Supply chain data has long been the Achilles’ heel of corporate climate action. It can get complex, fragmented, and opaque. But as Scope 3 emissions dominate corporate footprints and regulatory pressure mounts, data transparency is no longer optional. It’s strategic.
In a conversation with Terrascope’s Director of Sustainability Lia Nicholson, Anna Stanley-Radière, Director for Climate Transparency at WBCSD, shared insights into the Partnership for Carbon Transparency (PACT), a pragmatic, tech-agnostic initiative toward making Scope 3 data exchange actionable and auditable across value chains.
Here are four key learnings from their discussion:
Anna’s career arc, from intellectual property law to sustainability consulting and environmental coalitions, culminated in a secondment to WBCSD via Unilever. What began as a chance role during the pandemic evolved into a pivotal leadership position, as she built out the foundational strategy for PACT.
“Transparency is not the end goal. It’s the enabler for trust, decisions, and action across supply chains.”
The initiative began when member companies voiced a common need: the ability to calculate and share product-level emissions data in a reliable, standardised, and scalable way. From there, Anna and her team shaped PACT’s core mission, to enable businesses to take carbon-informed decisions by bridging methodology and technology.
PACT’s dual structure is intentional and essential. On one hand, the Pathfinder Framework guides companies through existing carbon accounting methodologies, like the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and ISO standards, standardising how product-level data is calculated. On the other hand, PACT’s Open API enables interoperability between tech platforms, ensuring that emissions data can flow securely and consistently across even the most complex supply chains.
This combination of standards navigation and digital infrastructure is PACT’s differentiator. It avoids duplicating efforts, while focusing on where most initiatives fall short: making data comparable, reliable, and auditable at scale.
“The challenge isn’t the lack of standards—it’s the lack of consistency and interoperability in how they’re applied.”
While much of the sustainability world is stuck debating the complexity of Scope 3, WBCSD chose action. Through its implementation program, more than 1,000 companies have successfully exchanged product-level emissions data using PACT-compliant standards and APIs.
What’s most compelling? It’s not just pilots or proof-of-concept exercises. These are real-world exchanges across procurement, manufacturing, and distribution. Companies are gaining insights into which ingredients or components are driving emissions, and recalibrating their decarbonisation strategies accordingly.
Anna’s team avoids tech gatekeeping. PACT is designed for inclusivity, offering a tiered approach that allows companies at all maturity levels to begin data sharing, with assurance protocols improving quality over time.
PACT’s decentralised architecture wasn’t a convenience. It was necessary. Corporates demanded sovereignty over their data and flexibility in how they engage across their value chains. Anna’s team responded by designing protocols that don’t centralise emissions data in one platform but allow any tech provider or corporate system to plug in and exchange information.
This creates both competitive and collaborative advantage. Tech players compete on UX, analytics, and sector specialisation, not on proprietary calculation engines. Meanwhile, corporates can begin segmenting their suppliers, focusing on material hotspots, and investing in supplier engagement that drives real decarbonisation.
The shift is seismic: from compliance to collaboration, from fragmented estimates to traceable carbon data.
“PACT was never meant to be a central repository. It’s a common language that allows everyone to speak to each other—without speaking the same dialect.”
Looking ahead, WBCSD is preparing for PACT 2.0, an expanded implementation program that will prioritise scalability and deeper integration into corporate systems. The goal isn't to build one tool to rule them all, but to create the connective tissue that links thousands of companies, products, and tech solutions in a shared journey towards supply chain transparency.
As Anna noted, “This isn’t about perfection from day one. It’s about getting started—with strategy, pragmatism, and a shared commitment to impact.”