SAP Community - Sustainability

SAP EHS Public Cloud: Extending Your Existing Landscape Side-by-Side - Guidebook (Part 6)

2025-12-10T10:36:35.961000+01:00

Integrating SAP EHS Public Cloud: Extending Your Existing Landscape Side-by-Side - Guidebook

Part 6: Summary & Outlook

Table of Contents:

1. Summary

In this blog series, we shared our hands-on experience from multiple SAP EHS Public Cloud projects that were implemented in a hybrid, side-by-side landscape. Across Parts 1 to 5, we covered the integration of Employees, Business Partners, Materials, Functional Locations, and Equipment, as well as practical extensibility scenarios from real customer use cases.

What became very clear throughout these projects is that SAP EHS Public Cloud works best when three things come together:

Consistent master data,
Standardized integration content,
And a disciplined clean-core extensibility strategy.

In practice, we saw that missing or inconsistent master data was the most common root cause for broken end-to-end EHS processes (far more critical than any technical limitation). Once HR data, business partners, materials and assets were properly aligned across systems, incident reporting, emissions calculations, and follow-up processes became significantly more stable and transparent.

Another key learning was that standard communication scenarios and scope items save a tremendous amount of time and risk. Whenever we were able to rely on delivered content instead of custom interfaces, implementation effort, testing effort, and long-term maintenance were reduced noticeably.

Finally, extensibility played an important role in every single project. While most requirements could be solved using in-app Key User Extensibility, it was essential to define clear governance early on to avoid country-specific deviations and long-term technical debt.

This final part summarizes the key benefits and pitfalls we repeatedly encountered and shares our outlook on how SAP EHS in the Public Cloud will continue to evolve based on what we see today in real projects.

2. Benefits & Pitfalls

Integrating SAP EHS as part of a hybrid SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud landscape delivers strong business value but it also introduces architectural and organizational challenges that need to be managed carefully. In this chapter, we summarize the most important benefits and pitfalls we encountered across different customer projects.

2.1 Benefits

Fast Access to Innovation through Public Cloud Releases & AI

One of the strongest benefits we experienced in our projects was the direct access to new EHS functionality without classical upgrade projects. Unlike on-premise systems with long release cycles, customers benefit immediately from:

Regular Public Cloud releases and micro deliveries
Fast availability of new EHS features and regulatory content
Immediate access to SAP’s latest AI-driven innovations in EHS scenarios

This had a noticeable impact on time-to-value. Instead of waiting months for technical upgrades, functional improvements became available continuously. For several customers, this was also the first time AI-supported features in the EHS context could be evaluated productively.

Data Consistency and Compliance

A unified master data landscape turned out to be one of the biggest success factors across all projects. By integrating:

Employee data from SAP SuccessFactors
Business Partners & Materials from SAP MDG
Functional Locations and Equipment from SAP S/4HANA On-Premise

We ensured that EHS processes consistently relied on harmonized and validated master data. In practice, this was essential for:

Accurate incident reporting,
Reliable emissions calculations,
Correct assignment of responsibilities and workflows,
Audit-proof regulatory documentation.

Where master data was incomplete or inconsistent, downstream EHS processes were immediately affected.

Hybrid Architecture without Disruption

The side-by-side approach allowed customers to adopt EHS innovations in the Public Cloud without shutting down their existing on-premise environments. This enabled:

Gradual modernization instead of big-bang migrations,
Reduced transformation risk,
Protection of critical operational processes.

From a project perspective, this phased approach proved to be far more controllable than technical full-system replacements.

Standardized Interfaces and Scope Items

Whenever we could rely on standard SAP communication scenarios and scope items, the implantation became significantly faster and more stable. Examples include:

SAP_COM_0001, 0008, 0009, 0395
EHS scope items such as 3FP (Incident Management), 4XD (Emissions Management), and 54A (Health & Safety Management)

These accelerators reduced custom development effort, simplified testing, and aligned customer landscapes with SAP best practices.

Scalability and Future Readiness

The event-driven and API-first architecture of the Public Cloud supported scalable growth across all projects. Typical examples were:

Near real-time updated via SAP Integration Suite and Event Mesh,
Flexible replication cycles for HR and MDG data,
Cloud-native extensibility for future EHS enhancements.

This ensured that the technical foundation remained adaptable as regulatory and sustainability requirements continued to evolve.

Extensibility for Business and Regulatory Needs

Across all customers, extensibility was required mainly for country-specific regulations, additional validations, or customer-specific reporting. In most cases, these requirements could be fulfilled using Key User (In-App) Extensibility, without breaking the clean core. This allowed customers to remain upgrade-stable while still meeting local compliance needs.

2.2 Pitfalls

Despite the strong benefits, several recurring challenges also appeared in almost every project.

System Landscape Complexity

Hybrid landscapes naturally involve multiple systems: SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud, SAP S/4HANA On-Premise, SAP MDG, SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP BTP / Integration Suite. Without clear integration ownership, defined interface responsibilities, and coordinated technical design, landscapes quickly became difficult to operate and monitor.

Dependency on Master Data Quality

EHS processes are extremely sensitive to master data issues. We repeatedly saw how missing materials, outdated organizational requirements, or incorrect functional locations immediately blocked emissions calculations, risk assessments, and incident follow-ups. High master data quality is mandatory.

Custom Development Where Standard Content Is Missing

For some integration scenarios, especially Plant Maintenance integration for Functional Location and Equipment, custom iFlows were still required. This introduced additional development effort, higher testing effort, and long-term maintenance overhead.

