Carbon Data Is Becoming Permission to Sell, Not Just Something to Report

Carbon data is no longer just something companies report. Increasingly, it may decide whether products can be sold at all.

In this episode of Climate Confident, I’m joined by Stephen Jamieson, Chief Marketing Officer for SAP Sustainability, to explore why sustainability is moving from the ESG report into the systems businesses use to run supply chains, finance, product compliance, and AI-enabled decisions. We get into what this means for climate tech, decarbonisation, policy, emissions reduction, net zero, and the wider energy transition.

You’ll hear why product carbon footprints, digital product passports, CBAM, ESPR, and Scope 3 reporting are pushing companies towards far more granular, decision-grade climate data. Stephen explains why relying on averages will not be enough when carbon insights start shaping market access, investor confidence, supply chain resilience, and commercial competitiveness.

We also dig into AI’s double edge. AI agents could change the economics of sustainability by scaling product-level analysis across thousands of items, but only if carbon, water, recycled content, and other sustainability factors are embedded in core business decisions. Otherwise, AI may simply optimise the wrong things faster. 

Listen now to hear how Stephen Jamieson and SAP Sustainability are helping move climate data from reporting theatre into real-world business action.

Sign up to Climate Confident+ for deep dive analysis of the major climate and energy stories of the day.

Transcript

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Stephen Jamieson: 0:00

And if you don't meet those conditions, you simply won't be able to put those products on the market. We'll see over the next 12, 18, 24 months metals on the agenda, we'll see fashion on the agenda. raising the specificity and the granularity of carbon insights that are necessary in order to do business.

Tom Raftery: 0:22

And that's the shift this episode gets into, carbon data moving from reporting obligation to commercial operating condition. Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is Climate Confident Stories and Strategies that Cut Emissions episode 276, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. My guest today is Steven Jamieson, Chief Marketing Officer for SAP Sustainability, and we talk about why sustainability is moving into transactions, product carbon footprints, supply chains, and AI enabled business decisions, and why companies that still treat climate data as a reporting exercise may be solving yesterday's problem. So I started by asking Steven what sits under his role at SAP and why sustainability has his attention. Steven, welcome to the podcast. Welcome back to the podcast, I should say, not your first time on the Climate Confident Podcast. For people who are unaware Steven, could you do a quick intro?

Stephen Jamieson: 1:29

Sure. Thank you for having me, Tom. And yeah, great to be back. So I'm Steven Jamieson, Chief Marketing Officer for SAP Sustainability.

Tom Raftery: 1:37

And Steven, what sits under that chief marketing role that you have at SAP now, and why does sustainability have your attention?

Stephen Jamieson: 1:47

So let's start with the second piece of that. So, sustainability as a theme or a priority or a topic, is something that is naturally central to the ability for many forms, if not all organisations, to be able to do business. And SAP has a very unique, perspective and unique role to play in the way that businesses run supply chains, run their finance organisations. Any large enterprise that is working across borders and dealing with supply chains and manufacturing products, more often than not we'll be running an SAP system to run their business. But also those insights, that information that helps to understand your ability to be resilient to changing climatic conditions, changing supply chain shocks, changing implications on the cost of carbon or other factors that affect your supply chain and, and products landscape. Things affect indeed the, corporation side, the, the wider business in terms of obligations you may have for premises, you run, for example, are all things that ultimately, you know, land and manifest in, in a core of system of record that that SAP runs. So sustainability is very much interwoven into everything that we do. And I'm very I have a very sort of good role in a sense to be able to, look at the, both the market perspective, how the sustainability agenda is evolving, for our customers and be able to translate that into product priorities. You know, what are the the AI solutions that support our industries and, and customer organisations to be able to truly scale and embed sustainability into what they do. And so, yeah, my team are, living and breathing, you know, the changing regulatory landscapes, the changing business priorities, and rapidly innovating a suite of solutions that support businesses in the context of, of how they run their business.

Tom Raftery: 3:55

Okay, and you've worked across technology, commercial models, sustainability. What has changed most in how business leaders talk about climate now compared to a few years ago.?

