In Australia, and for many readers of ZeroTwentyFifty, that time of year has once again passed where friends and families gather together, eat, drink and generally be merry. In Australia this is also marked by our summer, so people will generally take time off and this break becomes their long holiday period. As is the case every year, I find myself sitting around the table with family and friends, having a few drinks and chatting. Given my fixation with the problem space I work in, the conversation will inevitably at some point arrive on product carbon footprints, a topic that I’m sure everyone has the same level of interest in as myself… right?
This year however, my Dad has been reading English Pastoral, and given his prior interest and experience with both the Ag and Hort side of cultures, he has come far better prepared for the conversation. As we are talking about some of my more blue sky opinions about how product carbon footprints can be used, he is inquiring about how impacts that aren’t CO2 related are quantified. More specifically he is exploring how to quantify the impacts of events like flooding in areas that have seen soil degradation, and all I can really say to him is “that’s more of an LCA issue, because I only deal with CO2’. This feels like a fairly weak response, but as I get older, I’m finding myself yielding in conversations where knowledge gaps lie.
Anyway, the conversation and my very lame repeated response did manage to get something a bit better out in the end, and what it congealed on was that ultimately, the introduction of Product Carbon Footprints is a great way to introduce the idea of impacts to organisations in a hope that a more mature approach to addressing market failures and negative externalities finally be accounted for. This perspective has been informed by my most recent reading adventures with Let’s Tax Carbon, which I found after making a LinkedIn post that got some interest but unfortunately no suggestions.
The way I attempted to answer the question was by returning to my common refrain that we are standing on the precipice of a new system of accounting, and as our collective processes, software and expertise develop, we will undoubtedly start to see the rise of insights that have previously been shielded from analysis.
For example, one of the primary questions my Dad had revolved around the idea of two farms. One of these farms had relatively dead soil, as a result of extensive overfarming, and the other that practiced a more holistic approach to soil health. I believe he came upon this scenario from his reading of the aforementioned book English Pastoral, which described the efforts taken by the farmer-author, in conjunction with agronomists, to return his family's multi generational farm and soil health back to good levels. The result of 5 years of effort took the form of results and comments from the agronomists that they’d never seen soil so healthy, with the return of plant species that were previously in a dangerously precarious situation. Now I am no agronomist, but from what I do know, unhealthy soil is soil that is easily washed away, and this process results in an amplification of the worse effects of flooding, such as the washing of silt and other nasties into areas that they should not be. UItimately, this was the crux of my Dad’s question.
We can construct PCFs that enable a product to have an accurate measurement of the amount of CO2 residing in a unit of that product, but how do you assess the CO2 impacts of a farm that has bad soil health, when it enables and enhances damage to 3rd party locations outside the scope of the initial assessment? For example when flooding occurs and that flooding then has downstream effects of increasing the damage of a town, whose residents then need to replace all of their furniture, repair buildings, upgrade infrastructure and a whole host of other very negative impacts that cannot be mentioned, for reasons of both limited space in this email and an inability to track them down on the mental known-unknown matrix of potentialities.
I believe that this is where PCF and LCA come into play, they offer us a unique opportunity to perform system modelling, a grand unified model of complex system dynamics. It got me thinking about a future where PCFs are generated and exchanged at such fidelity where extremely complex systems of interaction are modelled end-to-end and represented as an entire system view, so that these dinner table conversations can actually be discussed with real numbers. I find the implications of such a system absolutely fascinating and it is one of the reasons why I work in this space. I honestly believe this space to have the most outrageous potential for large-scale change when you extrapolate what it can deliver.
Another common comment I like to make is that generally people have a good understanding of how large the internet is, but what about when all of a supply chain is modelled and communicated with data? I am certain that on absolute volumes, these numbers are at minimum an order of magnitude larger than what we have seen from the internet. I have previously talked about this concept in my post on the Internet of Emissions Data, but I’m starting to think that my own opinions on this topic don’t go far enough when you start to incorporate other impact categories, the scale of this is immense.
