At Ecosperity Week: Building a Carbon Data Network for Asia, from Interoperability to Implementation

16 June 2026 –

Carbon data is fast becoming a form of economic currency. As Scope 3 disclosure obligations tighten and green procurement scales across Asia, the question is no longer whether companies need product-level carbon data, but whether that data can actually move, accurately, comparably and securely, between the buyers and suppliers who need it.

That was the throughline of WBCSD Connect, held on Monday, 18 May 2026 as part of the Ecosperity Week 2026. ESGpedia, as a PACT conformant solution and a close partner of SBF, was invited to join the session ‘Building the Carbon Data Network: From Interoperability to Implementation’, co-organised by PACT and Singapore Business Federation (SBF). Our Vice President of Business Development Benjamin (Benji) Tan, presented a live implementation use case alongside CK Chung of SmartTradtz, in a session moderated by Naama Avni-Kadosh, Director of PACT at WBCSD.

Below, we share the most important takeaways from the session and what they mean for companies preparing for a future where carbon data flows through the supply chain.

1. How Carbon data is becoming an economic currency for Asia

The afternoon opened with a panel posing a deliberately pointed question: carbon data is becoming economic currency. Is Asia ready? As regulators, financiers, and large buyers increasingly treat verified carbon data as decision-grade information, the value shifts from simply producing reports to producing data that others can trust, compare and act upon. Decision-grade data, not siloed, one-off exercises, is what turns carbon accounting from a compliance cost into a commercial asset.

That framing set up the core challenge of the implementation session: a single company calculating its own footprint is useful, but the real prize is a network in which that footprint can be shared, verified, and reused by every other player in the supply chain.

2. Rising demand for Scope 3 emissions tracking and product carbon footprints: Public and private drivers

Benji opened by explaining why interest in product carbon footprinting is accelerating, splitting the drivers between public and private demand.

On the public side, green procurement is expanding quickly. The Building and Construction Authority (BCA) has begun setting aside up to 5% of government tenders above S$15 million for green procurement, beginning with the built environment and the MICE sector. The roadmap is clear: by 2028, all sectors of government procurement are expected to include sustainability criteria, and product carbon footprint could become one of them.

On the private side, the pull is coming from large buyers managing their Scope 3 emissions. Constituents of the Straits Times Index (STI) Top 30 already have Scope 3 reporting requirements in place from this year, driving a marked rise in supplier questionnaires and procurement requirements flowing down the supply chain.

This is the practical reality of supply chain ESG: Scope 3 obligations don’t stop at a company’s own operations – they cascade through every tier of the value chain.

Benji shared, “It is not just the manufacturing sector that requires Product Carbon Footprinting. We are seeing demand in the built environment, logistics, and other sectors, whereby more businesses are beginning to ask about it. Looking further ahead, this could eventually extend to service carbon footprinting. There are many avenues.”

3. EPD, PACT PCF, and LCA: One data input, multiple Scope 3 outputs

One of the most common questions ESGpedia receives is how a PACT-aligned PCF relates to an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) or a full Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Benji’s answer reframed the issue: these are not rival standards competing to replace one another.

An EPD remains a mandatory, industry-recognised certification in certain frameworks, under the BCA Green Mark Certification Scheme or the Singapore Green Building Product Certification Scheme by Singapore Green Building Council (SGBC); for example, an EPD may be required for materials such as steel or concrete. PACT is not trying to replace that. PACT is industry-agnostic: a common framework for recognising Global Warming Potential (GWP) values across any company in any sector, with much of the same underlying data.

Benji added, “Can you input your materials data once and generate multiple outputs, a PACT PCF, an EPD, an LCA, any relevant ISO standard, without having to start from scratch each time? That is what we are actively developing.”

4. Scope 3 emissions tracking in action: Integrated Precast Solutions leverages ESGpedia for concrete EPDs

To move the conversation from principle to practice, Benji walked through a built-environment use case: Integrated Pre-cast Solutions (IPS), a Singapore-based manufacturer of ready-mixed and precast concrete with factories in Singapore and Malaysia. Concrete is one of the primary materials on any construction site, which makes it an ideal first test of carbon data interoperability in the built environment.