Monitoring Challenges

End-to-end monitoring must cover:

SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud application logs
SAP S/4HANA On-Premise applications logs
SAP Master Data Governance application logs
SAP SuccessFactors message monitoring
SAP Integration Suite / iFlow monitoring

In several projects, missing monitoring initially led to delayed error detection and avoidable compliance risks.

Value Mapping and Harmonization

Incorrect or inconsistent value mappings between systems repeatedly caused replication failures. Early harmonization of organizational units, material types, equipment categories proved to be critical.

Validation of Services and Scope Items

Missing API activations or scope item assignments (e.g., API_EQUIPMENT or API_FUNCTIONALLOCATION) frequently caused delays late in the project. Early validation of all required services became a key project success factor.

Governance and Limitations of Extensibility

Extensibility offers flexibility but without governance it quickly leads to:

Diverging country solutions,
Misaligned business logic
And long-term technical debt.

Additionally, Developer Extensibility is still limited to released APIs and BAdIs, which means that not every requirement can be solved purely with custom logic.

2.3 Summary of Benefits & Pitfalls

A successful EHS Public Cloud implementation balances the strengths of standardized integration content and clean-core extensibility with disciplined data governance and architectural planning. Organizations that manage this balance effectively can unlock the full potential of SAP EHS – enabling safe, compliant, and scalable EHS operations across the enterprise.

3. Outlook

Based on what we observe across current customer projects and SAP’s latest roadmap updates, SAP EHS in the Public Cloud is clearly evolving from a standalone compliance solution toward a central digital backbone for safety, risk, and environmental governance.

Many customers are already productive with core EHS scenarios today. At the same time, the functional scope continues to expand with each Public Cloud release. We see a strong move toward more standardized business content, broader regulatory coverage, and deeper support for environmental and sustainability-driven processes. As a result, future implementations will increasingly rely on configuration rather than custom development which significantly reduces implementation and upgrade effort.

Extensibility will nevertheless remain a key success factor. From our project experience, SAP is steadily increasing both the number and the quality of released APIs and cloud-compliant BAdIs. This allows customers to address local regulatory requirements and compliant-specific validation logic in a clean-core compatible way. Especially Key User Extensibility is becoming more powerful, enabling business-driven adjustments without technical development.

In parallel, SAP BTP is gaining further importance for advanced EHS use cases. While this blog series focused on On-Stack Extensibility, we already see growing demand for advanced analytics and dashboards, cross-system workflow automation, and IoT-based hazard detection and emissions monitoring. These scenarios clearly go beyond standard transactional processing and position SAP BTP as a natural complement to SAP EHS in complex enterprise landscapes.

Another major trend we observe is the increasing convergence of EHS and sustainability. Environmental compliance, emissions management, and sustainability reporting are becoming tightly connected. From a solution perspective, this strengthens the integration between SAP EHS, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, and SAP Sustainability Control Tower. Customers will benefit from more consistent emissions data, integrated compliance reporting, and harmonized master data across production, procurement, and asset management.

For customers, these developments reinforce one central message from our project work: Early architectural discipline pays off. Organizations that invest early in clean-core principles, standardized integration content, high master data quality, and clear extensibility governance are best positioned to benefit from future SAP innovations.

4. Engage with Us

To follow the series, make sure to subscribe to the SAP EHS Public Cloud blog tag.

We welcome your thoughts and feedback in the comments!

Acknowledgements

This blog post series is the result of close collaboration within our EHS implementation team. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to my colleagues, whose expertise, insights, and project experience significantly contributed to the depth and quality of this guide.

A special thank you goes to:

Their contributions were instrumental in shaping the content of this blog post. I am truly grateful for their collaborations and support.

Dangerous Goods Compliance: From Regulatory Foundations to Integration

2025-12-12T08:46:31.457000+01:00

Today, we're diving into an exciting learning opportunity about dangerous goods. Whether you're a beginner or someone looking to expand your knowledge, this is a chance to explore foundational concepts and practical applications in product compliance.

Here is the link to the course and when you complete it, feel free to leave a comment on this article about your experience or let me know on LinkedIn, we would really appreciate your feedback.

Key Learning Areas:

1. Regulatory Foundation: Understand the basic regulations surrounding dangerous goods and how SAP S/4HANA can help administer these rules effectively.

2. Classification of Unpackaged Products: Learn how to classify unpackaged products within SAP S/4HANA, ensuring they meet compliance standards before they are packaged or shipped.

3. Classification of Packaged Products: Discover how to manage and classify packaged products, ensuring they are correctly labeled and compliant with regulations.

Enhancing Safety and Efficiency – How SAP S/4HANA Transforms Dangerous Goods Management

2025-12-16T09:54:08.377000+01:00

Managing dangerous goods in today’s global supply chains is not only about meeting regulations, it plays a key role in keeping people safe and protecting the environment while also making sure business operations keep running smoothly. Manual processes or disconnected systems can quickly lead to delays, mistakes, and unnecessary risks.

SAP S/4HANA for Product Compliance and its Dangerous Goods Management capabilities can close this gap. By simplifying and automating dangerous goods processes instead of relying on spreadsheets or outdated information, companies can handle their dangerous goods confidently and efficiently without slowing down their operations. Product Compliance comes with embedded regulatory content like UN classifications, hazard labels, shipping names, and transport permissions. So, with that, products can be classified correctly and handled safely throughout the entire supply chain.