This space is fascinating in a way that I’ve not experienced before and it holds my attention in an all encompassing way. I look forward to 2025 and continuing to execute on this vision. Now with the blue sky out of the way, let’s chat about 2024 and how it went, as well as 2025 and how we see it progressing coinciding with our plans for the year.
2024 Recap and how things went.
2024 was a big year for ZeroTwentyFifty, with a variety of wins and a lot of progress made extending the companies intentions to drive software adoption in an open source manner to jointly accelerate the adoption and use of Product Carbon Footprints. It was a year filled with learnings, a lot of trial and error and helped ZeroTwentyFifty really settle a number of business processes and positioned the business for excellent growth over 2025. I’m going to talk about a number of the wins that I am particularly proud of.
The launch of zerotwentyfifty.com
The website was launched early in 2024 and underwent a number of large changes before finally settling on something that felt right. I have had the opportunity to style the website in black and white, with this reflecting ZeroTwentyFifty’s view that there are no shades of gray in the fight against anthropogenic climate change, collectively we need to strike fast and hard against rising emissions and I wanted to find a striking website theme that drove that message home.
ZeroTwentyFifty achieves PACT Conformance with its flagship Open Source solution to PCF Exchange
Achieving PACT Conformance for our ZeroTwentyFifty software was an achievement of enormous note for ZeroTwentyFifty and was a continuation of our long term strategy to see the PACT Network and the PACT Methodology become the flagship network for the exchange of Product Carbon Footprints.
ZeroTwentyFifty’s continued support of the network by being a major supporter of Open Source initiatives is a core part of the organisation's DNA and a primary part of ZeroTwentyFifty’s value proposition to organisations. This Open Source approach is used to assure organisations that when they engage with ZeroTwentyFifty, they are not only receiving the best quality carbon accounting enhanced software engineering, but they are also supporting the continued development of open source solutions and increased network participation. This increases the value of the network and the security of their own investment and decision to use the PACT Network long term.
ZeroTwentyFifty Open Sources our pact_methodology library and zero_twenty_fifty PACT Conformant solution.
On top of this, engagement with ZeroTwentyFifty’s open source solutions blew away my expectations, with zero_twenty_fifty increasing to 5 stars and the pact_methodology library increasing to 18. This is the kind of positive reinforcement that really enables us to keep driving the implementation of these solutions and pushing forward. We have held that Open Source is the correct approach to many foundational challenges in the carbon accounting space and this engagement just drives that point home for ZeroTwentyFifty.
Graduating from Cohort 5 of OnePointFive
OnePointFive was an incredible learning and networking experience that really helped me expand my understanding of the work insights, experience and roles needed to get the world to Net Zero by 2050. I had the opportunity to meet a number of inspirational people from all walks of life and corners of the globe. What was really striking was the dedication of these individuals and the personal lengths and sacrifices undertaken to engage with decarbonisation as a goal and to create the world they wished to see.
The launch of the ZeroTwentyFifty blog with 13 pieces of content
Launching the blog of ZeroTwentyFifty has been a massive undertaking and the interest is a mixture of education and setting the stage for ZeroTwentyFifty being a domain expert in Product Carbon Footprint technology. My vision for ZeroTwentyFifty’s blog is twofold:
- Enable technological uptake of the PACT Network and the standardised exchange and calculation of accurate Product Carbon Footprint data, the goal being the reduction of embodied carbon emissions in an organisations suite of product and services.
- Serve as a source of excellent quality free information and education on the future of the space and the realities of what is required for this work to not only take place, but also to work effectively towards ZeroTwentyFifty’s stated ambition on supporting complete system decarbonisation, Zero by Twenty Fifty, if you will.
A major takeaway from this writing process has been the tremendous feedback received from organisations and individuals that I’ve engaged with this writing, giving positive feedback on the writing produced. It is a major point of pride for myself and something that really lets me know that the target is being hit. One of my favourite comments received is that people feel that the pieces feel conversational and involved, it’s nice to get feedback on a core metric that you’re targeting.
Major organisations reach out to ZeroTwentyFifty to better understand PCFs
Another win for ZeroTwentyFifty this year was increased attention and outreach from large organisations reading our content and wanting to learn more about Product Carbon Footprints. This is a major metric for ZeroTwentyFifty and indicates that my strongly held opinion on the value of producing original content and sharing it openly is working.
