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Open Footprint Forum

OFP Data Model Introduction

Bertrand Rioux

TWRVNS Consulting

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Data Model Principles & Objectives

Cover all types of emissions with plans to extend to other natural resources (e.g., water, land, biodiversity)

Provide structured definitions for data exchange, processing, and storage
Harmonize terminology across GHG reporting standards and frameworks
Provide Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to store, access and share data records.

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Data Model Sharing Ecosystem

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Data Object Groups

Reference-data:

Does not change frequently. Classifies business data (e.g., Country, City, Unit of Measure, Emission Category)

FIXED: cannot be extended/changed, except by the governing authority

OPEN: provided by forum and can be extended by operators

LOCAL: can be extended or entirely replaced by the operators.

Master-data:

Objects linked to a company’s business processes that evolves overtime.

E.g., Equipment, Facility, Product, Organization, Standard, Contact Person

Work-product-component

Measurements or observations from a business process (master-data).

E.g., Emission Factor, Emission Parameter Value, Emission Report, Product Carbon Footprint

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Data Model Object Structure

OFP JSON Schema

Access Control Lists

Legal Tags

Entity Specific Data Attributes

ID, Description, Relationships, …

Other metadata and shared Attributes

Create/modify user & time, ancestry, version,

Technical & Reporting Assurance

Policy Services

🡨 Entitlements

Compliance 🡪

Ingestion Workflow Services

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Data Model Domains & Flow

Organizational Structures

and Assets Domain

Product Value Chain Domain

Emission Calculation

and Recording Domain

Reporting Domain

Organizational Structure and Asset: The components of an Organization (company) in relation to its location, industry, other organizations, and legal entities. This includes how reporting boundaries are applied to the emission activities of the organization’s facilities and equipment.

Product Value Chain: Covers how activity emission data are recorded along a product’s lifecycle into final PCF statements. Products are expressed as inputs and outputs, including all their lifecycle stages and emission activity flows used in multiple PCF outcomes.

Emission Calculation and Recording: Describes how Calculation Models are used to structure emission activities and factors into final emission statements. This provide the basis for decision making and regulatory compliance following recognized standards.

Recording: Structuring of Emission Statements into standardize reports aligned with international reporting standards.

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Organizational Structures and Assets Domain

Organization Associations

Contact Person

Location/address

External Identifiers & Sector Type

Standard Governance

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Organizational Structures: Boundary & Inventory

Consolidation approaches

Operational/financial control
Equity share

Facility & Equipment

Emission Inventory & Activity

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Product Value Chain Domain

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach to evaluate impact of a product

Product Lifecyle: collection of emission activates for each stage of a PCF
Product Emission Activities: define Products as inputs of activities
Emission Factor Source: used to calculate emissions across the PCF stages

Calculate emission activity parameters (direct emissions)
Estimate indirect emissions

Product Carbon Footprint: the final PCF statement based on the Pathfinder technical specifications

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Product Value Chain Domain

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Product Value Chain Domain

Product Life Cycle ID	Product ID		Emission Activity (Flow) ID
Product Life Cycle ID	Input	Output	Emission Activity (Flow) ID
1: Material Extraction		1. Natural Gas	1. Gas flaring 2. Methane leakage
1: Material Extraction	2. Fuel	3. Raw Materials	3. Fuel combustion
2: Manufacturing	1. Natural Gas, 3. Raw Materials	4. Materials	4. Fuel combustion
3: Packaging & Transport	4. Materials	5. Packaged Materials	5. Fuel combustion

PCF Statement (Pathfinder)
Emissions: Biogenic, Exempted, Fossil, Land, Packaging Declared Unit & Unitary product Amount 🡪 Final PCF Period Start/End Geography Data Quality Indicator

Emission Factors
Indirect emission estimates Direct emission activity calculation

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Emission Calculation & Recording Domain

Emission Calculation Model: describe the calculations applied to parameters and factors to produce Emission Statements

Identify methodologies 🡪 provenance, transparency, trust.
Re-used and shared within and between organizations
Apply best practice to calculations in a consistent/meaningful way

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Emission Calculation & Recording Domain

Unit of Measure (UoM):

conventional name adopted from a standard, e.g., UoM Standard – Energistics

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Reporting Domain

Generate accurate, comprehensive, and transparent reports

Relay emission statements to internal ESG departments (e.g., Net Zero plan)
Provide data to regulators to comply with filling requirements

Reporting Standards

GHG Protocol (Corporate, Value Chain (Scope 3), Product Lifecycle, Project Protocol)
ISO 14064, ISO 14067, ISO 14025, GRI 305, CDP

Compliance legislation

EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CRSD)
UK’s Companies Climate-related Financial Disclosure, 2022
Australia’s National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) Act 2007

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Reporting Domain: Reporting Standards

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OFP ecosystem overview

The data ecosystem is broken down into 3 user segments

The figure identifies the ecosystem components by user segment and role, illustrating where the OFP standard and various data model instances (green diamonds) establish the links between them.

Blue diamonds represent non-OFP data interconnectors used by existing transfer methods to communicate with regulators or reporting frameworks.

Each segment involves a stage in the data lifecycle.

management of data sources internal to the organization or from external Suppliers.
Data governance mechanisms within the Organization address how source data and reports are compiled internally or shared
How source data is aggregated & analyzed to formulate metrics and final reports relayed to the Organization’s partners and consumers.

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Ecosystem: Sources and Suppliers

Facility & equipment data collected internally or by an external supplier

Measured sources (combustion) and sinks (technical or natural storage)

Estimated using emission factors applied to operational or financial data

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Ecosystem: Aggregation & analysis

Business units compile source data into statements and reports
Output key metrics to unlock business value

Carbon credits for emission reduction & offsetting
Compliance reporting for emission pricing & taxation
Design of financial products/contracts for technical offset projects
Voluntary reporting for differentiated commodities

🡪 Premiums for commodities with lower carbon footprint

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Ecosystem: Data governance

Internal policies defining how data is shared within and outside an organization.
Assurance 🡪 provenance, transparency, trust.

Technical assurance (data suitability)

Verification of the quantitative aggregation & analysis

Reporting assurance (validity of statements)

Qualitative: reasonable, limited, none

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Ecosystem: Consumers

Government purchasing authorities and reporting agencies
ESG rating agencies
Certificate registries that issue sustainability labels

MiQ or S&P Global methane performance certificates for natural gas
Consumer Carbon Footprint labels

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Key Takeaways

A standard data model and reference API for data exchange, processing, and storage

Enable organizations to capture and share emissions data in a concise, coherent and standardized way

Harmonize terminology across GHG reporting standards and frameworks

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Thank You!

Bertrand Rioux