The BECO2 (Building Environment CO₂) Use Case is designed to address a pressing challenge in the real estate sector: collecting and reporting reliable, standardised, and verifiable Scope 3 emissions data. These emissions—indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain—are now increasingly subject to regulatory scrutiny under frameworks such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), EU Taxonomy, and IFRS S2. For real estate owners, this poses a particular challenge due to the wide range of outsourced services and fragmented data sources that contribute to building-related emissions.
The SAGE (Sustainable Green Europe Data Space) project targets the four strategic pillars in the European Green Deal— Zero Pollution, Climate Adaptation, Biodiversity, and the Circular Economy Action Plan, by implementing a rich portfolio of use cases in each of them.
The project demonstrates a total of 10 pilot use cases to foster data-driven sustainability solutions across biodiversity, climate, circular economy, and pollution monitoring. Below you can read about one of these pilots.
The overview of all use cases can be found here: Use-cases
Use case objective
Emission data is generated along the supply chain, which is also the value chain of data. The challenge is that while the necessary emission data accumulates, the information itself does not. The vision is to develop the entire data value chain through data openness. However, the use case will initially focus on two specific points within the value chain.
The implementation of the BECO2 Use Case within the Green Deal Data Space (GDDS) aims to deliver measurable benefits at both operational and strategic levels. The overarching objective is to enable automated, accurate, and standardised Scope 3 emissions reporting in the real estate sector, in alignment with evolving regulatory frameworks and sustainability goals.
Fig. 1. An emission data value chain
End users
End users are being identified and selected in collaboration with Rakli (The Finnish Property Owners’ Industry Association). The participating organisations represent the following industries:
- Construction/building material wholesale
- Building maintenance companies
- Real estate owners
- CO2 calculation consultants
Objectives/Benefits
Benefits
- Optimising the Data Collection Process
- Streamline emission data collection from multiple service providers through a unified process.
- Transition from manual data sharing to automated solutions.
- Enhancing Data Quality
- Establish data models that include metadata for data quality assessment.
- Improve data transparency and reliability.
- Standardised and Comparable Reporting
- Enable standardised emissions reporting across the real estate industry within the GHG (Greenhouse Gas) Protocol.
- Development of industry-wide data models for real estate maintenance.
- Facilitate benchmarking solutions for performance comparison.
Objectives
- Improve Data Interoperability: Introduce harmonised emission data models (JSON-LD) for accurate, consistent reporting.
- Automate Data Exchange: Enable API-based data submission, enriched with metadata, using the iSHARE-compliant Identification & Access Management (see more here).
- Ensure Compliance: Support CSRD, ESRS, IFRS, and SFDR alignment through traceable and auditable data flows.
- Enhance Trust & Access Control: Implement role-based identity verification and secure, logged data access for third parties.
- Drive Innovation in ESG Reporting: Foster a data-driven sustainability culture within the real estate sector.
Fig. 2. Proposed Architecture
Tech provider
Tech providers play a central role in digitalising emissions reporting for real estate maintenance. By integrating secure data sharing, metadata standards, and trust mechanisms, they facilitate more reliable and scalable Scope 3 emissions monitoring. This not only strengthens ESG compliance but also positions the sector for sustainable innovation in line with European climate goals.
Participants – end users
The SAGE project team is looking for more participants among real estate owners, building maintenance service providers, and building material wholesalers, as well as CO2 calculation consultants who are keen on European-wide solutions.
Expected results
In a target stage, data will flow across the entire value chain with multiple stakeholders in such a way that Scope 3 emissions per real estate asset can be calculated in a standardised and comparable manner. This is achievable even if companies use different calculation methods, data models, or have varying levels of maturity.
Contact
- Boróka Péter, boroka@ishare.eu
- Antti Harjunpää, antti@ishare.eu
- Vesa Ilmarinen, Katalysti, vesa.ilmarinen@katalysti.fi, +358 40 508 6447
- Vinith Bhandari, vinith@ishare.eu