ZeroTwentyFifty assists 3 Organisations with their PACT Conformance goals
Over the course of 2024 ZeroTwentyFifty was given the opportunity to help a number of organisations meet their PACT conformance requirements and we look forward to being able to continue to provide this necessary support and service to the community in 2025. Specific thanks go out to Terralytiq, our most recent testing partner, who were well prepared and made our work of giving the final tick of approval an absolute pleasure.
ZeroTwentyFifty’s first technical advisory with the IceBreaker One Food Supply Chain AG
ZeroTwentyFifty was invited to participate in the IceBreaker One Food Supply Chain AG, which was both a privilege and unique experience to get a more intimate look into the process undertaken when engaging with various stakeholders, and how this develops into a holistic understanding of a domain and the various issues associated with solving a problem presented across a variety of supply chain participants. I am enormously grateful to IceBreaker One for the experience and hope that the technical input was useful in the definition of the next stages of the process.
Growth of the ZeroTwentyFifty mailing list
I am extremely grateful to anyone who subscribes and reads our monthly newsletter, and feel a great sense of pride in knowing that there are people out there who voluntarily choose to read what ZeroTwentyFifty produces. I look forward to being a provider of continued information in the future.
Excellent growth of the ZeroTwentyFifty social media presence
ZeroTwentyFifty grew our LinkedIn following to 65, which is much higher than expected, and have started posting more on BlueSky, which I’ve found to be an excellent social media for the sharing of information regarding Product Carbon Footprints, PACT and Climate Change as a whole.
ZeroTwentyFifty’s 2025 expectations for our focus areas of the PACT Network, Product Carbon Footprints and ZeroTwentyFifty
I believe that 2025 is set to be a massive year for ZeroTwentyFifty, Product Carbon Footprints and the PACT Network. Continued growth on the trajectory laid out by 2024 will see exponential growth in the use and viability of all three of our major areas of concern. ZeroTwentyFifty believes that the increased activity towards Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms as is being implemented by the European Union, along with the rise in Carbon Pricing across more jurisdictions will result in increased activity across our 3 major areas of focus. Combining these two advancements with the fast electrification rollout will yield exponential results in measures of decarbonisation activity across all industry verticals.
Product Carbon Footprints
Product Carbon Footprints within the context of PACT saw excellent growth in calculation and exchange in 2024 and I have covered some of this in other blog posts such as our piece on our guide to Product Carbon Footprints.
PACT Network
Across all measures of success, the PACT Network itself has also been growing at a great clip. ZeroTwentyFifty has watched the technical specification grow alongside more general interest and attention from the wider community which is reflected in our own data from both readers of the blog and our social media presence, with organisations reaching out to have more advanced discussions on the inherent benefits of using PACT formatted Product Carbon Footprints, as well as the advantages provided by becoming a data exchanging partner within the PACT Network itself. We do not see this slowing down.
With Version 3.0 starting to consolidate and solve a number of issues regarding the ease of technical adoption, a thriving open source community of implementors contributing improvement and bug reports and this feedback being fed back into the technical working group, we foresee an excellent 2025 for the PACT Network and one that we look forward to being a supporting participant of.
ZeroTwentyFifty
Our expectations for the growth of ZeroTwentyFifty are obviously biased but also the area that we have the most direct control over. This year based on our data, we envisage an increased level of engagement with our best-in-class consulting services along with the progression of our open source tooling, we are also always looking into ways to improve and refine our use of LLM technologies in order to ease the uptake and use of Product Carbon Footprints and look forward to progressing our Standard to Spec series, where we are defining a repeatable process for using LLMs in an effective manner to turn non-technology focused Product Carbon Footprint methodologies into fully featured technical specifications. This will ease the burden of isolated multi stakeholder implementation and software development causing a lag in the adoption of Product Carbon Footprints and progress on decarbonisation.
2025 and our plans
With great expectations comes a need for planning (which may or may not be as great), and so in order to see things roll forward ZeroTwentyFifty have a plan to execute and keep things moving.
