly, and publish information in a format that enables discovery and comparison across the industry.”



About the Organisations:

Green Web Foundation is a European non-profit working towards a fossil-free internet by 2030. They maintain the world's largest open dataset of websites running on green energy and provide open-source tools for managing the environmental impact of digital services.

Scott Logic transforms clients' businesses by engineering innovative, bespoke software solutions. Their sustainable technology practice helps organisations understand, measure, and reduce the environmental impacts of their technology infrastructure whilst aligning sustainability with quality and business goals.


Getting Started:

Organisations interested in implementing this approach can access:

• Technology Carbon Standard Schema Implementation Guide: https://www.techcarbonstandard.org/schemas/implementation-gu...
• carbon.txt project information: carbontxt.org
• GitHub repositories for both projects for technical contributors:
https://github.com/thegreenwebfoundation/carbon.txt
https://github.com/ScottLogic/Technology-Carbon-Standard

For implementation support or collaboration opportunities, organisations can contact either Green Web Foundation or Scott Logic directly.

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Bruce Callander
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