Most companies trying to report on their sustainability performance hit the same wall: the data simply isn’t there. A new ACCA report, drawn from eight global roundtables with finance and sustainability professionals, argues that’s fine, provided the resulting estimates are done properly and explained honestly.
The report walks through how organisations are filling gaps in emissions and other sustainability data when direct measurement isn’t possible. Common workarounds include using proxy data from similar sites or activities, deriving figures from existing financial records such as fuel invoices or bills of materials, and applying industry-standard conversion factors when local ones don’t exist. One case study describes a storage company estimating emissions at sites with no meter data by using energy use per unit of floor space and headcount at comparable locations; another describes a consumer goods firm working out packaging waste from its bill of materials and supplier invoices.
The report is candid about the risks. Proxy data that is itself modelled, rather than measured, becomes less useful the more removed it gets from a specific site or activity, and companies too reliant on it can struggle to tell whether they’re making genuine progress. Its message to preparers is to be transparent about assumptions, revisit estimates as better data becomes available, and invest in the systems, training, and cross-functional coordination between finance and sustainability teams that estimating well requires.
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