Every business starting out on their carbon data journey will be faced with the difficult question: “How can I ensure that I have good quality carbon data?”
High-quality emissions data is crucial for ensuring accurate carbon accounting, regulatory compliance and effective decarbonization strategies, as it allows organizations to set realistic, science-based targets and identify emission gaps for improvement. Ultimately this increases stakeholder trust and supports informed investment decisions. Without sufficient data quality, flawed strategies, ineffective investments and reputational damage could ensue.
For example: Calculating laptop emissions with actual supplier activity data helped us understand the full lifecycle of the product emissions, which informed our strategy to extend the lifetime use of laptops.
Why it matters
The Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB S2) and Australian Sustainability Reporting Standards (ASRS) require companies to include detailed Scope 3 emissions data in their disclosures. Industry analysts suggest that many first-time reporters are currently working with reasonable estimates, a practice likely to face greater interrogation as climate reporting matures.
This broader climate of scrutiny has already led several companies to make public revisions to their sustainability claims. Thirteen energy retailers have been questioned over ambiguous carbon-neutral statements, and Apple has scaled down its Watch-related environmental marketing. Other firms, such as EnergyAustralia, have publicly acknowledged previous “greenwashing” errors¹.
Our journey
Thoughtworks started its carbon data journey, as many organizations do, with only spend/financial data to work with. One of the goals for the team was to shift from spend data to more accurate data, known as activity data. This could be energy (in kWh), travel (in km), or product-specific metrics (e.g., supplier data for Apple laptops).
Ideally, all suppliers would define their activity data and make this available to all downstream users and stakeholders, but this is not always possible. In these cases we rely on our own efforts to try and improve data quality.
Since 2021, Thoughtworks has been reporting on our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and one of our goals is to ensure we improve our data quality. The focus is on our top-emitting categories in Scope 3, starting with travel and laptops.
Travel
Business travel is our highest emission category, consistent with any global consulting company. Working with activity data from our travel management platform companies (TMCs) and improving our emissions factors for airfares and hotels, we were able to transition from spend-based to activity-based tracking, resulting in a 9% reduction in reported emissions through improved data granularity.
We achieved this by using our TMC mileage and cost data to derive a more accurate emission factor, giving us more precise reporting.
Laptops
In 2024, we introduced strategies to reduce our laptop emissions by extending device lifespans from three to four years, as well as identifying and introducing lower-emission models for non-technical roles. In addition, our supplier, Apple, provided full lifecycle emissions data for our laptops, giving us greater visibility into the impact of our hardware choices. Together, these changes helped us achieve a significant 34% reduction in laptop-related emissions by December 2025.
Cloud Usage
With the use of our Cloud Carbon Footprint (CCF) tool, we were able to calculate our cloud usage and look at ways to optimize our cloud emissions. In one case, our Global IT Services team achieved 46% in cost savings and a 60% reduction in emissions².
To deliver these results, the team implemented several CCF recommendations:
Switching to serverless architectures.
Using a CDN to host the frontend.
Retiring unused services.
Refining configurations and optimized (e.g., schedule jobs for low emissions times).
As of 2025 and focusing on optimizing our cloud usage infrastructure, we were able to deliver a 1% direct reduction in emissions through enhanced resource efficiency on cloud services.
Towards our targets
These changes might not seem like a lot, but increments add up, and this is definitely an improvement of data quality — and confidence in our accuracy — that we will continue to build on. We’re not aiming for perfection, but simply to improve and evolve to provide the best, most accurate picture of our carbon footprint as we work toward our SBTi targets.
Footnotes
¹https://cfotech.com.au/story/climate-reporting-standards-put-it-emissions-under-close-scrutiny#:~:text=For%20organisations%2C%20technology%20procurement%2C%20use,reports%20and%20meet%20board%20expectations
² Example from 2023: Reducing cloud emissions by 60%
Disclaimer: The statements and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Thoughtworks.