Toward a Technology Ecosystem for Carbon Accounting

The brief highlights the current inefficiency of carbon accounting, which relies on manual, non-standardized data exchange (PDFs, spreadsheets), hindering real-time business decisions. It proposes a shift toward open standards—similar to the evolution of web browsers—to enable comparability, interoperability, and machine-readability of emissions data. The author advocates for the adoption of standardized formats like PACT, the use of open-source collaboration models, and the integration of carbon tracking into supply chain management software to incentivize low-carbon production and support green procurement policies.

• Current carbon accounting for product and transactional levels is highly manual and fragmented, often relying on disparate formats such as "spreadsheets", "PDFs", and "vendor surveys", which prevents the automated exchange of data.
• While the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) provides a foundation for tabulating emissions and is followed by over 92% of Fortune 500 companies reporting emissions, there is still no widely used common data format for exchanging that data.
• The PACT format for product-level carbon data, developed by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and RMI, has transitioned from a prototype to a "pilot-tested technical standard" to increase real-world adoption.
• There is significant financial investment in carbon accounting software, with venture capitalists investing over $410 million in startups in 2021, including funding for companies such as Persefoni ($114 million), Watershed ($85 million), SINAI ($36 million), and Sphera ($21 million).
• Standardized carbon data is essential for the implementation of green procurement policies, such as the Biden administration's guidelines requiring "net-zero emissions from federal procurement no later than 2050".
• The adoption of open standards creates a 'virtuous cycle' where low-carbon producers can charge a premium for their products, while high-emission vendors are incentivized to reduce emissions to maintain market access.

APA

RMI (2023). Toward a Technology Ecosystem for Carbon Accounting. https://rmi.org/resources/toward-a-technology-ecosystem-for-carbon-accounting/

Chicago

RMI. Toward a Technology Ecosystem for Carbon Accounting. 2023. https://rmi.org/resources/toward-a-technology-ecosystem-for-carbon-accounting/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Toward a Technology Ecosystem for Carbon Accounting |date=25 January 2023 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/toward-a-technology-ecosystem-for-carbon-accounting/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2023toward, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Toward a Technology Ecosystem for Carbon Accounting}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2023}, month = jan, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/toward-a-technology-ecosystem-for-carbon-accounting/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }