Sustainability and technology industry leaders and collaborators – IoT Alliance Australia (IoTAA), the Carbon Market Institute (CMI), Ai Group (Australian Industry Group), Climateworks Centre and the Tech Council – are calling on Australia’s federal, state and territory governments to coordinate support and funding for an industry-led trusted climate and nature data plan (trusted data plan) that will uplift Australia’s data capabilities to support investment confidence in the net zero and nature positive transformation.
The trusted data plan would support businesses and government agencies alike to meet the growing number of inter-related, data-dependent reporting frameworks that are arising under policies and programs related to Australia’s decarbonisation, net zero, clean tech and nature-positive plans.
These policies include mandatory climate-related financial disclosure and the Sustainable Finance Strategy, as well as existing regulations such as the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting (NGER) Scheme, and possible future reporting requirements that may arise from the incoming sectoral decarbonisation plans, the economy-wide Net Zero Plan, and the potential development of an Australian carbon border adjustment mechanism.
The trusted data plan would consider and complement existing government initiatives for improved data, such as Environment Information Australia, coordinating the following essential actions:
- Set internationally aligned national data standards that define the trusted data needed across government focus sectors, including Scope 3 supply chain data to support business decisions. These standards should specify electronic reporting formats and tagging using a taxonomy to enable data portability and validation.
- Lower the cost of data collection and management by setting principles for data practices and tools, including analytics, automation and AI, to meet the data requirements in a cost-effective way.
- Streamline and support interoperability and data sharing between existing platforms and tools in Australia, including the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Environment Information Australia, Australian Carbon Credit Unit Scheme and Nature Repair Market unit and project registers.
- Raise business awareness and capability through education and training and building capacity to digitally collect and manage sustainability data. By progressing a national data platform that aligns carbon, nature and other environmental data for business decision-making that drives Australia’s net zero and nature positive transformation.
- Support supply chain SMEs to uplift their data capabilities with technology that streamlines reporting processes and standardises the collection, management and reporting of sustainability data to meet the needs of large organisations’ Scope 3 reporting obligations.
- Create trusted data-sharing models to support data transparency and Scope 3 emissions data sharing, handle sensitive information appropriately, drive sectoral transition, and address greenwashing.
The goal of the trusted data plan would be to ensure that current and planned reporting initiatives become cheaper and easier to navigate – both for businesses working to comply, and governments working to administer.
Background
In September 2022, the Australian Government enacted the Climate Change Act 2022. This law commits Australia to a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and achieving net zero emissions by 2050. The Government has also declared its ambition to build a nature positive economy and for Australia to become a world leader in clean technology.
Trusted, reliable quantitative data is critical achieving these commitments because it:
- Provides timely, shared and sufficiently granular information on how we’re travelling in meeting decarbonisation, nature-related and other targets
- Informs businesses, government, investors and users where to focus investment and guides confident decision-making
While the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) has delivered its initial internationally aligned Australian Sustainability Reporting Standards (ASRS) to support mandatory climate-related financial disclosure, Australia is lagging in its collection and sharing of trusted data, industry capacity to deliver, and its ambition to overcome these challenges. This will seriously impede our ability to achieve net zero and nature positive goals.
Action is needed now to ensure reliability and confidence in climate and nature related information to:
- Unlock the power of market-based incentives to drive the emissions reductions and nature positive transition
- Streamline business sustainability reporting requirements
- Accelerate the pace of transition
- Advance the future net zero, nature positive economy
- Increase confidence in Australia’s net zero and nature positive credentials
IoT Alliance Australia CEO Frank Zeichner, said, “Industry is ready to step up and plug the net zero information and data gap articulated by the Climate Change Authority. Let’s not fail Australia’s net zero ambition because there’s no data to support it.”
IoT Alliance Australia (IoTAA) is partnering with Carbon Market Institute on a national campaign to kickstart the development of a national plan for digitally enabled emissions data capture and management.
