Your ESG Data Is Everywhere. That's the Problem.
Scope 1 emissions live in your fuel purchase records and facility energy bills. Scope 2 is buried in utility invoices across 12 locations. Scope 3 is scattered across supplier spreadsheets, freight carrier APIs, employee expense reports, and your procurement system — if you can even find it.
Every quarter, someone (usually a sustainability consultant or an overwhelmed finance analyst) manually exports CSVs, applies conversion factors from a government PDF, reconciles discrepancies, and prays the numbers are defensible when an auditor shows up.
This is not a reporting problem. It's a data infrastructure problem. And it's exactly what an automated ESG data pipeline solves.
What an ESG Data Pipeline Actually Does
An ESG data pipeline is the plumbing that connects your operational systems — ERP, HR, utilities, procurement, logistics — to your sustainability reporting outputs. It handles collection, normalization, calculation, and audit-trail generation automatically, on a schedule.
Data Collection Layer
ERP Integration (SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Dynamics) Your ERP holds the ground truth for energy purchases, fuel consumption, fleet expenses, and manufacturing inputs. We build direct API connections or scheduled data extracts that pull relevant transactions, tag them by emission category, and normalize units automatically.
HR System Integration Employee headcount, remote vs. office split, business travel, and commuting surveys feed Scope 3 Category 7 (Employee Commuting) and Category 6 (Business Travel). We connect to Workday, BambooHR, or your HRIS to pull this data without manual intervention.
Utility Bill OCR and API Not every utility provider has a modern API. For those that don't, we build OCR pipelines that ingest PDF invoices, extract consumption figures and meter IDs, and feed them into your calculation engine. For providers with APIs (Urjanet, Arcadia, utility direct APIs), we connect directly for real-time or monthly pulls.
Procurement and Spend Data Scope 3 Category 1 (Purchased Goods and Services) is the biggest category for most companies. We extract spend data from your procurement system or accounts payable, apply spend-based emission factors (using EEIO or supplier-specific factors where available), and flag high-emission spend categories for supplier engagement.
Logistics and Freight For companies with significant shipping footprints, we integrate with freight carriers (FedEx, DHL, custom 3PL APIs) or logistics platforms (ShipBob, Flexport) to pull distance and weight data for Scope 3 Category 4 and 9 calculations.
Calculation Engine
Once data flows in, the calculation engine applies the right methodology to each data stream:
Scope 1 Calculations Direct combustion (natural gas, diesel, propane, refrigerants) using IPCC emission factors and GHG Protocol Scope 1 guidance. Supports market-based and location-based methods where applicable.
Scope 2 Calculations Both location-based (grid average factors from IEA, EPA, DEFRA) and market-based (using Energy Attribute Certificates, supplier-specific emission factors, or residual mix factors). The system maintains a factor library updated quarterly.
Scope 3 Calculations All 15 categories handled, with configurable methodology per category — spend-based, activity-based, or hybrid. The engine applies the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain Standard and maintains a full audit trail of which factors were applied to which transactions.
For a deeper dive on Scope 3 specifically, see our Scope 3 Emissions Tracking solution.
CSRD and ESRS Alignment
The pipeline maps outputs to specific ESRS disclosure requirements:
- ESRS E1 (Climate Change): Scope 1, 2, 3 by category, climate targets, transition plan data
- ESRS E2-E5: Pollution, water, biodiversity, resource use — with configurable data collection modules
- ESRS S1-S4: Social metrics (headcount, gender pay, health and safety rates) pulled from HR systems
- ESRS G1: Governance indicators, board composition, ethics metrics
Every data point in your ESRS disclosure is traceable back to a source transaction. That is what auditors need.
For the full CSRD compliance picture, see our CSRD Compliance solution.
Real-Time Dashboards
Your sustainability team should not be flying blind between annual reports. The pipeline feeds real-time dashboards that show:
- Month-to-date emissions by scope and category
- Trend lines vs. prior year and vs. your reduction targets
- Data completeness status (which sources are reporting, which have gaps)
- Alert flags for anomalies
- SBTi target tracking with projected year-end performance
Audit Trail
Every number in your ESG report has a lineage:
- Source system and record ID
- Raw value and unit
- Conversion factor applied (with source reference)
- Calculation formula
- Who reviewed it and when
- Version history if it was restated
This transforms your ESG report from a marketing document into a defensible disclosure.
Common Integration Patterns
SAP + Utilities + Freight (Manufacturing) A typical manufacturing ESG pipeline connects SAP for energy and fuel purchases, utility APIs for electricity, an OCR layer for paper invoices, and freight carrier APIs for logistics emissions. Scope 1 and 2 are fully automated within 2 weeks; Scope 3 Categories 1, 4, and 11 are automated within 3 weeks.
NetSuite + Workday + Procurement (Professional Services) For services companies, the dominant categories are Scope 2 (office energy), Scope 3 Category 6 (business travel), and Category 7 (commuting). Connecting NetSuite's expense module, a travel booking system, and Workday HR covers 80%+ of emissions with high confidence.
Hybrid (Legacy + Modern Systems) Most companies have a mix — a modern cloud ERP but paper utility bills, or an old procurement system with no API. We handle the messy reality: combining direct API integrations, SFTP file transfers, email parsing, and OCR into a single unified pipeline.
How We Build It
Our ESG data pipeline sprint runs 3 weeks:
Week 1: Discovery and Architecture We map your source systems, identify data gaps, define emission categories relevant to your business, and design the pipeline architecture.
Week 2: Integration and Calculation We build the integrations — APIs, ETL jobs, OCR pipelines — and wire them to the calculation engine. We validate outputs against your existing numbers.
Week 3: Dashboards, Audit Trail, and Handoff We deploy dashboards, configure alerts, document every calculation and data source, and train your team. You end the sprint with a running pipeline, not a prototype.
Related Reading
- Scope 3 Emissions Tracking: Supply Chain to Disclosure
- CSRD Compliance: Double Materiality to ESRS Disclosure
- Manual vs. Automated Scope 3 Tracking
- GRI vs. CSRD vs. TCFD: Which Framework Do You Need?
- The Complete Guide to ESG Reporting Automation
Ready to Stop Managing ESG Data in Spreadsheets?
If your ESG reporting process involves more than one spreadsheet and more than two people, you are carrying technical debt that will compound as disclosure requirements tighten.