New Specification for Embodied Carbon Harmonizes Reporting Across the DC Industry
AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 7, 2025 /CNW/ -- The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP), in collaboration with the iMasons Climate Accord (iCA), today unveiled theEmbodied Carbon Disclosure – OCP Base Specification, with contributions from Google, Meta, Microsoft, Schneider Electric and more, the first major work product from their alliance. This foundational specification establishes a common, open framework for reporting data center equipment carbon impact data. This framework is designed to reduce duplication, align reporting practices, and streamline carbon disclosure for both buyers and suppliers in the digital infrastructure ecosystem. Leveraging OCP's Community and OCP's ecosystems ability to impact the data center supply chain and iMasons reach with the end user community, this work is a crucial step in tackling one of the industry's greatest challenges, creating sustainable, and scalable digital infrastructure capable of meeting the requirements for AI and HPC from the data center to the edge.
This specification directly responds to the industry's need for consistent, transparent carbon reporting. By harmonizing carbon disclosure requirements across stakeholders and eliminating duplicative data requests, the specification and provided template simplifies information sharing, accelerates supplier compliance, and empowers buyers with clear carbon insights that can be used to make a purchasing decision. A standard taxonomy for supplier carbon disclosures related to data center materials and equipment provides the industry an opportunity to build new tools and utilize existing sustainability solutions with a common data structure for reporting carbon impact and methodology applied to derive the result.
"The large AI data center buildout and expansion worldwide in front of us has the potential to have an enormous impact on our environment. The OCP Community is committed to ensure that any potential negative impacts are minimized. It was with this as a guiding factor that OCP established an alliance with iMasons Climate Accord, and are very pleased to see the initial fruits of the effort materialize. This new open carbon disclosure framework gives our members and the data center ecosystem a trusted, community-led standardized data carbon reporting format they need to make sustainability a central part of their purchasing and product development decisions," said George Tchaparian, CEO at the Open Compute Project Foundation.
The longer term goal of this effort between the Open Compute Project and iMasons is to be a catalyst to the industry to better build capabilities toward standardized carbon disclosure methodologies with increased rigor and stricter requirements for high quality carbon measurement practices. The current base specification is a step in this direction encouraging vendors to disclose the embodied carbon figure for a specific piece of data center infrastructure equipment (MEP - Mechanical, Electrical, Plumbing or IT - Information Technology) or material stream, as well as the underlying methodologies and data sources that were used to calculate that carbon figure. The specification is purposely flexible to allow a variety of carbon measurement tools, including Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), CIBSE's TM65 methodology, Product Carbon Footprint, or Economic Input-Output modeling. As the supplier community builds capabilities around carbon measurement, this specification will help procurement organizations to uncover and evaluate the types and quality of empirical data that their suppliers are using to quantify the carbon impact of their products.
"At iMasons, we believe that uniting the industry around open, transparent standards is the only way to achieve meaningful progress on sustainability. This collaboration with OCP is a major step forward in giving our respective communities -- from suppliers to end users -- the clarity and confidence to make carbon-aware decisions. By aligning on a common framework, we are not only reducing complexity, but also creating the foundation for scalable, sustainable digital infrastructure that can responsibly power the AI era," said Santiago Suinaga, CEO Infrastructure Masons.
"Critical to the success of this effort is the well-established multi-vendor data center supply chain provided by the OCP vendor member community. Upon delivering an open framework such as this new specification along with a set of best practices, the OCP members typically move rapidly to adopt and align their product offerings. As the catalog of products produced with embodied carbon disclosure information for showcase in the OCP Marketplace increases, end user demand is stimulated for products that comply, " said Rob Coyle, Director of Technical Programs at the Open Compute Project Foundation.
The OCP and iMasons Communities will begin leveraging the potential of the Embodied Carbon Disclosure Specification. Later this year, the Carbon Disclosure Ready™ product recognition icon will begin to appear in the OCP Marketplace alongside products where carbon reporting is available. This identification will help buyers easily recognize products with carbon reporting that complies with the OCP Embodied Carbon Disclosure Specification.
"This effort between the Open Compute Project and the iMasons Climate Accord comes at a time when the data center industry is undergoing tremendous change, providing an ideal time for introducing new buying behaviours. Tackling a very important problem, the carbon impact of data center equipment by providing a common format for reporting carbon content with an eye to evolving a standard carbon reporting methodology is a necessary and simple 1st step that the industry can take together. Once we have a foundation established to compare carbon content reporting across the industry we can believe this will lead to better decision making and accountability." said Ashish Nadkarni Group VP and GM of Worldwide Infrastructure Research at IDC.
About the Open Compute Project Foundation
The Open Compute Project (OCP) brings at-scale innovations and hyperscaler best practices to all, spanning technology domains from the data center to the edge, and the technology stack from silicon, to systems, to site facilities and services. The international OCP Community is made up of organizations and people from hyperscale and tier-2 cloud data center operators, communications providers, colocation providers, diverse enterprises, and technology vendors. With the tenets of openness, impact, efficiency, scale and sustainability, the OCP engages and educates thousands of engineers every year. Across many projects and initiatives the OCP Foundation and Community are meeting the market today and shaping the future.
Learn more at: www.opencompute.org
About Infrastructure Masons
Infrastructure Masons (iMasons) is a global, nonprofit, professional association of individuals connected and empowered to build a greater digital future for all by uniting people that innovate to drive efficiency. Since its launch in 2016, the organization has brought together 6,000 individuals representing US $1.5T+ in infrastructure projects across 130 countries. iMasons provides an agnostic platform for members to connect, grow, and give back.
To date, iMasons has contributed USD $1+ million in scholarships, launched Member Focus Groups and opened regional and local Chapters across four continents. In 2022, iMasons spearheaded the Climate Accord, uniting leaders on carbon reduction in digital infrastructure.
To learn more, visit iMasons.org or LinkedIn
About the iMasons Climate Accord
The iMasons Climate Accord (iCA) is a coalition united on decarbonization of digital infrastructure. Launched by Infrastructure Masons in 2022, the organization has mobilized a community of key companies leading the future of data centers, networks, cloud computing, energy, products and software. With a combined market cap of over $6T USD, their purchasing power will help accelerate the industry to net-zero carbon. iCA's Governing Body includes Digital Realty, Google, iMasons, Meta, Microsoft, and Schneider Electric. Members are working toward industry-wide adoption of an open standard to report carbon in materials, equipment and power, as shared in their Maturity Model released in February 2025.
To learn more, visit climateaccord.org or LinkedIn
Media Contacts
Dirk Van Slyke
Open Compute Project Foundation
[email protected]
Mobile: +1 303-999-7398
(Central Time Zone/CST/Austin, TX)
Rachell Robson
Infrastructure Masons
[email protected]
(Mountain Time Zone/MST)
SOURCE Open Compute Project Foundation
Share this article