Data collection is often the most time-consuming and demanding step in the carbon accounting process. Teams can streamline this step by understanding business goals, identifying data owners, cultivating buy-in, and staying up-to-date on reporting requirements.
Managing greenhouse gas emissions is the crux of corporate sustainability. Yet calculating emissions remains a persistent challenge, in large part due to the difficulty of collecting data. Many teams find themselves stuck early on in the carbon accounting process, when they attempt to gather the information they need to begin calculating emissions. Problems with data collection can eat up staff time, slow down sustainability reporting, and hinder progress on climate targets.
In this article, we break down some of the most common data collection challenges and provide tips to help you overcome them.
What Data Is Needed for a Full Carbon Footprint?
Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions
It’s helpful to start with a broad understanding of the categories of data you’ll need. A full carbon footprint will include scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. Here’s a brief overview of each:
- Scope 1 (Direct Emissions): Fuel consumption (fleet, company-owned or operated assets), process emissions, refrigerants.
- Scope 2 (Indirect Emissions from Energy Use): Electricity, heating, cooling usage, and purchased steam.
- Scope 3 (Value Chain Emissions): Fifteen categories encompassing emissions up and down the value chain, including: purchased goods and services, employee commuting, business travel, waste disposal, transportation and logistics, capital goods, investments, franchises, processing of sold intermediate products, and use and end-of-life treatment of sold products.
Common Challenges in Data Collection for Carbon Accounting
Different goals, data fragmentation, resource limitations, evolving regulations
Collecting emissions data can sometimes feel like an uphill battle — it’s often the most time-consuming and demanding step in the carbon accounting process. You first have to identify the specific data you’re looking for, then figure out where it lives, persuade other stakeholders to provide it, and ensure it’s consistent and aligned with relevant frameworks. Each of these steps comes with potential pitfalls. Common challenges include:
- Identifying Data Needs
Getting a holistic view of your organization's operations can be challenging. It isn’t easy for one central team to understand the niche-building operations at each location. For example, some sites may have forklifts running on propane while others have a whole company fleet. Additionally, different business goals demand different types of data. For example, if you’re hoping to achieve ambitious decarbonization targets, you’ll want much more granular data than if your priority is to meet baseline reporting requirements. When teams don’t understand the end goals of their data collection from the outset, they risk gathering irrelevant or misleading information and having to start over.
- Data Fragmentation and Inconsistency
Teams are often slowed down by the lack of centralized access to key data sources. Once you’ve overcome the challenge of identifying the necessary data, you must track it down. It’s common for emissions data to be scattered across different departments and systems, with wide variations in quality, sources, and collection methodologies. This can be especially taxing if you’re in a large organization; the more people you have to reach out to, the more time-consuming data collection will be.
- Limited Internal Expertise & Resources
Often, the team in charge of sustainability reporting is extremely lean (sometimes it’s a team of one), and carbon accounting can be highly complex. Data collection frequently grows to represent a large chunk of the sustainability team’s workload, which prevents them from spending time on strategic climate planning and other important needs. The problem is compounded by the fact that the information needed for carbon accounting often lives with other functions in the organization, who may not have an incentive to spend time on it.
- Scope 3 Data Gaps
Collecting scope 3 emissions data poses a unique set of challenges. It can be tough to engage supply chain partners and gather granular, reliable data. Sustainability teams aren’t typically the main points of contact with suppliers, so they need to work with other functions (like procurement teams) to request data. This adds time and complexity to the process. Scope 3 categories 10, 11, and 12 bring another layer of challenge, requiring data on the processing of sold intermediate products (e.g., emissions from producing rubber that’s sold to another company to make tires), use of sold products (e.g., emissions from consumers driving their new car), and end-of-life treatment of sold products (e.g., emissions created when a car is wrecked and taken to the junkyard).
- Navigating Regulations and Standards
The climate reporting landscape is rapidly evolving. Sustainability teams are often navigating a variety of disclosure demands, from voluntary frameworks like CDP to mandatory regulations like California’s SB 253 or Europe’s CSRD. They need a solid understanding of calculation guidance from the GHG Protocol and SBTi and reporting standards like TCFD and ISSB. Each requires data sliced and diced slightly differently.
Tips for Overcoming Data Collection Challenges
Start by understanding your business goals
There are a handful of specific steps you can take to overcome data collection obstacles and streamline the carbon accounting process. To get started, we recommend you:
- Understand Your Business Goals From the Start
Before you begin collecting data, you should get crystal clear on how you’ll be using it. This will allow you to understand which data to collect and the level of granularity needed. If you have one specific business goal in mind, you can tailor your data collection to meet it. For example, if your goal is to comply with a scope 3 reporting requirement, you can likely use a spend-based industry code to calculate the footprint from your procurement of plastics. But if your goal is to decarbonize your plastics supply chain, you’ll need more granular, activity-based data.
