Three data hurdles businesses face as COP31 turns to implementation    

COP31 is aiming for a little less talk and a lot more action.

In his first letter to parties, President-Designate Murat Kurum promised this year’s convention will have an implementation-focused approach that will transform commitments into measurable results.

Implementing climate action has been the theme around the sustainability circuit this year. At its core, implementation is a matter of evidence: regulators, lenders, investors, and customers all demand to see proof of action.

The message I’m bringing to Antalya this year is there is no more time to wait. Corporate sustainability regulations are spreading across jurisdictions and the cost of inaction – literal and opportunity – is rising.

The evidence of urgency borders on overwhelming. Last month, leading insurance executives wrote that premiums will inevitably rise and coverage is likely to disappear, leading to an increase in uninsured losses due to climate change.

Against this backdrop of uncertainty, businesses need to know where their assets are at risk, and how to weigh the cost of protecting those assets against the risk of losing them.

Spoiler alert: It all comes back to data.

The ‘Implementation COP’ is a demand for data

Regulatory fragmentation and using industry average data can make compliance more challenging and more expensive.

Compliance is, however, just the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface is the much larger data value. When sustainability data is connected to products and suppliers, and across departments, it can provide much more accurate operational insights and financial forecasts.

Understanding the challenges and implementing the appropriate data foundation can help your business thrive in the implementation era.

Challenge No. 1: Regulatory fragmentation

Different jurisdictions and different standards are generally all asking for different variations of the same sustainability data. The underlying problem is that one dataset or one emissions inventory isn’t compatible with every framework. If you’re reporting in multiple places, a central data management system can help format and route data to the correct place.

Standard setters and regulators are taking steps to reduce the reporting burden, but with requirements that cover everything from carbon emissions to deforestation and climate risk exposure, staying compliant quickly becomes cumbersome and repetitive.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol and the International Organization for Standardization are consolidating their emissions reporting standards to reduce the reporting burden on companies, and ultimately help accelerate decarbonization. An integrated public consultation is planned for the second quarter of 2027 with hopes to release the final standards by the fourth quarter of 2028. Until then, the existing standards remain in force, so there is no reason to hold off on getting your data house in order.

“Consistent, credible emissions data is not only important for reporting, it can also help companies identify where efficiencies and emissions reductions can be made, inform operational and investment decisions, and provide customers with clearer information about lower-carbon products,” said a GHG Protocol-ISO spokesperson.

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems that understand the different regulatory disclosures can manage a lot of the interoperability challenges.

“With AI, we can achieve interoperability a lot easier,” said Angel Hsu, associate professor of public policy at University of California at Chapel Hill, and founding director of the Data-Driven EnviroLab. “AI won’t solve all of our interoperability problems, however. Leaving AI agents to determine which data pieces match can pose a lot of risks.”

A combination of AI assistance with a central data system and human oversight can help overcome fragmentation hurdles. SAP Sustainability Tower is built for this: it centralizes carbon and ESG data in a single solution that supports reporting under frameworks such as EU’s CSRD, California’s climate regulations and the ISSB’s IFRS standards, with AI-assisted ESG report generation.

Challenge No. 2: Data accuracy

The two main options for reporting data are industry averages or primary data directly from the supplier.

Industry averages have the obvious benefit of being easily collected and calculated, therefore reducing the reporting burden. It’s a bit of a false front, however, because averages don’t provide the insights that can drive competitive transformation, they don’t reward efforts to reduce supply chain emissions, and they cost businesses more in carbon border taxes. Averages can also be far off the mark: BCG has found that industry-average ESG data can vary by 30 to 40 percent or more from actual values.

A growing list of goods imported into the EU are subject to the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). Default emission values under CBAM are deliberately conservative, and most of them carry a built-in mark-up of 10 percent in 2026, rising to 20 percent in 2027 and 30 percent from 2028, designed to push importers toward actual data.

Primary data puts businesses in control of their emissions inventory and includes the direct incentive to implement decarbonization strategies. While collecting primary data from thousands of suppliers is a logistical challenge, the insights are invaluable. Businesses can unlock those insights with a supplier data exchange system.

Challenge No. 3: Disconnected data

“A company might have a detailed emissions inventory, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the information is being used to make procurement decisions, prioritize investments, or evaluate the effectiveness of emissions reduction measures,” said Hsu.

Sustainability data that can’t interact with other corporate data is useful for reporting but fragile for decision making. If companies want accurate scenario planning that considers carbon, costs, compliance, and resiliency trade-offs, internally connected data is essential.

Businesses need a system that takes information from purchase orders, invoices and other documents and connects the data across departments. However, sustainability data that stays in the sustainability department remains isolated from procurement, finance and operations teams, providing an incomplete evaluation of the true cost of decisions.

SAP Green Ledger does this for carbon: it applies the principles of double-entry accounting to emissions, giving carbon data the same structure, controls and traceability as financial data.

Implementation starts with better data management

At COP31, governments are being asked to show what their climate commitments have delivered. Business leaders must be ready to do the same. The companies leading on implementation stop treating sustainability data as a reporting exercise and start managing it with the same rigor and controls as financial data.

SAP’s data systems connect corporate data from different departments, down to the transaction and product level. With built-in AI capabilities and supplier data, SAP simplifies reporting and provides the data insights that balance carbon, cost and compliance.

Data is where SAP is strongest: after more than five decades of running the processes that businesses depend on, in 2026 SAP was named a Leader for the second time in the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Carbon Accounting and Management Applications.

Implementation starts with data, and the reasons to wait have run out.

Read more about SAP sustainability solutions here.