Stephen Jamieson: 4:08

It's really interesting, you know, of a certainly since I've been, in a sort of leadership capacity in this topic over probably the last eight years or so. Where we had come from was, you know, very much a, a niche topic within the kind of sustainability team in terms of preparing disclosures through, the era of, of ambition that we probably saw between sort of 2018 and maybe, you know, 24, 25 in terms of business really trying to strive to deliver upon, you know, ambitious goals to what we're, we're now really seeing breakthrough, which is this almost shift into really focusing on the pure economics of this agenda both from a cost of carbon perspective, but also, in terms of the risk exposure that carbon intensive products and, and industries mean to the investor community. And so, you know, I think we've seen now the, I won't say full circle, but we've seen a sort of maturation of the topic into something that's, you know, really concrete and really tangible and that businesses are having to listen to in a, in a very meaningful way now.

Tom Raftery: 5:20

And as part of that maturation does that mean that this problem stops being a nice ESG conversation and starts to become more of a business problem? In other words, is the real shift now that sustainability is moving from the annual report into the transaction itself?

Stephen Jamieson: 5:39

I think that's a major shift. Yes. And I, I think as with all of these topics, you can't isolate one topic and say, you know, that's carrying the momentum. I think what we're seeing is this confluence of the geopolitical landscape, Alongside the trend in the AI landscape, should we say or the AI technology trend, alongside the, the essentials of, climate risk. And I think those three elements are working together to make what we'd see in SAP as a sort of the transactional view of carbon has been incredibly relevant. And I didn't even mention the sort of the regulatory landscape there, which is obviously framing so much of this. So it's these things working together that make this topic so compelling at that level. You know, the idea that you could simply disclose your sort of overall carbon intensity and, and, and that be good enough for, you know, investors to get a sense of where your business is, is heading. It was, was sort of fine a few years ago, but, realistically now it's, the topic and the agenda is pivoting into a real operational control, question. And when we've got things like CBAM and you know, ESPR on the horizon, that's really framing this new set of conditions that businesses need to operate within from, later this year, I think, EV batteries for example, on the, on the European market will be framed by, digital product passports, which will expect, very highly evolved sort of PCF style calculation to be accompanying every product that's sold. And that isn't just at a point in time at design time, that's the true operational, PCF, you know, as it rolls through the supply chain. And if you don't meet those conditions, you simply won't be able to put those products on the market. We'll see over the next 12, 18, 24 months, you know, metals on the agenda, we'll see fashion on the agenda. And these are, topics that are going to be raising the specificity and the granularity of, carbon insights that are necessary, in order to simply do business. And so, you know, that is, that is one, one framing condition. The, the second piece around the AI landscape is changing the economics of, this question in general. It creates opportunity and risk, that we, that we can go into. And the geopolitical agenda, you know, the Straits of Hormuz, you know, the organisations that are dependent upon these carbon intensive supply chains have greater risk than those that don't. And that's just a simple fact. Those are the realities. And so the more you can manage your business at the molecular level, at the product level, at the component level, the more resilient you'll be.

Tom Raftery: 8:31

Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And for, for people listening, PCF is product carbon footprint. is the pressure on companies now, is it coming more from regulation? Is it coming from customers capital markets? You mentioned Strait of Hormuz. Is it supply chain risk? Is it all of the above?

Stephen Jamieson: 9:17

I think it really depends who you talk to, doesn't it? I mean, I, I think that, you know, different industries and different businesses have got different constraints. I, I, I returned from a, you know, sustainability conference just last week in central Europe. And one of the most observations that I I made in, you know, in speaking to hundreds of people there, is that where regulation was sort of the tip of the tongue maybe 12, 18 months ago. But actually nobody was talking about regulation anymore. It's sort of almost a given that that is a set of conditions that need to be dealt with. And everyone is now looking, I'd say simultaneously at the conditions of business in and, and the, cost of business in terms of supply chain disruption and the, input costs. And at the same time, most businesses are working in a B2B supply chain. And so, the more you can demonstrate that your products are are are less exposed to carbon, intensive cost variations and cost variabilities, then the more attractive your product is going to be at the end of the day. So there's this sort of simultaneous, juggling act that's happening in every business in terms of how you are one on one side, manage the input, and how you best represent the output. And I think that's the, the real question that most organisations trying to, to land right now.'cause that's what, you know, fine from a, from a sort of an objective point of view. But practically how you do that in terms of data connectivity and supply chain collaboration kind of remains, such a key challenge in a world where the cost pressures are high, sustainability budgets are challenged and there's a increasing view on, you know, short term solutions. That's a set of dynamics that, all sustainability businesses that I speak to, or all sustainability officers that I speak to are, are having navigate simultaneously

Tom Raftery: 11:14

This obviously requires companies who say they are data driven to actually be data driven. I mean, they're going to need decision grade sustainability to be able to report on these things, no?

