SAN FRANCISCO, CA & LONDON, UK, May 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Watershed, the leading enterprise sustainability platform, today announced Open CEDA, a free version of its global emissions factor database the Comprehensive Environmental Data Archive (CEDA). The database, which covers 148 countries, 400 industries, and 95% of global GDP, aims to address critical gaps in emissions reporting data to inform more impactful climate action at the private, nonprofit, academic, and public sector levels. Open CEDA will be available at openceda.org. 

Organizations and companies unable to access comprehensive databases face a barrier to high-quality data, leaving sustainability programs reliant on regionally skewed and outdated data that can impede climate progress. Of the companies reporting to CDP in the 2023 cycle, 75% appeared to be using datasets that were disproportionately skewed to one country, misrepresenting the true geographic distribution of their operations. This is a challenge for organizations with global supply chains where the difference in emissions across countries can be up to 70% higher in some industries. Without an emissions database that comprises the full range of global energy scenarios across a supply chain, companies are wrestling with how to best measure emissions values and make progress on scope 3.

“Simply put, better data leads to better decisions,” said Christian Anderson, Watershed co-founder. “By opening up CEDA to the public, we hope to give organizations of all sizes a more accurate foundation from which to make critical choices about their sustainability action. We believe harmonizing measurement methodologies across more parts of the global economy will help accelerate the transition to a new climate-informed economy.”

CEDA has been used by hundreds of global enterprises including Johnson & Johnson, Stripe, and BBVA, and its impact is evident across multiple types of businesses. Using CEDA's country-specific emissions data, one Watershed customer identified opportunities to reduce its supply chain emissions by 30% through procurement shifts to more sustainable suppliers in Mexico, Canada, and Italy. Watershed will continue to offer a paid version of CEDA that includes additional features.


Joining Watershed in the launch and use of Open CEDA is a collection of partners across industries including standard-setters, open data advocates, and organizations already putting Open CEDA to use. 

Statements from Open CEDA partners

The Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI) provides open access to sustainability data to organizations, researchers, and practitioners worldwide. ASDI is part of Amazon's Sustainability Exchange—a resource hub for companies of all sizes to access tools, playbooks, and program information—and helps to accelerate environmental innovation by reducing the traditional time and cost barriers associated with acquiring and analyzing high-value sustainability information. This initiative helps to equip the global community with the data, technical resources, and tools needed to develop innovative solutions to pressing environmental challenges, enabling more effective collaboration and impact.

“Access to high-quality environmental data is important for companies to take meaningful climate action across all sectors,” said Michelle Jolly, director of Sustainability Solutions at Amazon. “The Exchange is working to democratize access to tools and learnings to address our shared climate challenges. By incorporating Open CEDA into the Exchange and ASDI, we're helping to reduce barriers to accessing emissions data that organizations of all sizes need to make informed sustainability decisions.”

Open CEDA is available on the Amazon Sustainability Exchange here.

“Access to (secondary) emission factor databases is essential for financial institutions to begin accounting for emissions from their financial activities and to address gaps where reported emissions are unavailable,” said Arjun Ganguly of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF). “The decision to make the CEDA database freely accessible is a welcome step towards supporting these efforts, as it reduces the barrier to start carbon accounting for financial institutions across the globe regardless of size and budget.”

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is one of the first organizations to use Open CEDA, deploying it in a research paper on the distribution and concentration of greenhouse gas emissions sources through global supply chains.

“We use Open CEDA to analyze and inform strategy on different industry sectors. The inclusion of land sector emissions and geographic resolution is critical to developing comprehensive approaches across global emissions sources. Making this tool public will inform better decisions across companies and nongovernmental organizations and enable more action,” said Martha Stevenson, senior director of strategy and research for forests at WWF-US.

+++

ABOUT WATERSHED: Watershed is the enterprise sustainability platform. Companies like Airbnb, Carlyle Group, FedEx, Visa, and Dr. Martens use Watershed to manage climate and ESG data, produce audit-ready metrics for voluntary and regulatory reporting, and drive real decarbonization. Watershed is the platform of choice for companies seeking to reduce emissions, meet customer, investor and regulatory requirements, and modernize their sustainability programs. Watershed customers also have exclusive access to a marketplace of pre-vetted, high-quality carbon projects and groundbreaking virtual power purchase agreements.

Amelia Penniman
Watershed
amelia@watershed.com