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| 22 May 2025 | |
| Written by Data Foundation | |
| Blogs |
Climate performance data—the measurable information that tracks and verifies the emissions reductions or carbon removals resulting from specific climate mitigation activities—is critical for investors, companies, and policymakers to prioritize effective climate investments. Stanford Law School, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, and the Data Foundation* organized a conference on "Increasing Accessibility to Trusted Climate Performance Data," hosted in March 2025. The event brought together experts from law firms, companies, investors, academics, philanthropic organizations, federal agencies, state and local governments, and NGOs to address the need for more accessible and trusted climate performance metrics.
Developing reliable climate performance metrics requires stronger collaborative frameworks and partnerships between federal and non-federal entities to create more robust and sustainable data ecosystems.
David J. Hayes (Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and Stanford Law School) the primary organizer of the conference, opened the conference by framing the central challenge: despite technological advances in climate and environmental data collection and analysis, our efforts in the United States lack common metrics for measuring success in key opportunity areas. Current climate reporting and accounting may not provide the granularity of performance data we need to track actual emissions reductions and carbon removal from specific investments. Changes in capacity and implementation strategies for federal climate and environmental data programs highlights the urgent need for non-federal entities to champion this essential work. Many of the conference presenters demonstrated this leadership through their innovative cross-sector partnerships and approaches, showcasing how collaboration among diverse stakeholders creates more robust and resilient climate data ecosystems.
The morning featured perspectives from three key stakeholder groups on the importance of climate performance data:
Methane monitoring is undergoing an empirical data revolution, shifting from theoretical models to direct measurements which will require standardized protocols to transform this growing wealth of data into actionable insights.
The methane panel—moderated by Sonia Wang (Senior Advisor, Data Foundation) featuring Professor Rob Jackson (Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor, Stanford University), Dr. Chris Konek (Lead Scientist, Global Methane Hub), and Dr. Steven Hamburg (Senior Vice President and Chief Scientist, Environmental Defense Fund)—discussed methane's significant climate impact: accounting for 11% of global emissions, 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and responsible for roughly 30% of recent warming. The experts highlighted concerning trends in increasing anthropogenic emissions and biogenic sources from natural systems.
The panel described the current empirical data revolution in methane monitoring, where new technologies, particularly satellites, are enabling a shift from theoretical models to empirical measurements that provide point source observations of emission sources and volumes. As we stand at the forefront of this data revolution, the panel emphasized the urgent need for standardized protocols and data sharing mechanisms to enable meaningful comparisons across emission sources. They recommended leveraging existing trusted third-party organizations, such as the International Methane Emissions Observatory, to transform this flood of new data into actionable insights.
Advanced technologies are transforming forest carbon monitoring, but require collaborative frameworks that balance scientific transparency with landowner privacy across diverse forest ecosystems.
The forestry panel—moderated by Lauren Cooper (Chief Conservation Officer, Sustainable Forestry Initiative) featuring Dr. Chris Field (Perry L. McCarty Director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment), Jad Daley (President and CEO of American Forests), and Ashley Conrad-Saydah (Chief of Policy and Community Affairs at Vibrant Planet)—examined forestry's potential as a nature-based climate solution. Recent advances in remote sensing, LiDAR, and AI-enhanced monitoring now enable high-resolution tracking of forest carbon dynamics, shifting from traditional costly field sampling to comprehensive digital monitoring across landscapes.
The panel highlighted promising initiatives including Dynamic Matched Baselines for carbon accounting, state partnerships for carbon budget modeling, and integrated decision-support tools. Despite this progress, significant barriers remain, including resistance to new measurement technologies, landowner privacy concerns, lack of common quantification protocols, and siloed data systems between government and private organizations. Overcoming these barriers requires collaborative frameworks that balance transparency with privacy protections while accommodating the inherent diversity present in forest ecosystems.
Scaling hybrid CDR technologies requires closing the gap between academic research and startup innovation, with more open-source data sharing and collaborative validation efforts to build investor confidence in diverse removal approaches.