Stephen Jamieson: 11:30

I mean, that's exactly the challenge. And, I talked earlier about the, the AI opportunity and, and risk and what is interesting about this topic is that, take a room of a hundred people and talk about the challenges and opportunities of AI in respect to sustainability. First thing people will talk about is how intensive and, resource intensive AI in itself is, which is a very reasonable point. Secondly, they'll talk about workforce disruption. Again, incredibly reasonable topic. But I, I actually think that's hiding a much broader question, which is that, and it comes back to this short termism point, which is that as, as businesses embed AI further and further into their corporations, the risk that arises as a result of that is an increasing pace and, cadence around focus on the key metrics that businesses do best. Businesses do finances brilliantly. They do costs very well. They do revenue very well. They do utilisation very well. And so what happens is the AI optimises for things that it sees as highest quality inputs. And the risk there is that the things that are not necessarily at the table in that let's say data environment become secondary or become optimised against. So there's a genuine risk in the sort of acceleration we have in, in the AI domain that businesses end up in this echo chamber of short-termism. And what we're working very hard on at the moment in SAP is how to make sure that AI remains on the agenda in every single one of those decisions. So, as financial decisions happen, as capital allocation is happening. As supply chain planning is happening, that is being done with carbon and, and wider sustainability factors. Recycled content in packaging, water intensity are all factors that are taken into account in those decisions. So that as AI scales, sustainability stays very much in that evaluation. And the opportunity, of course, is that if you can get that right, you can actually start to move away from the short termist echo chamber and you can do the thing that humans have struggled to do, which is to keep sustainability on the agenda. Because AI doesn't care. All, all AI sees is a suite of factors it needs to optimise for. So if we can keep sustainability in the room. Then there's a, there's a very strong upside,

Tom Raftery: 14:22

Yeah.

Stephen Jamieson: 14:23

and, and we need to be mindful of both the opportunity and risk profile as we kind of navigate this agenda.

Tom Raftery: 14:28

Alright. And SAP talks about sustainability agents. What does that mean in plain terms? You know, work are these agents supposed to take outta the system?

Stephen Jamieson: 14:39

Yeah. So this is the, is it a brave new world? Or, or is, or is this the, the natural evolution of things. But, I think what's been genuinely exciting certainly in the work I've been doing in the last probably couple of years, really behind the scenes in terms of preparing for this, is bringing now agentic capabilities into the sustainability domain. It really allows us to change the economics of sustainability. Whereas, you know, to, to do, true transactional level sustainability evaluations at product level, measuring carbon footprints at the product level, for example, has historically been a very effort intensive activity. And it often requires lots of consultants and lots of effort to not even scratch the surface on the true sort of carbon intensity of a, of an organisation. And so often, the ambition of sustainability was limited by the complexity of being able to manage the data, and manage the process. So our focus in terms of the agentic capabilities that we're bringing into the market now is really how to change the game on, on those basic economics of the sustainability business. So bringing for example end-to-end decarbonisation agent into the market, which allows us to both identify decarbonisation opportunities, handle the sort of disclosure aspects as well as implement the action that then puts those opportunities into initiatives within a business. And then doing that in a way that's supported by things like emission factor, mapping AI capabilities that allow us to move from, manually managing handfuls of emission factors for, for products to scaling across, you know, tens of thousands of products. And our customers are, are doing this, week in, week out now. And so it's these, AI capabilities that allow us to simplify the data management, simplify the process, accelerate the process, spot opportunities, and then embed that back into the business at the transactional level, which is where the game really changes. Because once it's back in that transactional level, then the agentic capabilities that the finance business are delivering, that the supply chain business are delivering, and pick up those insights and then accelerate, with those insights, right in the core of enterprise decision making. And that's where the magic happens, because it's not the decision making that happens in a sustainability team that changes the agenda. It's the scaling of those insights into the decisions that are made within the finance business, within the supply chain business, where the change really happens and making that audit ready, making it visible, making it traceable so that when investors come in and evaluate, how they are you know, allocating capital into different organisations, they can see the businesses that are doing a really good job, and are demonstrating more resilient practises as a result.

