Answer
Varying levels of audit, assurance, or verification are currently performed across companies’ reporting of climate-related information. The Climate Data Utility captures fields that indicate whether audit, assurance, or verification have been performed on certain data fields prior to public disclosure and can capture evidence of assurance or verification, where available, providing transparency for a user to determine the credibility and quality of the data.
Improvements in approaches to assurance and verification of climate data will be important to achieve the CDSC’s vision for the Climate Data Utility as a global, centralized, open repository of verifiable climate transition-related data.