The carbon dioxide removal panel—moderated by David Hayes featuring Anu Khan (Founder and Executive Director, Carbon Removal Standards Initiative), Professor Kate Maher (Earth System Science, Stanford University), and Ryan Orbuch (Partner, Lowercarbon Capital)—discussed how hybrid CDR approaches (e.g., biochar, enhanced rock weathering, and biomass storage) require robust MMRV frameworks to scale.
The panel highlighted ongoing initiatives to advance standard-setting and data sharing, including Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability's Accelerator CDR projects, Carbon Removal Standards Initiative's technical assistance for quantification standards, and Cascade Climate's data sharing framework for accessing commercial datasets. The panelists emphasized that stronger coordination between academic researchers and startup companies can help address the critical MMRV bottleneck limiting CDR deployment at scale. Without trusted performance data, investors lack confidence in carbon removal claims, buyers struggle to compare approaches, and policy incentives remain limited. The experts recommended developing open-source methodologies, creating shared data repositories, and investing in field validation of carbon removal claims.
The academic community needs to be a full partner with companies, NGOs, philanthropies, and governments in accurately measuring and monitoring progress in reducing GHG emissions and increasing removals.
Dean Arun Majumdar from the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability emphasized that accurate measurement and monitoring of GHG emissions and removals is too significant a challenge for any single institution to tackle alone. The global academic community must collaborate with civil society to implement a disciplined, science-based approach to climate change mitigation. This partnership should focus on deepening our understanding of GHG sources and sinks and publicly sharing performance data through open-source platforms and interoperable data management tools, creating a more transparent and actionable climate data ecosystem.
Developing standardized semantics and metadata enables seamless data sharing through collaborative platforms, which transforms fragmented research into integrated insights, strengthens stakeholder relationships, and provides unified access while maintaining data quality.
Dr. Sam Volchenboum (Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Chief Research Informatics Officer, University of Chicago) showcased the Data for the Common Good initiative, which has successfully united rare disease researchers through a public data commons. The initiative demonstrates how building trust between institutions first creates sustainable data sharing ecosystems that accelerate research outcomes and patient care.
Dr. Mark Musen (Director, Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research) emphasized that common metadata structures, standardized terminologies, and shared ontologies form the essential foundation for truly interoperable data systems. He demonstrated how researchers often define even basic variables differently—for example, "male" can be variously coded as "M," "male," or "men"—creating fundamental barriers to digital data integration. Without standardized classification systems, even well-organized datasets remain siloed and unable to communicate effectively across research teams and institutions.
Successful data initiatives prioritize the invisible data "plumbing" as much as the visible "fountain" of polished data products and visualization tools.
Nick Hart (President & CEO, Data Foundation), and Dr. Julia Lane, (Professor Emerita, NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service), closed the day's programming with a thought-provoking fireside chat on lessons from other data contexts. Their conversation highlighted the importance of clear theories of change and building sustainable, democratized data infrastructure.
Photo credit: Terry McConell, UNESCO
During the discussion, Dr. Lane introduced her illuminating "fountain analogy" to illustrate a common pitfall in data initiatives. She explained that organizations often invest heavily in creating impressive data visualizations and dashboards—the visible "fountains"—while underinvesting in the essential "plumbing" of data infrastructure that powers these displays. She emphasized that successful initiatives require democratizing both data collection and governance processes to ensure sustainable, equitable outcomes. The speakers also discussed how FAIR data principles and collaborative data commons have succeeded in other sectors, offering valuable frameworks for climate performance data initiatives.
*Additional organizing entities included Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability's Sustainability Accelerator, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford Law School's Environmental and Natural Resources Law & Policy Program, and CodeX Stanford Center for Legal Informatics.
Download Conference Report: https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Increasing-Accessibility-to-Trusted-Climate-Final-5.21.25.pdf
Conference website: https://conferences.law.stanford.edu/climatedata/