Tom Raftery: 17:45

And, what should listeners be sceptical of when vendors start talking about AI for sustainability?

Stephen Jamieson: 17:53

There's a few watch outs, right? I guess, the risk here is that you kind of go, okay, well we've got an AI sustainability capability that massively moves us forward and, we're so much better off than we were great. and no one can get in the way of, you know, value delivered at the end of the day. So, so that's all good. The challenges come from, it comes back to that first risk I talked about, which is, at the end of the day, sustainability can do a good job. But if that insight or if that information is not being ingested into the core decision making of the business, then sustainability is gonna fail. And it might tick a box on a report, it might tick the box on a compliance requirement, but if the risk exposure that carbon intensive product is having on the, long-term prospects of a business, is not being made evident into financial planning and into supply chain planning, then that business at the end of the day is going to do less well over time than one that is bringing those insights directly into those business areas. So the watch out here is making sure that as you're thinking about those AI AI investments, is the data domain connected? Does it bridge the different disciplines of sustainability of finance or supply chain? Is there a kind of golden thread that brings those things together? Is it connected to the core processes of how businesses run? Is there a business context that is feeding that insight? So, as we're making a decision about whether to launch a product in a new market, do you have the context of, the business and of the sustainability factors about that product as you are going into a launch decision of that product in a new market? And do you have the operational control in place and the governance in place and the auditability in place to be able to demonstrate back to regulators and investors and other stakeholder groups that, you are making those decisions based on, good end-to-end traceable in insights. And so yeah, AI can move us so far and so fast, but if data's not connected, if the business context isn't there, if it's not auditable and governable, then, again, it can be a nice initiative that sort of pops and then, falls down again as it, loses that kind of integration into how businesses actually run.

Tom Raftery: 20:36

Right. And the SAP framing is intelligence, optimisation, then autonomy. What has to be true before a company should let software take action automatically? And where, flip side, where must a human stay firmly in the loop. And if you have any concrete examples, obviously that'd be ideal.

Stephen Jamieson: 20:56

Yeah. So there's a clear reality here that, these capabilities present huge innovation, but at the end of the day, they can only assist humans, leaders, people that are organising the sort of success and goals of an organisation. These are capabilities that should only ever assist those leaders in how they operate their business functions. So it's more than human in the loop. It's about at the end of the day, humans need to be the accountable ones. And, an AI agent cannot be accountable for the decisions that are made. and I think making sure that that kind of clarity is maintained is a really critical component and critical discipline. There are, for every one key accountability around should my product be released into, the UK market or the French market, you know, once CBAM regulations are in place, or DPP regulations are in place is you know, ultimately a decision point that needs to have a human oversight. But at the end of the day the, preparation of that decision and the preparation of the intelligence that's needed in order to get to that decision point is something that can more often than not be automated with the agentic capabilities. And in doing so, frees up talent to be able to focus on the true sort of value of understanding supply chain risk and supply chain exposure and supply chain opportunity. So supports organisations in delivering upon, you know, their goals. So, there is a discipline and a, and a set of, diligence factors there that need to remain within human ownership, but if we're talking about the sort of data preparation and, and how to, accelerate those process steps, particularly, you know, one of the agents that we're releasing this year is around automating things like the, obligations around packaging materials. So we have the PPWR regulations going live in, in Europe, and there's just such a huge amount of data preparation needed in order to be able to assemble all the different insights around packaging recycled content, around chemicals of concern, other aspects that support the documentary evidence you need to be able to place products on the market, going forward. And to do that in a way that scales to the tens of thousands of products that certain organisations may have in the market can only realistically be achieved with agentic capabilities. So those are the sorts of opportunity areas that we're trying to support business in. And as I say, it's really about changing the economics of sustainability to make sure that it's something that is truly scalable, at the rate that it needs to be scaled in order to have the impact that it needs to have, you know, to address the broader climate agenda.

