Data has a huge role to play in delivering net zero by 2050.
Reliable data is vital for verifying that organisations are meeting their sustainability commitments. Investors depend on it to shift their investments towards greener companies, while innovation in energy production will hinge on the smart use of data.
But despite generating huge quantities of data every day, we’re not making the most of it. Take data about companies’ emissions. It’s languishing in spreadsheets, carbon calculators, smart meters and other siloes. Even when organisations do share their emissions data, it’s generally seen as an exercise in after-the-fact reporting.
Databases of low quality, out-of-date information are not a foundation for developing new products or technologies, or unlocking new markets.
When it comes to net zero, data is everywhere, just not where we need it.
At IB1, we don’t try to bring ‘all the data into one place’, as others attempt. Nor do we host data or seek to provide analysis services using it.
Instead, we [orchestrate] [schemes] of [data governance] that enable groups of organisations to share continuous flows of well-structured, assurable data with one another.
Governance
Our focus on [data governance] is driven by the view that making data work harder for net zero isn’t a technology challenge.
Rather than a deficit of data or technologies to manage it, it’s a deficit of effective processes for groups of organisations to come together, cooperate on and set the terms of data sharing that’s really holding us back.
“Incentives in our organisations and society prompt us to beaver away on our own. Collaboration is the catalyst of innovation, [but] we often struggle to practice it when it comes to overcoming complex challenges and making efforts towards positive social progress”. – Miranda Dixon, Brink
As with other collective action problems, only good governance can align fragmented interests, enable collaboration and facilitate shared investment.
In our work, governance is an ongoing process. The execution of this process produces decisions that enable data sharing to take place. In practice, this involves establishing principles, defining clear roles and responsibilities, and agreeing priorities and tasks. It also involves collaborating to create artefacts to express and enforce these decisions, such as legal agreements and technical standards.
We have a particular approach to organising data governance at IB1. We use a tiered system of Steering, Advisory and Working Groups to bring organisations together. These groups work together to agree and adopt:
- User needs & impact: commercial priorities, business cases, and prospective new products and services.
- Technical infrastructure: shared ontologies, APIs, schemas and standards to support data exchange.
- Licensing & legal: data sharing agreements, modes of redress and liability frameworks.
- Engagement & communications: common language, stakeholder engagement and recruitment.
- Policy: alignment with corporate policy and industry regulations.
Participation in this process can be either voluntary (initiated by the market), or mandatory (demanded by regulators).
Our approach is inspired by the UK’s Open Banking ecosystem, which enabled data to be shared in new ways across banks and other financial services. It now has 10 million users and is projected to sustain a $12bn market of data-driven products and services. This change has been achieved not by building a big, centralised database of customer banking data, but by governing who should access it and how it should flow.
Schemes
As well as neglecting governance, attempts to build databases of net zero data fail because they try to be all things to all people.
In a 2024 talk, Building scalable public data sets for scientific innovation, John Wilbanks described how effective data systems generally begin life by addressing a small set of very specific primary uses, before evolving to enable more over time:
“No one has ever built a complex data system by setting out to build a complex data system [from day one]. You build one by answering five questions at a time, using a standards based approach… And then when you’re able to answer twenty, you’ll have a functioning complex data system”.
We agree that specificity is a necessary condition for effective data sharing. We enable groups of organisations to come together around tightly-focused challenges or use cases related to net zero, which we refer to as [schemes].
Our flagship scheme, Perseus, enables small-and-medium sized businesses to share granular emissions data from their smart meter systems with banks and other lenders. By providing lenders with the accurate and assurable data they need, the scheme enables participating businesses to access loans and other finance to help reduce their emissions.
Perseus isn’t trying to cast a net around all sustainability data, or work for every company. It demonstrates how good governance—anchored around a very specific goal —can unlock data from the real economy and put it to use for net zero.
Orchestration
We don’t have a monopoly on this view of data governance. But we think groups of organisations can go further, more quickly with our [orchestration].
We provide and maintain the following Trust Services to enable schemes like Perseus to function:
- A machine-readable rulebook that codifies how data can be shared within the scheme.
- An approach for verifying which organisations can take part in the scheme.
- An open directory of the organisations that have been verified to take part in the scheme.
- An approach for monitoring and assuring that access to data within the scheme adheres to the agreed rulebook.
- An open catalogue of the data that is made available within the scheme.
None of the services we provide rely on particular software or a singular technology vendor. What we deploy depends on the needs of the scheme. Data access can be enabled by API, more advanced privacy enhancing technologies… even fax machine. (Although we wouldn’t recommend the latter.) What’s important is that the solution meets our NOVA principles: a Networked, Open, Verifiable Architecture.
Our non-profit status is another key element of this work. There’s a risk that the direction of data use will be dictated by commercial actors, if schemes are left to the market alone. Our approach at IB1 ensures that no individual or entity can take disproportionate control of net zero data, and that end user needs rather than organisational agendas drive progress.
We’re glad the importance of this orchestrating role is now being recognised. A recent analysis of ‘data spaces’ being built across the European Union found that successful efforts have an independent organisation at the centre:
“It is crucial to have a neutral orchestrator facilitating the exchanges between participants before the operations and governance of a data ecosystem solidifies.
The orchestrator should prioritise use cases, map business value creation, test business models, and set up governance models. During the operation phase, the focus will shift toward onboarding, enforcing the rules, ensuring the governance works as it should, and scaling up”.
Infrastructure for real progress
Making data work harder for net zero ultimately depends on trust, coordination, and infrastructure that works across organisations.
Ever-bigger, centralised databases won’t get us there. What we urgently need are well-orchestrated schemes of data governance that enable decision grade data to flow.
But making this shift requires resources—and partners.
If you’re working along the same lines, or if you’re looking to fund the infrastructure that underpins real progress on net zero, join us.
Reach out via: icebreaking@ib1.org