What for me really stands out is the integration into everyday business processes. The system automatically calculates and checks transport permissions and flags missing or incomplete classification data. This stops non-compliant shipments before the products leave the warehouse. With built-in analytics, teams can gain a clear overview of regulatory requirements, which makes it much easier to act proactively.

What the video is about:

How SAP S/4HANA simplifies classification and global transport management for dangerous goods
How embedded regulatory content supports safety and compliance
How automated checks and documentation reduce errors, delays, and manual work
How analytics provide transparency across the supply chain

This topic is specially close to me because safety and compliance belong together. When they’re built into daily processes and supported by automation, they don’t slow teams down. They actually make work easier while reducing risks and building trust across the organization and beyond.

SAP Video - In brief: SAP Product Compliance - Dangerous Goods

Watch the video to see how SAP S/4HANA for Product Compliance can help your organization handle dangerous goods safely and turn regulatory requirements into a real advantage.

Deep Dive: Multi-Impact Categories in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management

2025-12-17T14:19:43.479000+01:00

This blog post was co-authored with @Cielo_SanabriaRuiz & @Sebastian1611

Sustainability is no longer just about carbon emissions - it’s about understanding the full environmental impact of business operations along the value chain. With the next phase of SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, the solution expands from a pure carbon tool to a broader environmental footprint platform: In addition to detailed analysis of greenhouse gas emissions – including fossil, biogenic, and removed emissions – you can now calculate and analyze your organization’s impact across a wider range of areas, such as land use , energy, waste, and resource depletion. This allows you to meet diverse reporting standards and drive operational decisions beyond decarbonization alone.

In this blog post, we’ll provide you an introduction into the topic and a guided walk-through of the implementation process for multi-impact categories in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management. You’ll see how to configure your system, manage the relevant data, and run calculations so you can unlock richer, decision-ready sustainability insights.

Introduction

What has changed

Since its initial release, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management has focused on calculating accurate product and corporate carbon footprints based on actual business data from SAP ERP and other sources. With the latest updates, this calculation engine now covers additional environmental impact categories so that you can monitor a wider range of environmental pressures using the same data foundation, governance model, and auditability:

Impact Categories in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management

What multi-impact categories mean

Multi-impact categories in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management represent separate “lenses” on how business activities put pressure on different parts of the Earth system, all calculated on the same data foundation. This aligns well with the planetary boundaries concept, where climate change is only one boundary among several others such as biosphere integrity, land-system change, and biogeochemical flows that together define a safe operating space for humanity.

Instead of focusing on a single metric like carbon, multi‑impact categories let you translate your operational data into a set of environmental pressure indicators that mirror those planetary boundaries dimensions. In practice, this means that for every relevant activity or product, you can see not only its contribution to climate change but also how it stresses other Earth-system limits, helping you understand whether improvements in one area inadvertently push another boundary closer to its threshold. By structuring these indicators as configurable categories in the footprint model, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management becomes a bridge between planetary science and enterprise data, turning abstract boundary concepts into concrete KPIs based on your ERP data.

Why this matters for reporting

By going beyond carbon, you can align one consistent footprint dataset with multiple regulatory and voluntary frameworks, including emerging requirements from the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) or Science-Based Targets Initiative’s Forests, Land and Agriculture (SBTi FLAG) guidance, that increasingly demand broader environmental indicators. This reduces the need for parallel tools and spreadsheet workarounds, and helps sustainability, finance, and controlling teams work from synchronized, audit-ready numbers when preparing disclosures and customer requests.

A structured multi-impact model also strengthens the credibility of reported data, because the same calculation logic and master data serve both internal and external views. That consistency is crucial when environmental performance becomes a criterion in financing, procurement, and customer negotiations.

Why this matters for decisions

When multi-impact indicators sit next to financial and operational KPIs, sustainability data moves from a separate reporting stream into the core of how you evaluate trade-offs and investment cases. This richer impact picture helps identify where reducing environmental pressure also boosts efficiency, resilience, and brand value, and where hidden risks accumulate if planetary boundaries are ignored.

In this way, multi-impact categories support a shift from compliance-driven reporting to performance-driven steering, where sustainability becomes a dimension of competitiveness and innovation. These updates are a concrete step in SAP’s broader vision to transform sustainability data into a catalyst for long-term business value rather than a pure cost of doing business.

How one calculation serves many requirements

In SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, the integration and calculation setup stays exactly the same as before: You still reuse your ERP data, automate activity data collection, map to imported or pre-delivered emission factors, and run one centralized footprint calculation. The difference is that this familiar approach now delivers additional impact categories and result views, so the same activity data and methods can serve a growing list of corporate and product-level requirements without extra integration projects or parallel calculation logic.

Footprint Calculation Concept in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management

Configure and Calculate Footprints for Multi-Impact Categories

The overall workflow remains similar to a standard carbon footprint calculation, but with crucial distinctions in steps where you specify and assign your desired impact categories and their corresponding factors:

Manage Source Data: Prepare foundational data.
Manage Footprint Settings: Configure how footprints are calculated, including impact categories.
Manage Emission Factors: Define impact factors for all chosen categories and link them to purchased products.
Model Footprint Parameters: Refine specific calculation models (e.g., energy flow, allocations).
Manage Periodic Data: Input business transactional data for the calculation period.
Manage Footprint Calculations: Execute the footprint calculation across all selected impact categories.
Analyze Footprints: Review and analyze on the multi-category results on different aggregation levels.
Communicate Footprints: Send your calculated environmental footprints to other applications.

