SAP’s newest solution designed to deliver standardized sustainability data is anchored on the tech giant’s experience from Catena-X as one of the founding members.
One of the key highlights of the recently concluded SAP Sapphire 2023 conference in Orlando was the introduction of another breakthrough initiative around sustainability. Dubbed the green ledger, the concept deepens SAP’s efforts in sustainability measurement by natively integrating financial and environmental data to enable leaders to make more informed and effective decisions to help future-proof their businesses.
Five decades after revolutionizing financial accounting with the SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, the German company is expanding the meaning of “R” to sustainability with a new approach to transactional carbon accounting through the green ledger concept. Green ledger will be embedded into RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, with new capabilities in every release such as a new way to embed carbon data that would cover significant scope categories into product-level costing.
Supporting SAP’s green ledger initiative, the ERP company introduced a new solution that champions the exchange of carbon footprint data along the value chain. Named SAP Sustainability Data Exchange, the new platform enables companies to share standardized sustainability data, including carbon emissions, with their clients to help decarbonize value chains.
Standardizing Sustainability Data
The latest sustainability platform is part of the SAP Business Network and was built using the technical framework of GreenToken by SAP, an application powered by the SAP Cloud Platform Blockchain service, which utilizes an energy-efficient form of blockchain to notarize and transfer carbon emissions from one supply chain member’s wallet to another.
Nitin Jain, general manager of GreenToken by SAP and SAP Sustainability Data Exchange, highlighted that SAP continuously discovers innovative solutions that deliver value as a champion of a sustainable future. He said:
“Our launch of SAP Sustainability Data Exchange is a testament to this commitment. By leveraging our expertise and resources, we have developed a cutting-edge platform application that lets organizations share product carbon information with their customers and vendors, empowering our customers to measure and reduce their carbon footprint while promoting transparency throughout the supply chain. With this new offering, we are setting a new standard in sustainability and paving the way for a more sustainable future.”
Utilizing the carbon data interoperability standards established by the Partnership for Carbon Transparency (PACT) hosted by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), SAP Sustainability Data Exchange allows sustainability data sharing within organizations on this platform and interoperability with other equivalent networks. Companies can use the new sustainability solution to share data securely together with SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, a cloud-native solution built on SAP Business Technology Platform (SAP BTP) that helps enterprises to calculate and analyze their carbon footprint, or with their existing solution that calculates carbon footprints.
The launch of the platform reflects SAP’s Catena-X and Confinity-X background. The Catena-X Automotive Network is the world’s first open and collaborative data ecosystem, pioneering a new way of working with automotive industry stakeholders. In partnership with WBCSD, Catena-X adopted a framework and data model designed to calculate the CO2 emissions of a wide range of industry sectors and activities.
SAP Sustainability Data Exchange will be generally available in Q3 of 2023 following the beta version, which is available now.