Continuing to refine and build on the success of the ZeroTwentyFifty PACT Methodology library
Building on the success of the ZeroTwentyFifty PACT Methodology Library in 2024, ZeroTwentyFifty has an expansive list of work including better documentation, test coverage and the move to the 3.0 future of the PACT Methodology.
The 3.0 changes coming via the PACT Methodology and PACT Network Technical Specification are fairly interesting and will be providing a lot more cohesion with other cross-industry initiatives. I believe that 3.0 will enable a significant uptick in network volume and participants exchanging PACT formatted Product Carbon Footprints.
Some of the planned changes to the ZeroTwentyFifty PACT Methodology Library include:
- The migration to Version 2.3 of the technical specification, as well as the move to Version 3.0 in both draft and its final release.
- Greatly improved documentation, which we’ve been improving recently. The intention here is to improve the documentation to cover not only the libraries API, but also provide more contextual information and insights as a form of developer documentation to make moving into PACT much easier to understand and reduce the mental burden of having to dig into the nitty gritty of the technical specification itself.
- An expanded data model and the introduction of PCF lifecycle management in line with the rules laid out via the PACT Methodology and PACT Technical Specification.
- Tests, tests, tests. We are currently sitting at around 600 tests primarily at the unit test level, but would love to increase coverage and add other forms of testing in order to provide greater peace of mind and ensure exact conformance with the technical spec, PACT Network rules and the PACT Methodology itself.
- A regular release cadence, which has largely alluded ZeroTwentyFifty this year down to two factors, one that the size of changes has on average been quite large and involved, resulting in difficulty with aligning the release of code and my want to release a fully operational library. Luckily the foundational work is almost complete and so over 2025 releases will be occurring more regularly. The second being a lack of time and resources to set up a more automated approach to releases, I intend to rectify this soon, but if a DevOps person was reading this, maybe a pull request would be a nice belated Christmas gift? A man can surely dream.
- A more refined CI/CD process with more linting, more static analysis and other automated goodness, my pleas for DevOps assistance from the previous dotpoint still apply.
- We are also looking to gather more data and knowledge on how organisations and PACT users are currently representing their data, and introduce easier ways for organisations to translate intermediary data formats such as excel, CSV, PDF and others, in order to ease the transition and scale the use of the PACT Network and API, getting more users into the network and increasing network data volumes in order to support growth.
A much expanded open source solution to PACT data exchange via our ZeroTwentyFifty solution
A much expanded open source solution to PACT data exchange via the ZeroTwentyFifty PACT Conformant PCF Solution, with the integration of our PACT Methodology library in order to enhance and provide a more robust solution for organisations that have an interest in interacting with PACT conformant Product Carbon Footprints. Our plans for this work include:
- The migration to Version 3.0 of the PACT Technical Specification and further.
- A user-friendly interface and frontend so that the data of the PACT Network can be seen by not just programmers and those with software backgrounds.
- The integration of our pact_methodology library into the zero_twenty_fifty solution, in order to expand the type of data and the quality of insights gleaned from its use.
- Expansion of the API to provide a wider variety of data.
- Better documentation and tests.
The expansion of best-in-class consulting services and improved organisational access to unique domain expertise on PCF technologies
The expansion of ZeroTwentyFifty’s consulting services and the ability to provide access to unique domain expertise on PCF technologies. We’re specifically looking forward to being able to provide a unique product offering through our domain expertise in the following areas:
Custom Development
Looking for a specific solution that utilises Product Carbon Footprints and/or PACT within your organisation? We’re aware of the challenges that organisations can face using off the shelf tools, and can facilitate the entire development lifecycle for those looking to build something unique that can integrate with your internal systems.
You can schedule a chat here: Book a Custom Development Consultation today.
Learn more about our Custom Development offering.
Integration
Do you already have software and systems internally that you need to add some functionality to? Do you need to use PACT but aren’t sure how? Maybe you have an off the shelf tool but are looking to use the data you have and enhance it with PCFs, PACT or something else?
You can schedule a chat here: Book an Integration Consultation today.
Learn more about our Integration offering.