Manage Source Data

The foundational master data required for environmental impact calculations is uploaded using the Import Master Data application. There are no changes to this app, for details see: Import Master Data.

Manage Footprint Settings

To tailor the calculation process, select your desired configuration variant using the Manage Calculation Variants app. You can either opt for the DEFAULT variant or configure a new one. Calculation variants define various parameters, such as allocation rules and Scope 2 calculation methods, which are fundamental to the overall footprint calculation. It is important to understand how these settings influence the results across all selected impact categories to ensure consistency and accuracy. See Manage Calculation Variants for more information.

Next, go to the Manage Footprint Inventory Scopes app to define the boundaries and specific impact categories to be assessed in your environmental footprint calculation. This is a critical step when expanding beyond pure product carbon footprints (PCFs) and corporate carbon footprints (CCFs). When creating a footprint inventory scope, you can select up to ten impact categories for a single scope, including Climate Change which is always mandatory. If you enable the Accept Missing Emission Factors attribute for an impact category, any entities lacking an emission factor for that category will be excluded from its specific calculation. This attribute can be enabled for each impact category individually. For details, see Manage Footprint Inventory Scopes.

Manage Inventory Scope

Manage Emission Factors

To calculate footprints for your desired Impact Categories, you must provide corresponding emission and/or impact factors. SAP Sustainability Footprint Management allows you to utilize pre-delivered emission factor data packages, or you can import your own data via the Manage Emission Factors app. This is a key area where the process expands significantly when moving beyond a single CO2e factor. The key considerations for managing emission factors for multiple impact categories are the following:

For each impact category you wish to assess, a specific impact factor is required. Therefore, when populating either the LCA or Simple Template, you must input a separate entry for each impact category. Although these factors might relate to the same product, energy source, or business activity, they are differentiated by their distinct Impact Category ID.
Impact factors other than Climate Change (CLCH) must be added via Data Packages and cannot be manually inserted into the Emission Factor Periods in consuming apps such as Model Energy Flows, Manage Waste Footprints, or Manage Business Activities.
For importing emission factors, both the simple template (version 3) and the LCA template (version 5) in the Manage Emission Factors app have been enhanced to support multiple impact categories.

For details on maintaining emission factors data in the templates, see Emission Factors Data. Under Impact Categories, you find a table with all impact categories, including their IDs, dimensions, and indicators.

Manage Emission Factors

After importing the relevant emission factors, you can move to the Manage Purchased Product Footprints app to map your imported products from your ERP system to the previously maintained emission factor datasets. Those must include data for the Climate Change impact category and can optionally include emission data for additional ones. The mapping can be done manually or AI-assisted – with just one mapping, all available data for the impact categories is linked automatically. Clicking on a mapped dataset, provides you with an overview of all mapped content. See Manage Purchased Product Footprints for more information.

Manage Purchased Product Footprints

Similar to purchased products, the Manage Waste Footprints app enables you to manage the values used to calculate Climate Change and other environmental impacts resulting from the treatment of a specific type of waste within a defined period. Those can also be entered manually or mapped to maintained emission factor datasets. For more details, see Manage Waste Footprints.

Finally, Business Activities allow you to calculate environmental impacts based on form-based data collection. In the Manage Business Activities app, you can create those business activities and map the corresponding emission factor. For each business activity, you can determine which GHG scope the activity relates to. Find all details under Manage Business Activities.

Model Footprint Parameters

When calculating impacts for energy-related and transport activities, the Manage Locations app allows you to manage relevant locations. Ensure all locations pertinent to your chosen impact categories are added. See Manage Locations for more information.

The Model Energy Flows application is crucial for managing energy consumption and its associated impacts. When creating Energy Sources and their corresponding emission factor periods, you can now connect to emission factor datasets that include impact categories beyond just Climate Change. This means that the environmental impact of energy consumption, whether from electricity, fuel, or other sources, can now be assessed not only for its carbon footprint but also for its contribution to abiotic resource depletion or other selected impact categories, provided the relevant emission factors are assigned. While you can create a full energy flow model, including meter readings to allocate energy and emissions to locations, resources and manufactured products, you may also opt to create only the relevant Energy Sources required for your Corporate Carbon Footprint calculations. In both cases, the periodic consumption values, and if enabled the corresponding meter readings, are entered later in a GHG Data Form via the Record GHG Data app. For more information, see Model Energy Flows.

Manage Energy Source

For distributing environmental impacts from senders (e.g., Business Activities, Facilities, or Waste Types) to receivers (e.g., Facilities, Process Infrastructures, or Products), you can define Allocation Schemes and Allocation Rules in the Manage Allocations app. A sender is selected and linked to one or multiple receivers. The allocation ratio determines which portion of the sender’s total impact (across all calculated impact categories) is allocated to each receiver. This ensures that the environmental impacts associated with, for example, a shared energy source are correctly attributed to the products or processes consuming that energy. Check Manage Allocations for all details.

Manage Periodic Data

To calculate environmental impacts related to purchased goods and services, business transactions need to be imported from your ERP system via the Import Business Transactions app. This includes data related to the movement of physical goods that are relevant for calculating product and corporate environmental impacts. Typical goods movement transactions that track the flow of products are: Opening Stock, Goods Receipt from Supplier, Goods Transfer, Goods Issue and Receipt from Production, and Internal Service Confirmation. Periodic data will be imported within the periodic boundaries defined in the Footprint Inventory Scope. These transactions form the basis for actual activity data that will be multiplied by the impact factors across all selected impact categories. Find more information under Import Business Transactions.

