Sustainability Ontology

A human being, whether man, woman, or child.

A collection of people organized to achieve a common set of goals.

An enterprise that prepares and submits sustainability / GHG reports under a defined reporting boundary (organizational or operational).

An enterprise within the supply chain that contributes emission data for Scope 3 upstream or downstream categories.

An association, membership, or relationship between organizations or between an organization and a person.

A source or supply from which benefit is produced. Typically, resources are materials, energy, services, knowledge, or other assets.

A resource (fuel, feedstock, refrigerant, etc.) that directly or indirectly produces greenhouse gas emissions when consumed or processed.

A resource that removes greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (forests, soil, CCUS storage).

A natural resource subject to ESG reporting: water, minerals, biological assets.

A ledger resource for tracking accountability balances, entries, debits, credits, and transfers.

A physical asset - machinery, vehicle, meter, or installed unit - that consumes resources or produces emissions when operated.

A place or position. Typically, locations provide geographic or geometric context that characterizes the data element.

A physical installation, plant, or site where emission-producing activities occur.

A geographic area defined by regulatory or political boundaries relevant to compliance obligations.

A coordinate reference system, spatial transformation, or abstract spatial location used for geospatial data.

A postal or civic address identifying where an organization, person, or facility can be reached or is registered.

A subsurface geological body or interpreted region that emission-producing or carbon-storing activity is attributed to: basin, field, play, prospect, reservoir, rock volume or interpreted boundary.

An occurrence happening at some point or points in time, with or without the participation of human agents.

A recording event capturing one or more emission measurements or calculations for a defined period.

A discrete sensor reading, sampling, or monitoring event producing raw environmental data (CEMS, meters).

An audit, assurance, or verification activity applied to emission data.

An event where emission quantities are allocated to facilities, activities, organizations, or products.

A particular mode of being of a person or thing; existing state; situation with respect to circumstances.

The regulatory compliance status of an entity against a specific framework (CSRD, SEC, ISSB).

The data quality condition of an emission record, assessed against PACT DQI dimensions.

A data quality rule, rule set, or assessment state used to evaluate and enforce data integrity.

A deviation from expected data quality, regulatory compliance, or internal standards requiring corrective action.

The natural or man-made surroundings of someone or something.

A climatic region that influences emission patterns and baseline assumptions.

An ecological system relevant to biodiversity impact assessment.

A law (natural or man-made) or policy that governs a process.

A regulatory or voluntary reporting framework governing sustainability disclosure (CSRD, SEC Climate, ISSB S2, EU ETS).

A technical standard defining how emissions are measured, calculated, and reported (GHG Protocol, ISO 14064, ISO 14067).

A product category rule (PCR) or environmental product declaration (EPD) standard governing product footprint calculation.

A series of actions, changes, or functions bringing about a result.

An activity that produces greenhouse gas emissions: combustion, fugitive release, industrial process, purchased energy.

The application of emission factors, allocation methods, or models to convert activity data into CO2e.

An activity that reduces, offsets, or removes emissions: renewable energy, carbon capture, efficiency improvement.

A workflow process for reviewing and approving emission data, ledger entries, or reports.

A process for transferring e-liabilities between ledgers, organizations, or products along the value chain.

The result of a process.

A product whose production generates significant embodied carbon (steel, cement, chemicals, aluminium).

A product bearing a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) as defined by ISO 14067 / PACT.

A stage within a product life cycle (raw material, manufacturing, distribution, use, end-of-life) relevant to PCF calculation.

A material of a particular kind that bears physical and chemical properties. Substances can be solid, liquid or gaseous.

A gaseous substance contributing to radiative forcing: CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs, SF6, NF3.

A non-GHG substance causing environmental pollution: SOx, NOx, PM, VOCs.

Water in any state relevant to water stewardship reporting: freshwater, wastewater, recycled water.

A collection of information, whether in physical form (such as a book), machine-readable form (such as a file on disc), or human memory.

A structured report of emission data for a reporting period, conformant to a reporting framework.