PACT Advisory
Are you looking to start your journey with the PACT Methodology, PACT Network and Product Carbon Footprints in 2025, but maybe you’re unsure where to start or just want to start it off in the right way with the developers of the most feature rich Open Source solutions in the PACT ecosystem? Well look no further, we are here to help and a chat is only a click away.
You can schedule a chat here: Book a PACT Advisory Consultation today.
Learn more about our PACT Advisory offering.
Drop-in Resources
Already have a development team, roadmap or product? Struggling to fill out head count or get something finished? Can’t find software engineering and development resources with the domain expertise required for the carbon emissions and product carbon footprint domain?
We are here to help: Book a Drop-in Resources Consultation today.
Learn more about our Drop-In Resources offering.
The continued creation of a one stop shop for free Product Carbon Footprint knowledge with our blog
More original content and writing on the ZeroTwentyFifty blog, combined with a more proactive approach to social media after internalising some of the learnings from 2024.
As mentioned in the aforementioned recap of 2024, you can expect much more original writing to come, and I look forward to continuing to educate and inform readers. The only change to this will be an increase in the quality of these pieces, with many learnings taken and a much more refined process having been developed over 2024, I have massive plans to really keep driving our ambition of being a one stop shop for understanding Product Carbon Footprints.
Some of the topics I are looking forward to researching and sharing on include:
- A general introduction to Decarbonisation and the current state of affairs.
- An expansive guide to Carbon Accounting and the various types that occur.
- A detailed discussion of the major product-level carbon accounting/product carbon footprinting methodology.
- A piece on primary data, with comparisons to secondary emissions factor data.
- And much more.
Thank yous and acknowledgements
- SINE Foundation and Martin Pompery, for all the support and intellectual back and forth we’ve had.
- Anne Jacobs, once again from the SINE Foundation, for giving myself and ZeroTwentyFifty our first opportunity to talk publicly about our work and how we see the future evolving.
- The Partnership for Carbon Transparency PACT crew including Beth, Gertjan and Arunav for their continuing work on the technical spec and for continuing to define a standard that ZeroTwentyFifty loves supporting with our Open Source. I have big opinions on the level of success for the PACT Network over 2025.
- Icebreaker One for inviting me to my first technical advisory, and enabling ZeroTwentyFifty to learn from others in spaces we are not as experienced in, and share our own expertise.
- OnePoinFive Academy, through Matthias Muehlbauer andNeil Yeoh (and the entire staff) and for putting on a great course and working hard to develop a lasting community, it was a great experience. Although I think my body clock is still readjusting!
- Any readers of the ZeroTwentyFifty blog, I derive an enormous amount of energy from kind comments from people who have taken the time to read the sometimes very large pieces I’ve produced, it truly means a lot that people can learn or take some useful knowledge from something that I produce.
- Anyone who has had conversations, shared knowledge and talked about the type of problems they’re facing.
- Clients and potential clients that have engaged us directly or in conversation and put their trust in us to solve their problems, we are very grateful for the trust placed in ZeroTwentyFifty and look forward to continuing to do so over the next 12 months and ideally through and past the year 2050 where we will enable further decarbonisation efforts.
- Jack Hage for listening to my delirious ramblings on Product Carbon Footprints in between pockets playing pool, and having to repeatedly ask what drink I want from the bar in between my utterances. In between a tough year, the consistency has been a nice break away from the madness of attempting to scale the business and I am grateful for the friendship and solid support.
What does your 2025 look like?
What do your plans look like for 2025? What are you looking to achieve with Product Carbon Footprints and the PACT Network and PACT Methodology? If you’d like to learn more about the services we provide or are looking for a dedicated technical partner well versed in the technology and benefits provided by our solutions, please feel free to book in a time to chat and see how ZeroTwentyFifty can further assist you and your organisation in progressing towards a zero carbon future.
If you’ve resonated with anything I’ve written, I’d really appreciate you sharing this article on whatever platforms you use. Alternatively, you can follow ZeroTwentyFifty or add me on Linkedin. I release all writing on our free newsletter. You can also book a 30 minute no-obligation call with me, to talk about our range of solutions and services.