For capturing activity data for Energy Consumption, Meter Readings, Business Activities, and Waste Generated in Operations, the Manage GHG Data Collection and Record GHG Data applications offer a form-based data collection approach. You can enter activity values for each footprint inventory scope and period within these apps. While the apps are named with GHG, they now support the collection of activity data that will be linked to emission factors for all selected impact categories, not just greenhouse gases. For all details, see Manage GHG Data Collections and Record GHG Data.

GHG Data Collection

Manage Footprint Calculations

Once all data is set up and provided in the preceding steps, the organizational environmental impact for the selected impact categories can be calculated. In the Calculate Footprints app, maintain the necessary data, such as the Footprint Inventory Scope, Calculation Variant, and Period. Before initiating the calculation, it’s crucial to check for data completeness to ensure accurate results across all chosen impact categories. The calculation engine will then process all assigned impact factors against the activity data. For more information, see Calculate Footprints.

To view the detailed results per impact category, navigate to the Manage Footprint Results app or click Show Results directly within the Calculate Footprints app. You can then click on each calculated Footprint Item within the inventory to drill down into details. While the Sankey chart currently remains focused on Climate Change, the Footprint Information section now clearly displays the calculated impact categories per GHG scope (where applicable), along with the corresponding total footprint and footprint per unit for each impact category you selected. See Manage Footprint Results for details.

Manage Footprint Results

Analyze Footprints

For analyzing the calculated footprints, the Footprint Overview app provides a high-level summary of your impact calculation results. While the initial general overview and dashboards emphasize the Climate Change impact category, clicking on the respective dashboards allows you to navigate to more detailed analyses. See Using the Footprint Overview Application for more information.

The Corporate Balance app provides a consolidated view of your organization’s environmental performance. While it may not yet offer specific multi-impact-category features distinct from the Climate Change balance, it serves as an overarching summary. For learning more about viewing organizational upstream and downstream emissions, see Using the Corporate Balance Application.

The Purchased Products analytics app now allows you to display calculated footprints by impact category via a filter option. This enables a detailed understanding of the environmental burden associated with specific procured products across all selected impact categories, providing a richer perspective than just CO2e. For more information, see Using the Purchased Products Application.

Purchased Product Footprints Analytics

Similarly, the Sold Products analytics app offers a filter option to display the calculated footprints by impact category. This is crucial for understanding the cradle-to-gate (or other defined boundary) impacts of products your organization sells, reported across various environmental indicators. Find more details under Using the Sold Products Application.

The Energy Consumers analytics app has been enhanced to allow you to choose and display the calculated footprints by impact category through a filter option. This provides granular insights into the environmental impacts (e.g., Climate Change, Resource Depletion) associated with energy consumption for specific entities within your organization. See Using the Energy Consumers Application to learn more.

Finally, also the Waste Generated in Operations analytics app now includes a filter option, enabling you to display the calculated footprints by impact category. This allows for a comprehensive assessment of the environmental burden from internal waste management across different environmental dimensions. Find more information here: Using the Waste Generated in Operations Application.

Communicate Footprints

For Communicating Footprints you can use different apps to perform the configurations required to make calculated footprints available to be consumed by other systems, for example, SAP Sustainability Control Tower and SAP Cloud ERP:

The Manage Footprint Communication app allows you to configure which footprint data be shared with other systems like SAP Sustainability Control Tower. Currently, it focuses on climate change results.

With the Publish Product Footprints (internal) app, you can publish calculated Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) to connected SAP Cloud ERP systems for business process integration.

For supply chain collaboration, you can use the Publish Product Footprints (Carbon Data Exchange) app to publish PCFs externally to customers and partners leveraging the standardized PACT format.

Enhancements to APIs in Business Accelerator Hub

Updates have also been made to existing APIs on the SAP Business Accelerator Hub to support the expanded impact category capabilities, now also supporting all categories in addition to Climate Change:

Map Calculation Results to Reporting Standards

To facilitate external reporting, especially for frameworks that require specific categorization of impacts, you can map your calculated impact category results to relevant reporting categories. The following figure illustrates how certain Climate Change sub-impact categories serve as building blocks to support different key reporting standards:

Impact Categories as Building Blocks for Key Reporting Standards

We plan to publish additional blog posts in the future to explain in detail how the mapping of calculated impact categories to the listed standard’s reporting categories works – stay tuned!

For general news on SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, follow me here in the SAP Community. In regular cadence, I’ll publish blog posts giving you updates on all the product’s new features and functions as well as deep dives into the product capabilities. I’m also looking forward to engaging with you directly, feel free to leave your feedback in the comment section.

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management: Q4-25 Updates & Highlights

2026-01-15T15:03:11.612000+01:00

Happy New Year and cheers to a sustainable year ahead! As we kick off 2026, I’m back with my quarterly blog series about the latest innovations and highlights in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management. In this edition, I’m covering:

Multi-Impact Categories

One of the most significant innovations this quarter is the introduction of multi-impact categories in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, moving the product beyond carbon. Built on the same ERP-driven data foundation, governance model, and auditability, the latest updates extend the calculation engine to cover additional environmental impact categories. This lets you monitor a broader spectrum of environmental pressures without changing the way you integrate data or run calculations.

Think of multi-impact categories as different lenses on how your operations affect the Earth system. Aligned with planetary boundaries, they translate the data you already have into indicators for climate and other dimensions like land use, biosphere integrity, and biogeochemical flows. That means you can see where improvements in one area risk shifting burdens elsewhere – and manage those trade-offs with real numbers.

