What is the Open Footprint® Data Model Standard?
The Open Footprint Standard defines a common data model for the management and storage of emissions and other environmental footprint data. The Open Footprint Standard was published in Q2, 2026 (c267). The Standard is designed to support corporate and supply chain emissions data management and compliance with emissions-related regulations by establishing common table structures, relationships, and field definitions that promote consistency, auditability, and data quality across industries.
Benefits
By adopting the Open Footprint Data Model Standard in whole or in part, reporting organizations and their value chain partners across industries yield numerous significant benefits:
- Eases the burden of reporting across multiple regulators with base data
- Reduces the burden on individual companies in developing systems with emissions data management best practices
- Simplifies data integration challenges amongst Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) software, emissions databases, and enterprise IT systems using the standard
- May serve as a translation interface between systems utilizing proprietary data model structures
- Compatibility with Green House Gas (GHG) Protocol, WBCSD PACT, and makes adoption of the data model complementary to ongoing emissions work
- Enables faster realization of value from emissions data
- Provides the emissions data backbone for an organization. enabling a modern data architecture to be built, and faster enablement of AI use on this critical data
Data Model Architecture
The high-level architecture of the date model is depicted below. For complete details, please refer to the standard.
JSON Schemas
To enable data architects, sustainability professionals, software developers, and others to get started more quickly with using and getting value from the Open Footprint Standard, the Open Footprint Forum has created JSON schemas, which may be downloaded from our library, here.