IPS faced a concrete challenge in both senses: its customers required an EPD, while the wider ecosystem was moving towards a common PCF framework. ESGpedia supported IPS on both, generating and publishing the EPD and structuring the same underlying data into a PACT-aligned PCF covering lifecycle stages A1 to A5, a cradle-to-gate boundary. Crucially, IPS already held most of this data from its EPD work, so it was not a matter of reinventing the wheel, but of structuring existing data within ESGpedia’s digital infrastructure so it could be shared.

ESGpedia then conducted a successful demonstration of sharing IPS’s PCF data through the PACT system, simulating how a footprint moves upstream through the supply chain and how Scope 3 emissions tracking works in practice, from the concrete manufacturer to the main contractor, and then one layer up to the developer.

This matters because, under the BCA Green Mark framework’s Whole Life Carbon section, developers earn points for procuring SGBC-certified products and for materials with a carbon footprint at least 30% below the baseline, a requirement they push down to contractors and material suppliers.

Benji elaborated, “What we showed is just one material in the built environment. In a typical construction project, there can be hundreds, if not thousands, of materials. If we can do it for one, we can scale it to impact more and more suppliers and manufacturers, capturing product carbon footprints in a streamlined way, aligned with the PACT Methodology, and usable by every player in the ecosystem.”

5. The real bottleneck to supply chain ESG is data collection, and grants lower the barrier

A recurring theme across the session was that the hardest part is not the framework, it is getting the underlying data in the first place. Working with both buyers and suppliers, ESGpedia sees the same pain point from both sides: even with a common methodology that specifies the inputs needed to calculate, say, a concrete PCF, the practical question is whether the manufacturer can actually gather the right data in the right way.

Cost is the other barrier, and here Benji pointed to support already available in Singapore. The Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG), which provides up to 50% cost offset for solutions such as ESGpedia’s, meaningfully reduces the barrier to entry for corporations beginning their carbon tracking and sustainability reporting journey.

6. Beyond disclosures: How PCF data transforms Scope 3 tracking, supply chain ESG, green procurement, and financing

Today, most organisations use PCF data primarily for carbon reporting, particularly Scope 3 disclosures. But Benji closed by mapping out where the real value lies as the carbon data network matures:

• Green procurement decision support, helping companies select suppliers based on verified, comparable sustainability and carbon performance.
• Transition financing, using PCF data as a bankable input into financing applications.
• Carbon insetting, monetising low-carbon materials, whether through a price premium, a large customer financing a supplier’s decarbonisation, or generating a carbon asset that can convert into a carbon credit.
• Digital Product Passport (DPP) integration, for materials such as recycled batteries, building a carbon insetting mechanism on top of the DPP allows suppliers to monetise the low-carbon value of their material.

Benji said, “The PCF value is very significant. We simply need to identify and develop the use cases where it becomes truly transformative.”

How ESGpedia supports your carbon data journey

As a PACT conformant solution and a Full Licensee of the Singapore Emissions Factors Registry (SEFR), ESGpedia helps companies move from carbon measurement to carbon data that can be shared and acted upon. Our Carbon Calculator supports both company-level and product-level footprinting, while our sustainability reporting and supply chain ESG tools help buyers and suppliers enhance competitiveness and exchange decision-grade data across the value chain. We are grateful to the PACT team and to SBF, whose partnership brought us into this work.

Looking ahead: from interoperability to implementation

A carbon data network only delivers value if data can actually flow through it. The technology to do that exists today, as the IPS demonstration showed. The task now is to scale it, material by material, supplier by supplier, into a network where a footprint calculated once can be trusted and reused by everyone who needs it.

ESGpedia looks forward to continuing this work with PACT, WBCSD, SBF and the broader ecosystem, and to helping businesses across Asia turn ESG data from a reporting obligation into a genuine source of competitive advantage.

To explore how ESGpedia can support your product carbon footprinting, Scope 3 emissions tracking and reporting, sustainability reporting, supply chain ESG and carbon data needs, speak with one of our sustainability experts.