This matters for reporting because one consistent dataset can now serve multiple frameworks (e.g., CSRD, SBTi FLAG), reducing parallel tools and strengthening credibility with synchronized, audit-ready figures for sustainability, finance, and controlling. But this also matters for decision-making because placing multi‑impact indicators alongside financial and operational KPIs brings sustainability into core business steering. A richer picture of environmental pressure helps identify where reductions also improve efficiency, resilience, and brand value – and where hidden risks accumulate. This supports a shift from compliance‑driven reporting to performance‑driven management, where sustainability becomes a source of competitiveness and innovation.

Importantly, nothing changes in how you run the system. You still reuse ERP data, automate activity data collection, map to imported or pre‑delivered factors, and execute one centralized footprint calculation. The difference is that the same setup now delivers additional impact categories and result views, so your existing data and methods serve a growing list of corporate and product requirements – without extra integrations or parallel logic.

Footprint Results with additional Impact Categories

To learn more about this innovation, its business rationale, and how it supports your reporting requirements, check out my deep dive blog post: Multi-Impact Categories in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management. It also includes a step-by-step walkthrough of the overall workflow and the enhanced apps. For complete documentation and technical details, visit SAP Help: Calculating Footprints for Different Impact Categories.

We will also publish additional blog posts in the SAP Community, explaining in detail how you can map the multi-impact calculation results to various reporting requirements. Stay tuned!

Streamlined Energy Management

Managing energy data for footprint calculations has often been repetitive and time-consuming. Previously, you had to enter the same energy data and meter readings multiple times for different calculation variants, making workflows cumbersome and prone to errors. This complexity increased further when handling periodic meter readings and energy bills across multiple locations.

With the latest release, we’ve simplified this process significantly: For all newly created footprint calculations, energy bills and meter readings are now managed separately from the footprint inventory using two new types of GHG data forms. This means you can collect periodic energy data via the Record GHG Data app and reuse it across multiple calculations without redundant entries. Data maintenance is now independent of calculation variants, saving time and improving consistency.

We’ve also introduced more flexibility: you can calculate energy-related footprints based on energy sources only, without the need for an energy flow model, which is a major advantage for Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) calculations. The user experience has been improved in the Calculate Footprints app as well, with data readings displayed directly on the first page of the inventory for quick access.

In the following, I’ll briefly summarize the required process steps and what has changed in the existing apps. For the full documentation, see Maintain Energy Bills and Meter Readings Using GHG Data Forms on SAP Help.

To use the new approach, start by preparing your footprint inventory scope. In the Manage Footprint Inventory Scopes app, activate form-based data collection for energy bills and meter readings. If you plan to use meter readings in your energy flow model, make sure to include Direct Emissions and Energy Consumptions under Value Chain Steps. For energy bills, this step isn’t required.

Define Footprint Inventory Scope with Form-Based Data Collection

Next, configure your energy sources in the Model Energy Flows app. When creating an energy source, choose Enter Energy Bills if you want to manage consumption through the Energy Bills form, or Use Meter Readings and Planned Consumptions for meter-based data. Meters themselves are created in the Manage Locations app and must be assigned to the relevant plants. If you include meters in your energy flow model, they need to be in place before creating the footprint inventory.

With the scope and energy sources ready, create GHG data collections for the relevant plants and periods in the Manage GHG Data Collections app. Then, record your periodic energy data in the Record GHG Data app. You can enter values directly in the UI. Alternatively, you can download the template for offline editing and mass upload, or you can use the enhanced API for automating data entry and connecting smart meters – see the following chapter for details. Validation checks help ensure consistency, for example by flagging deviations greater than 30% from previous readings.

Record Meter Readings in GHG Data Form

Finally, run your calculation in the Calculate Footprints app. Newly created inventories no longer show separate tabs for energy bills and meter readings – instead, these values are maintained in the GHG data forms, and the Data Readiness section provides an overview of form status and associated models.

Calculate Footprints: Data Readiness

Mass Upload and API Enhancements for GHG Data Collections

Managing GHG data across multiple locations and form types can be a challenge, especially when dealing with large datasets. That’s why we’re introducing a powerful new capability, allowing mass upload for GHG data forms. You can now upload different types of forms – such as energy bills, meter readings, business activities, and waste data – across locations using a single template in the Record GHG Data and Manage GHG Data Collections apps. The template includes tabs for each form type, making it easy to consolidate and manage data efficiently without repetitive manual entry. For all details, check SAP Help: Working with GHG Data Collections and Record GHG Data.

To take automation even further, the GHG Data Forms API has been enhanced with new endpoints and parameters for mass updates. This means you can retrieve and update forms programmatically, integrate with external systems, and even connect smart meters or IoT devices directly. Check out the API on SAP Business Accelerator Hub: GHG Data Forms.

These improvements reduce manual effort, increase accuracy, and save time. They’re also addressing several of the most requested features on SAP Influence.

Emission Factor Management & AI-Mapping Enhancements

High‑quality emission factors are the backbone of accurate and audit‑ready footprint results. The broader and better your factor library, the fewer workarounds you need, the faster you can onboard, and the more confidently you can answer customer and regulatory requests. Last quarter, we’ve expanded the default datasets, improved import templates and governance, and refined AI‑assisted mapping – so you can source, structure, and apply factors with less manual effort and higher precision.