An immutable record documenting data lineage, transformation history, and custody chain.

A reconciliation record verifying mass-balance or ledger conservation (e.g., e-liability totals match).

A defined time interval for which emission data is collected and reported.

Reference information carrying emission conversion factors and their sources, used to derive emission quantities from activity data.

Reference information defining units of measure, unit systems, physical quantity kinds, and currencies used to express measured or monetary values.

A structured inventory of emission sources and quantities for an organization or facility, organized by category for reporting.

A valuable potential or actual action, deed, or effort to satisfy a need or to fulfill a demand.

A third-party or internal service providing independent assurance of emission data.

A service that ingests, transforms, and maps raw data to the OFP Recording Domain.

A service providing formal assurance or attestation of sustainability reports and organizational boundaries.

Any role derived from any kind of trade relation of the implied or referenced object.

An entity that produces greenhouse gas emissions and holds the resulting e-liability.

An entity that generates or purchases carbon offsets/credits to compensate for emissions.

A supply chain partner providing embedded emission data for Scope 3 upstream categories.

The party that buys a product, service or resource and inherits the emissions embedded in it; the buyer-side counterpart of Trader.Supplier. On the customer's books the same emission value a supplier reports as its own becomes upstream (Scope 3) emissions, so one value carries a supplier-role code on one side of a transaction and a customer-role code on the other without being re-keyed.

Any role derived from a relationship of the implied or referenced object with a common heritage.

The provenance chain tracing emission data from measurement point through processing to final report.

The supply chain lineage of embodied carbon through product life-cycle stages.

Any role derived from the configurational/organizational relation of an object.

An organizational hierarchy defining the reporting boundary (equity share, operational control, financial control).

A postal or physical address structure within an organizational entity.

A contact person or point of contact within an organizational entity.

Any role derived from nationality of an implied or referenced person object.

Any role derived from a kind of intermediation on behalf of an implied or referenced object.

A proxy value used to convert activity data into estimated GHG emissions when direct measurement is unavailable.

An estimated quantity derived from proxy data, models, or extrapolation rather than direct measurement.

An aggregated or rolled-up value derived from detail-level records.

Any role derived from a treatment with the intent to change an implied or referenced object.

A defined emissions reduction goal (SBTi-aligned, net-zero, absolute/intensity target).

A regulatory threshold or cap that must not be exceeded (EU ETS allocation, EPA limits).

Any role derived from an acquired, trained, tuned, configurated or calibrated capability of an implied or referenced object.

The ability to directly measure emissions via instruments (CEMS, flow meters, gas analysers).

Any role derived from collective characteristics of implied or referenced objects.

The aggregation of individual emission records into Scope 1, 2, or 3 totals.

The aggregation of emissions across multiple entities, facilities, or products into portfolio-level totals.

Any role derived from leveragability of an implied or referenced object.

A ratio expressing emission intensity relative to a business metric (revenue, production volume, FTE).

The member acts as a controlled classification value - a type, category, status, or scheme entry - that categorizes instances of its object class rather than being an instance itself.

A value that is intended to identify uniquely the object of the data element.

An identifier originating from an external system, registry, or partner.

A foreign key reference to another entity within the OFP data model.

A word or phrase that refers to the object of the data element but is not intended to identify it uniquely.

A value from an enumerated list of possible values that is not an Indicator and that is not subject to continual change.

A code categorizing emissions into Scope 1 (direct), Scope 2 (energy indirect), or Scope 3 (other indirect).

A code representing data quality along PACT DQI dimensions (temporal, geographical, technological, reliability, coverage).

A code representing ESG governance metrics (board diversity, policy compliance, anti-corruption).

A code representing social performance metrics (workforce safety, diversity, training, living wage).

A code classifying an entity into a type or category from a controlled vocabulary.

A code representing the lifecycle or workflow status of an entity.

A code representing the verification or assurance status of a data element or report.

A value that is one of only two (true or false) possible choices.

A numeric quantity that has an explicit or implied unit of measure other than a monetary unit.

