The Open Group, a vendor-neutral technology and standards organisation, has announced the publication of the Open Footprint Standard, Edition 1.0. The new technical release is designed to help enterprises streamline the management and disclosure of Scopes 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions.
The publication represents the first open-source emissions data model to encompass all three reporting scopes within a unified framework. The architecture allows multinational corporations to aggregate and standardise carbon data across complex supply chains and generate compliant disclosures for multiple legal jurisdictions.
Steve Nunn, President and Chief Executive Officer of The Open Group, highlighted the operational inefficiencies the standard aims to solve: “There is an urgent need to streamline emissions data management and reduce the manual effort required to capture data within supply chains, perform data conversion, and report out to various regulators. The Open Footprint Standard removes friction and lowers cost, helping organisations identify emissions reduction opportunities.”
The Open Footprint Standard introduces unified emissions data definitions to replace the fragmented, manual spreadsheet reporting processes currently used by many compliance teams. By establishing standardised data relationships, the model facilitates secure interoperability and automated data sharing between corporate buyers and upstream suppliers.
The framework is mapped to ensure compliance with major international greenhouse gas regulations, including the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), California’s Senate Bill 253 (SB 253), and the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) rules. It also aligns with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) PACT V3 Product Carbon Footprints specifications, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and relevant ISO standards.
According to Sammy Lakshmanan, Co-chair of the Open Footprint Forum, the standard establishes the structural foundation required for modern data architectures: “Large enterprises today are focused on deriving value from their carbon data and applying AI using modern and integrated data architectures. The Open Footprint Standard is a foundational element in building an AI-ready carbon management data structure that enables organisations to spend more time on driving business outcomes and less on handling data.”
The standard is divided into two operational sections to support software development and database integration. Part 1 defines the general architectural requirements of the data model, whilst Part 2 delivers a comprehensive data element dictionary.
To expedite corporate deployment, the Open Footprint Forum has released a supporting suite of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) schema files. These files allow corporate IT departments and software vendors to construct compliant database instances directly using the Open Footprint Data Model structure.
AJ Van de Voort, Co-chair of the Open Footprint Forum, emphasised the regulatory importance of lifecycle data integrity: “Accountability in emissions reporting starts with data integrity. By standardising how we capture and manage emissions data throughout its entire lifecycle, we are enabling the level of traceability and verification that modern regulatory landscapes—and stakeholders—now demand.”