With this release, the Manage Emission Factors app expands its default dataset substantially. We’ve added two new source packages and refreshed an existing one to broaden coverage and improve alignment with logistics and fuel methodologies. Newly added are:

GLEC Framework (Smart Freight Centre): Harmonized logistics factors across road, rail, air, ocean/inland waterways, and parcel/last‑mile; coverage for fuels and energy (TTW/WTT), logistics sites and equipment (warehousing, refrigeration, handling), plus rules for distance, allocation, and data quality aligned with ISO 14083.
German Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt, UBA): Factors for fossil fuels including natural gas, hard coal, lignite, heating oils, diesel, gasoline, LPG, and more.

In addition, the UK DEFRA packages have been updated and now include the full set of emission factors. For more information, see Using Default Emission Factor Data on SAP Help.

To make onboarding and governance smoother, and to align with the latest features, we’ve updated the import templates in the Manage Emission Factors app. The simple template (v3) and the LCA template (v5) now support impact categories beyond Climate Change, including the selection of an LCIA method and its characterization factor per dataset – so you can manage multi‑impact content consistently. In the Dataset Sources tab, you can add a source URL to the dataset for traceability, and unit validation has been tightened via the Dimensions column. We also streamlined context fields by adding a drop-down list to the Boundary column and moving it to the Emission Dataset tab to keep dataset‑level semantics in one place. For all changes, visit SAP Help: Emission Factors Data.

With the Custom Datasets feature in the Manage Emission Factor app, you can assemble component datasets into a single, composite dataset to derive an overall emission factor when a product or activity’s direct factor is unknown – leveraging known emissions of its parts to enable accurate footprint calculations. Now, those custom datasets also support multi-impact categories, so you can use it also for emission factors beyond climate change. For more information, see Creating Custom Datasets and Emission Factors on SAP Help.

Custom Dataset with Multi-Impact Emission Factors

We’ve also refined the AI-assisted emission factor mapping in the Manage Purchased Product Footprints app. This powerful feature suggests mappings between products (or product groups) from your ERP system and emission factors from LCA databases. A new option, Show Enhanced Footprint Suggestions, is enabled by default and shifts similarity scores to prioritize commodity code first, then text similarity, then country/region. This enhances mapping precision where commodity codes are available. If your ERP master data or LCA packages lack commodity codes, you can switch the option off to revert to text‑matching. Exact matches are elevated when product names and dataset names align and commodity codes are consistent (or both absent), even if descriptions are missing. To reduce false negatives, AI no longer pre‑filters by unit convertibility and you’ll only be blocked at release if unit conversions are missing in product master data. And for categories with sparse activity‑based data, AI now includes spend‑based factors when they rank among the top 10 suggestions. For all details, check SAP Help: Using AI to Map Emission Factors to Purchased Products and Product Groups.

Refined AI-assisted Emission Factor Mapping with Enhanced Footprint Suggestions

Other Release Highlights

To help you better understand your transport network at a glance, we added map visualizations for locations and transport routes across key apps. In the Manage Locations app, you can view locations on an interactive map along with details such as address, geocoordinates, postal code, and country or region. The Manage Transport Activities app now also provides a map-based view of generated routes and legs, helping you visualize transport flows more intuitively. On top of that, the Manage Transport Activities and Calculate Transport Footprints apps include an enhanced quick view for locations with an embedded map display. This means you can access location details and see them on a map instantly, streamlining your workflow and saving time.

Visualization of Transport Route and Legs

In my previous blog post, I introduced the Source Input Items feature in the Manage Footprint Results app that gives granular visibility into the inputs driving product emissions to identify hotspots and guide targeted decarbonization actions. We now enhanced this feature with the ability to generate source input items for cyclical calculations. This makes footprint analysis more comprehensive, especially for products calculated based on cyclical processes. On SAP Help, you find more information about source input items: Viewing the Footprint Results, and examples on cycle calculations: Calculating Cycles.

Another update improves data handling and coverage in the Import Business Transactions app: You can now add business transaction data to supplement imported records, with clear tracking of imported and added entries. New columns – Imported Records, Added Records, and Entry Method – provide transparency on how data enters the system, ensuring complete coverage for footprint calculations. The consolidated data (imported and added records) is then used to calculate footprints. For details, see Import Business Transactions, and for more information about business transactions' behavior, see Business Transactions Types on SAP Help.

Finally, SAP Sustainability Footprint Management is now available in two additional regions: Europe (Frankfurt) and Brazil (São Paulo), both on AWS. This expansion supports customers operating in these regions with improved availability and compliance.

Enablement Updates: Webinar, Learning Journey & Scenario Guide

To make it easier for you to adopt the latest capabilities, we’ve expanded our enablement portfolio with new content and updates across multiple channels. Together with BearingPoint, we hosted a webinar that gives an overall introduction of SAP Sustainability Footprint Management and also takes a closer look at multi-impact categories and what they mean for your sustainability strategy. Supported by a system demo, the session explains how these new dimensions help you move beyond carbon to a more holistic view of environmental performance. If you missed it, you can watch the full recording here:

We’ve also updated the Learning Journey Establishing Corporate Carbon Footprint Emissions with Advanced Configurations. A new unit now explains how to calculate GHG Scope 3.4 emissions using the ERP-centric transport footprint calculation capabilities introduced last year. This addition is particularly valuable for organizations looking to leverage existing ERP data for transport-related emissions without building parallel processes. It’s a practical guide to help you understand how these capabilities fit into your overall footprint model and reporting requirements.