Tom Raftery: 24:09

Hmm. Yeah. And we've come quite a bit into this podcast, Stephen, without so far mentioning the dreaded Scope 3. So, Scope 3 is particularly tough for companies, obviously, and it's still full of averages and assumptions. How do things like digital product passports, as you mentioned earlier, how do things like finance financed emissions and insured emissions, how, how do they change the game for the likes of Scope 3?

Stephen Jamieson: 24:46

All these measures are ultimately about how do you drive standardisation and consistent ways and consistent practises through supply chains so that so many supply chain scenarios depend upon, you know, multi-tier supply chains where maybe getting the first supplier, maybe the second supplier, is sort of manageable, through direct communications. But for most organisations, that quickly breaks down in most industries, that quickly breaks down for, anything but the simplest of products. So, having clear standards that, flow through supply chain scenarios is a critical enabler to getting true accuracy across that wider scope. These are not things that are happening overnight either. You know, we innovated the pact framework and and methodology with WBCSD over the last five years or so. And I'd say that's gathering a, a serious level of momentum and critical mass now across thousands of organisations. But, it's taken years to iterate that methodology into a way that is, portable across many cases. And ESPR, which is the regulation that governs digital product passports, that first went live in, in 2024. You know, we're seeing the first delegated act coming live for batteries, I think in the next couple of months. And then, iron and steel and aluminium, I think early next year and then so on and so forth. So the time it takes for industries to align on methodologies and, and, and practises, it's time consuming, labour intensive work at the end of the day that AI doesn't necessarily help much towards, in terms of how to agree on these, methodologies. We've been going deep on the steel industry in the last recent weeks and, the complexities of, how metals are produced and how to calculate a footprint for different metal scenarios is, detailed and reflective of the kind of deep industrial nuances that those industries reflect. And to work that through the industry supply chain requires standardisation to be accepted through that supply chain. It might be European level regulation, which is, a great starting point, but when the supply chain partners are global, it creates a level of complexity that needs to, it needs broad agreement in order to be able to work through in a, in a way that is workable for business. So it's getting there. The agenda has definitely shifted materially in the last five years, as we said at the start of this call. And I think as a result we're getting greater primary data on that wider scope. But it's a, a long journey.

Tom Raftery: 27:39

And where have you seen, or have you seen companies move from reporting to actual operational change? You know, do you have concrete examples of where emissions data maybe even exposed business risk?

Stephen Jamieson: 27:56

No, good question Tom, and I think the, take a a business like Salzgitter, major metals manufacturer. We're just talking about metals. They are an organisation that obviously has historically a heavy reliance on, carbon based emissions in order to produce its materials, but also has an emerging capability in terms of renewable energy and green sourced manufacturing. So in their scenario, they've been able to utilise product level carbon footprinting to be able to demonstrate to their downstream supply chain, their customers the benefits of that transition of their energy supply. And as a result have been able to increase the marketability of their products, and in doing so, reduce the exposure they have to, you know, the energy shocks that have challenged the European economy over the last five years or so.

Tom Raftery: 28:54

And if all this works, what does a climate smart enterprise actually do in the future differently day to day?

Stephen Jamieson: 29:04

That's a big question, Tom. I think the , I think if we, if we kind of cast our minds forward, we're going to be seeing enterprises that are embedding, agentic capabilities deep into their business functions. In that world, you know, sustainability becomes I see it as a, as a, as really a kind of control layer that is helping to guardrail, agentic capabilities in the wider business domain. Let's not pretend that businesses, are, entirely altruistic at times, you know, and, and that they'll, very much making decisions based upon, where they see the sort of revenue growth and revenue opportunities. The opportunity we have now is to be able to make sure that sustainability is, a set of factors essentially, that are ever present in the enterprise consciousness and the agentic consciousness as it's increasingly automating, core business functions. I do believe in, in doing so we are, we are ultimately gonna see more sustainable businesses emerge over time. You know,

Tom Raftery: 30:17

Hmm,

Stephen Jamieson: 30:17

businesses that are able to differentiate because of more reliable sourced materials more secure materials that have been sourced from, local supply chains through circularity. There's a real opportunity for these ideas that have been nestling in, in the kind of business domain for a few years now. There's a real opportunity for those things to break through as a result of these innovations around AI. So I do genuinely think we're on the, kind of the, the precipice of a true scaling of the agenda. And I think that's really exciting.

