Consultants helping clients to develop emissions data strategies, collect, convert, and harmonize data across supply chains, and prepare for emissions reporting are important parts of the overall emissions ecosystem.
Just as audit firms provide audit services to support financial reporting by companies in support of Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and other regulations, so too are they providing audits in support of sustainability standards from the SASB, and the ISSB. This will become increasingly important over time, and the audit firms will want to understand how their client firms calculate their GHG emissions for Scope1/2/3. The availability of auditable data will not only facilitate compliance with sustainability standards but also enhance comparability and consistency across industries, enabling informed decision-making.
The Open Footprint Standard is the adaptable emissions data model that will provide a universal integration protocol amongst data and software platforms across the value chain, leading to reduced costs in customer implementation, data collection and consolidation, and improved data quality. The data model is designed to support auditors, assurance providers, and corporate compliance teams with data lineage supporting visibility of data across the data life cycle, permissions access for verifiers, and support for assurance control checks.
Consulting organizations, auditors, and assurance firms benefit by:
- Growing their client base and strengthening client retention through usage of the Open Footprint Standard
- Reduce client costs from manual efforts to collect and manage data
- Improve quality and efficiency of assurance processes
- Support assurance parties review and validation of client data with transparent emissions data, source, lineage, and calculation.
- Reduce client cost and effort to support assurance
- Increased efficiency for assurance providers strengthens cost competitiveness