SCI Self-Certification: A Standardized Way to Disclose Software's Carbon Emissions Data

When the Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) standard was published as ISO/IEC 21031:2024, organizations could calculate their SCI score, identify areas for improvement, and make meaningful optimizations. But measuring and disclosing emissions data are two different things, and the internal measurement work they were doing wasn’t visible outside of the organization. 

With global regulations, such as CSRD, increasingly recognizing that software has an environmental impact, and procurement requirements emerging, it has become clear that expectations for transparent and consistent software emissions disclosures will continue to grow among stakeholders, auditors, and regulators. 

We are thrilled to open the SCI Self-Certification program to any organization ready to demonstrate its commitment to transparent and consistent disclosure practices. 

Shaped by years of building standards and supporting organizations through their measurement efforts, the program provides a structured, voluntary, and ISO-aligned way to disclose software emissions, setting a benchmark for carbon transparency for the whole industry. 

#What SCI Self-Certification Means for Green Software

The tech industry needs a reliable, transparent, and publicly available body of reference data showing how organizations measure software emissions to make meaningful progress on sustainability, and right now, there isn’t one the industry can broadly rely on. Those doing measurement work are operating in silos. This is where the role of the SCI Self-Certification extends beyond a single organization’s gain; more than a record of individual scores, it becomes reference data that suppliers, researchers, and policy makers can rely on and build on. 

Each disclosure contributes to a collective database of shared knowledge, crucial to making progress and advancing sustainable software practices globally, transforming individual measurement work into collective action. 

For participating organizations, the program brings benefits on three different levels: 

• For your organization: It brings internal measurement work into a structured, publicly recognized disclosure.
• For your stakeholders: It provides a consistent and transparent reference point for understanding software carbon impact.
• For the broader tech community: It contributes to shared infrastructure, building a more accurate picture of emissions across the entire ecosystem that contributes to research, benchmarking, and policy development. 

By sharing their SCI score publicly and voluntarily, an organization demonstrates confidence in their work, building credibility and establishing a reference point for clients, procurement teams, and regulators.

#How the Program Works 

Self-Certification is a widely recognized conformity assessment approach. By making it free, we remove a significant adoption barrier and enable any organization that has calculated an SCI score to self-certify. 

From submission to receiving the certificate, the process takes around four weeks. Organizations submit the questionnaire via email, which is then checked for completeness, and if the submission passes, the Software Standards Working Group has seven days to sign it off before issuing the certification. The purpose of the review is to confirm that the disclosure is complete and detailed enough for a practitioner to understand and evaluate, rather than to audit the actual calculations. 

Each certification is valid for one year and renewable by making a full new submission. 

All approved disclosures are shared publicly on GitHub, for the wider community to examine the methodology, raise questions, and build on the data, making transparency an accountability tool.

The certification comes with a shareable badge, demonstrating the organization’s commitment to a transparent, measurable approach to reducing software emissions.

“The SCI Self-Certification program is a major step toward making software sustainability measurable, transparent, and actionable at scale. By enabling organizations to disclose software emissions in a consistent and credible way, it helps drive accountability, shared learning, and collective progress across the global software ecosystem. We invite organizations worldwide to participate and help build a more transparent and sustainable future for software and AI.”—Navveen Balani, Executive Director, GSF  

#Building on our values 

From the beginning, our work has been grounded in a strong belief that measuring software emissions accurately and transparently is the foundation for meaningful reductions. Over the years, that belief has shaped the standards and tools we’ve built, from the SCI specification, the Impact Framework, and the Carbon Aware SDK, each designed to make measurement part of everyday practice. 

“At the Green Software Foundation, two of our core values are to ‘Maximize Trust’ and ‘Hold Ourselves Accountable’. That’s why we’re proud to introduce the SCI Self-Certification program—a meaningful step toward greater transparency, and the accountability and trust that follow from it.” —Gadhu Sundaram, VP of Application Services, NTT DATA and Chair, GSF 

The SCI Self-Certification program is the natural next step, building on this work. By making those measurement results visible, transparent, and open to public review, it helps move the industry from measurement toward greater accountability. 

Standards only reach their full potential when they get adopted, and practice is only verifiable when it’s transparent. 

Every disclosure becomes part of the infrastructure the industry needs to make progress, from supplier data in procurement chains, to evidence for researchers and input for policy makers and regulators.  

As we look ahead, the SCI Self-Certification program is bringing us closer to a reality where disclosing software emissions becomes a baseline expectation.

#Next steps

We invite organizations worldwide to submit their SCI score, contributing to the shared database of sustainability practices. 

Submit your SCI score: Explore submission materials, including the applicant guide, example submission, and email template, on the SCI Self-Certification program page. 

Calculate Your First SCI Score: If your organization wants to measure its software emissions, these resources help you understand how to do it. 

• Take the SCI Fundamentals course to learn about the principles of the SCI specification and how to calculate your SCI score. 
• Explore the SCI guide to understand available methodologies for calculating the core components of the SCI score. 
• Learn how the Impact Framework turns observations about running systems, such as CPU utilization, page views, or number of installs, and converts them into carbon in an auditable, replicable, and verifiable way.
• Learn how to use Carmen to implement the Impact Framework at scale to measure the carbon footprint of cloud-based software at both infrastructure and application levels.

Explore existing SCI case studies from NTT Data, Accenture, and CAST Software. 

Work with us: GSF standards and tools are developed under the guidance of our Steering Members: Accenture, Google, NTT DATA, Siemens, and UBS.

Become a GSF Member to join tech leaders shaping an industry-wide commitment to measuring and reducing software’s environmental impact.