- Identify Data Owners
Once you have a handle on the information you’re looking for, you must figure out where it lives in your organization. One of the things that slows teams down the most is reaching out to multiple other functions to request data. For example, you may need to contact the facilities team for HVAC records, the procurement team for supplier info, and the finance team for spend data.
If you have a solid grasp of your organizational structure to begin with, this process will be much more efficient. It’s also crucial to document which departments hold these different pieces of information, so the company retains institutional knowledge regardless of staff turnover. Below, we provide an overview of where different types of data are typically found in an organization.
- Communicate Value and Cultivate Buy-In
Developing relationships and engagement throughout your organization (and among external partners) is one of the most important things you can do to streamline data collection. It can be tough to convince a different department to spend hours compiling meter readings for you if they don’t understand how the information will benefit the company. This is why it’s important to be able to clearly articulate your business goals. Some companies are starting to create incentive structures for sustainability performance as part of their climate transition plans, which can greatly improve buy-in and pave the way for smoother data collection.
Engagement is also key when it comes to gathering data from outside sources. For example, if you’ve established good communication with the landlord of a building you rent, it will likely be easier to acquire the utility data you need from them to complete your carbon inventory.
- Implement Centralized Data Collection Methods
When you’re collecting different types of data from a wide range of sources, it’s imperative that you implement centralized data collection methods. Automated carbon accounting software is the best way to ensure consistency, prepare for auditing, and create a single source of truth for the organization. Scope 3 supplier data can be particularly inconsistent and tough to acquire. One solution is to provide your suppliers with free carbon accounting software like Persefoni Pro, which allows them to share their data with you efficiently and consistently. Sometimes it may make sense to tap into hands-on support as you juggle all the moving pieces.
- Stay Up-to-Date on Different Reporting Requirements
The climate disclosure environment continues to evolve. Before you begin collecting data, you should make sure you understand which frameworks are relevant for your organization, the data they require, and if there have been any recent updates. The right carbon accounting platform will incorporate the necessary frameworks and standards (with the latest updates) into your calculations. For example, Persefoni Sustainability Reporting enables you to generate your own GHG metrics reports for different frameworks, including CDP, CA SB 253, CSRD, SECR, and ISSB.
Where Does Necessary Data Typically Live in an Organization?
- Finance & Procurement: Supplier invoices, purchasing records, and spend data.
- Facilities & Operations: Energy bills, fuel consumption, HVAC data, waste logs.
- HR & Travel Teams: Employee commuting surveys, business travel logs.
- IT & Data Teams: Software tools tracking emissions, IoT sensors.
- Supply Chain & Logistics: Shipping and transportation records, supplier reports.
Maturing Data and Calculating the Most Accurate Emissions
Establish processes to boost granularity and completeness
If your company has made decarbonization commitments, you’ll likely be working to improve the quality of your carbon inventory over time. This will allow you to identify emissions reduction opportunities and provide more transparency and auditability in your disclosures. You can build your processes to facilitate increasingly granular and complete data. As you work to mature your data, you will likely move through these steps:
Spend-Based Data
If your goal is simply to meet reporting requirements, spend-based emissions estimates will often suffice. But if you’re working to decarbonize, using spend data will create a situation in which the only way to drive down your emissions numbers is to reduce your spending. For high-impact reductions, you’ll need more granular, comprehensive data.
Getting Granular
You’ll need to work with different organizational functions to improve the granularity of your data. For example, if your accounting team categorizes medical purchases in a broad category called “lab supplies,” it may be hard to distinguish between PVC tubing, cotton swabs, and scalpels — each of which has vastly different emissions. If, however, the team tracks lab supplies by the type of plastic procured (and even the percentage of recycled content in that plastic), it will be a lot easier to assign an accurate emissions number.
Actionability
As your data gets more granular and supplier-specific, your ability to take action and drive improvements in your value chain will increase. For example, you might determine that every syringe your company purchases equals 1 kilogram of CO2. You can then make informed decisions about how to best reduce this impact. Rather than simply reducing the company’s spend on syringes (which could make little business sense), or switching to another material, you can work with your syringe supplier to adopt more renewable energy at its facility — driving a broader positive impact.
Building Business Value With Carbon Data
Solving the data collection puzzle is crucial for spurring high-impact emissions reductions. The less time sustainability teams have to spend chasing down data, the more time they’ll have available to design and implement decarbonization measures. Bolstering your team with technology and expert support will free up time to minimize climate impacts and risk — and ultimately build business value.