Tom Raftery: 30:52

Great. But do you think carbon compliance and resilience will ever sit in the same decision system as cost and margin?

Stephen Jamieson: 31:01

It absolutely can be. And it absolutely, should be, And, things like IFRS and ISSB are definitely moving us in that direction. We will see how that evolves over the next few years as to whether that genuinely scales into, into every business decision. What I am confident in is that the more that we can demonstrate that these insights are not are trustable, are reliable, are useful and support ultimately investors in driving the investability of the businesses that they're investing in, then logic says, and logic follows through that, that really should be the outcome that, we land at.

Tom Raftery: 31:49

Time for the lightning round now, Steven. So I've got a couple of quick questions for you. One sentence answers if possible. First up, what's the biggest climate data mistake companies make?

Stephen Jamieson: 32:03

Assuming you can rely on average databases for all of your climate decisions.

Tom Raftery: 32:08

Cut carbon faster or report carbon better?

Stephen Jamieson: 32:12

Cut it faster.

Tom Raftery: 32:14

Okay, good. What matters more, perfect data or useful data?

Stephen Jamieson: 32:23

Useful.

Tom Raftery: 32:24

Okay. Very good. Most over-hyped use of AI today?

Stephen Jamieson: 32:30

That's a good one. I would say use of generative AI to support general white collar, thinking.

Tom Raftery: 32:43

Right. I would've gone with vibe coding, but hey.

Stephen Jamieson: 32:47

quite like a bit of vibe, coding

Tom Raftery: 32:48

Okay. Who should own carbon data internally?

Stephen Jamieson: 32:54

Lines of business

Tom Raftery: 32:55

and what should companies stop pretending?

Stephen Jamieson: 33:00

That tomorrow will look after itself.

Tom Raftery: 33:04

Great. Alright, left field question for you now. If you could have any person or character, alive or dead real or fictional as a champion for sustainability reporting, AI and sustainability, et cetera, et cetera, who would it be and why?

Stephen Jamieson: 33:25

Well, I just discovered that my actually very close to me here in southwest London. The great David Attenborough is turning a hundred this week. I think so,

Tom Raftery: 33:33

Yesterday.

Stephen Jamieson: 33:34

yes.

Tom Raftery: 33:35

by the time this goes out, it'll be a couple of weeks ago.

Stephen Jamieson: 33:37

Fine. So I'm gonna say David Attenborough,

Tom Raftery: 33:39

Perfect. Great. Alright, Steven, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. Is there any question I did not ask that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't touched on that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

Stephen Jamieson: 33:53

I have to make sure that before I leave, I mentioned that the five key agents that I think we are betting on as changing the game in 2026. So we have the Sustainability Regulatory Readiness agent supporting your ESG needs. We have a Footprint Optimisation agent that is really driving that sort of decarbonisation agenda I mentioned earlier, I think I mentioned PPWR, so a Packaging Compliance agent. I think we need to have agent named every name here. A Workplace Safety agent supporting people delivering upon HS HS obligations. And we also have a Product Compliance agent, which is looking at things like GHS labelling. Yeah, a lot to, explore for those that are interested in, what AI agents can deliver the sustainability agenda in 2026.

Tom Raftery: 34:43

Okay. And when are those agents going to be available?

Stephen Jamieson: 34:48

There'll be throughout the, sort of the rest of this year but certainly within 2026

Tom Raftery: 34:52

Perfect. Okay, great. And Steven, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the topics, agents, whatever we discussed on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Stephen Jamieson: 35:03

sap.com/sustainability.

Tom Raftery: 35:06

Perfect. Alright, Stephen, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

Stephen Jamieson: 35:11

Always a pleasure, Tom. Thank you so much.