A measure of greenhouse gas emissions in a CO2-equivalent unit (kgCO2e, tCO2e), whether measured, calculated or estimated — the recording method is carried by Emission Recording Method Type, not by this property (the MRV 'measure'). Aggregates and footprint totals use this member; origin-specific values use its leaves.

Greenhouse-gas emissions of fossil origin — fuel combustion, fugitive and process emissions, including fossil emissions arising from land management — in a CO2-equivalent unit.

Greenhouse-gas emissions of biogenic origin — biogenic CO2 from land management and from the oxidation, transformation or degradation of biomass, and biogenic non-CO2 gases such as CH4 — in a CO2-equivalent unit. Removals are recorded separately under Removal.

Emissions from carbon-stock loss due to land conversion, such as deforestation or conversion of natural forest to plantation, in a CO2-equivalent unit; the direct and indirect cases are distinguished below.

Direct land-use change (dLUC): emissions from carbon-stock loss on land converted for the product's own supply chain, typically assessed over the preceding 20 years.

Indirect land-use change (iLUC): emissions from carbon-stock loss on land converted elsewhere as a market consequence of the product's demand; usually reported separately from the footprint total.

Greenhouse gas removed from the atmosphere or withdrawn into the product, in a CO2-equivalent unit, reported separately from emissions; biogenic and technological removals are distinguished below.

Biogenic removals: temporary CO2 uptake by biomass contained in the product at the factory gate, biogenic carbon withdrawal, and removals from a net increase in land-based carbon pools.

Technological removals: CO2 captured directly from the atmosphere or via biogenic CO2 capture and storage, subject to permanence and reporting requirements.

Emissions displaced outside the value chain as a consequence of the product's land use (land carbon leakage), reported separately from the footprint.

A greenhouse-gas emission measure scoped to one life-cycle stage or activity of the footprint — packaging, outbound logistics, aircraft transport — in a CO2-equivalent unit; the stage or activity is identified by the field's entity or reference, not by a further property.

A measure of water volume (withdrawal, discharge, consumption) in cubic metres or equivalent.

A measure of biodiversity status or impact (MSA, BII, species richness index).

A spatial coordinate, distance, or geometric measurement.

An integral numeric quantity that has no unit of measurement.

The total quantity of greenhouse gas emissions for a given activity, period, and scope. Superseded for emission values by 5.1 Measure.Greenhouse-Gas-Emission and its leaves — an emission value is a measure with a CO2e unit — and retained for compatibility only, with retirement proposed for the next major version. Activity data remain under 6.2.

The quantity of an activity driver (kWh consumed, litres fuel burned, km travelled) used in emission calculations.

An explicit or implied monetary unit of measure.

A monetary or physical amount specifically associated with carbon (carbon price, carbon tax, carbon credit value).

A monetary or quantitative amount in a ledger context (balance, debit, credit).

A real numeric quantity, possibly expressed as a fraction, but not as a percentage.

The rate of greenhouse gas emission per unit time (kg/hr, t/year) or per unit activity (kgCO2e/kWh).

A numeric quantity expressed as a percentage. Percent is a specialized Rate.

The percentage reduction of emissions relative to a baseline year or reference scenario.

A specific date in the progression of time.

The start date of a reporting, validity, or observation period.

The end date of a reporting, validity, or observation period.

The start date of a validity or applicability window for factors, rules, or registrations.

The end date of a validity or applicability window for factors, rules, or registrations.

A specific date plus time in the progression of time.

The date-time when a record, rule, or status becomes effective.

The date-time when a record, rule, or status ceases to be effective.

A specific time within a specific timeframe.

Text that is not an identifier, name, code, indicator, measure, quantity, amount, rate, percent, date, date-time, or time.

Descriptive free text providing context about an entity or record.

A textual formula, rule expression, or calculation specification.

A free-text annotation, reviewer note, or explanatory comment.

A value that is not an identifier, name, code, indicator, measure, quantity, amount, rate, percent, date, date-time, time, or text.