In addition, we also published a new Scenario Guide that includes detailed process steps for calculating Scope 3.4 emissions based on data already available in your ERP systems: Process 8 – Calculating Scope 3.4 Emissions Using Business Transaction Data.

These enablement updates are designed to make adoption easier and faster, so you can focus on turning sustainability data into actionable insights. Whether you prefer learning through webinars, structured journeys, or detailed guides, we’ve got you covered.

BASF Coatings’ Journey with SAP Sustainability Footprint Management

Recently, I joined the Inside SAP S/4HANA Cloud Podcast to discuss sustainability and share real-world examples of how our solutions create impact. A highlight was my conversation with Maximilian Bauer from BASF Coatings, who explained how they use SAP Sustainability Footprint Management to tackle the complexity of sustainability in their business.

BASF Coatings operates in a highly dynamic environment, producing thousands of product variations with every color shade counting as a new product. This creates massive data challenges when calculating footprints. With SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, BASF Coatings can now:

Scale and automate carbon footprint calculations for hundreds of thousands of products.
Integrate seamlessly into existing systems, embedding sustainability into daily operations.
Gain actionable insights to offer more sustainable products and make data-driven decisions.

As Maximilian Bauer said: “You can only improve what you can measure – and SAP Sustainability Footprint Management offers us exactly this.”

Looking ahead, BASF Coatings is moving beyond carbon to multi-impact footprints, covering categories like abiotic resource depletion to ensure responsible use of finite resources. They’re also scaling innovations such as biomass balance and ChemCycling®, replacing fossil-based raw materials with renewable or recycled alternatives. These steps position BASF to meet growing global demand for sustainable products and stay ahead of regulatory expectations.

BASF Coatings’ journey illustrates why we’re evolving SAP Sustainability Footprint Management: from carbon-only to multi-impact sustainability footprints, enabling companies to manage risk, cost, and growth across multiple environmental dimensions – all embedded in core business processes.

In the podcast, I also shared our broader vision: embedding sustainability into business processes, leveraging a single trusted data foundation, and using AI to make sustainability intelligent and scalable. By expanding beyond carbon toward multiple impact categories, we help businesses move from compliance to competitive advantage.

Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcast or Spotify.

Additional Information

For in-depth details on SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, including concepts, setup, and the application help, I recommend you browsing through the SAP Help Portal. For an overview of all new features and functions that have been released, check the What’s New section, which is updated with every new software release.

For exploring and experimenting in a live system, register for the free SAP Sustainability Footprint Management Trial. You’ll receive an e-mail with access information within seconds after your registration and can then test the solution at your own convenience within a 30-day trial period. It also includes a wide range of guided tours designed to help you navigate through all the features and functions comprehensively. Recently, we also added new tours and will shortly release additional ones, representing the latest features and an enhanced user experience.

To stay up to date on SAP Sustainability Footprint Management, follow me here in the SAP Community. In regular cadence, I’ll publish blog posts giving you updates on all the product’s new features and functions as well as deep dives into the product capabilities. I’m also looking forward to engaging with you directly, feel free to leave your feedback in the comment section.

Inside the Regulatory Content Service: Everything You Can Access

2026-01-16T11:05:51.470000+01:00

If you’ve ever wondered why your system doesn’t show the newest regulatory phrases, lists, or templates right after we announce “new content available,” you’re not alone. Those announcements mean new content packages are useable via the Regulatory Content Service—not that every installed system is automatically updated. To access all the embedded content, you’ll need to be on the latest release of SAP S/4HANA for product compliance. Below, you’ll find a clear mapping of what content is available today and the specific system versions that deliver it, so you can see exactly what you get now—and what an upgrade unlocks.

Starting from SAP S/4HANA OP2021 release, the system consumes new and updated regulatory phrases
Starting from SAP S/4HANA OP2023 release, the system consumes listed substance content
Starting from SAP S/4HANA OP2023 Feature Pack 3 release, the system consumes new and updated regulatory graphics
Starting from SAP S/4HANA OP2023 Feature Pack 3 release, the system consumes new and updated dangerous goods regulations
Starting from SAP S/4HANA OP2025 release, the system consumes new and updated product marketability regulations
Starting from SAP S/4HANA OP2025 release, the system consumes new and updated safety data sheets regulations

More content is planned to be made accessible in the future. If you have questions, please feel free to leave a comment or message me via LinkedIn.

Comment Directly on User Guide for SAP Green Ledger

2026-01-19T03:00:00.051000+01:00

We’re excited to introduce external commenting for SAP Green Ledger User Guide on SAP Help Portal!

You can now leave comments directly on User Guide for SAP Green Ledger to share feedback, ask questions, or suggest improvements, right where you’re reading. This helps us improve the guide together by capturing your feedback in context and continuously refining the documentation to better support your daily work with SAP Green Ledger.

For more information about documentation feedback on SAP Help Portal, see Giving Documentation Feedback on SAP Help Portal | SAP Help Portal.

At the moment, commenting is only available for the User Guide. It is not yet supported for Integration Guide or Admin Guide. That said, we’d absolutely love to hear your advice and collect more feedback.

We truly appreciate your time, insights, and support as we work together to make SAP Green Ledger documentation even better!

New Content Updates for Product Compliance

2026-01-19T09:10:48.382000+01:00

With the latest Product Compliance release, many new compliance requirement versions have been added to the embedded regulatory content. Among these is the TRGS Occupational Exposure Limits for Germany. To accommodate the additional data included in this compliance requirement version, we have expanded the Manage Compliance Requirement – SDS app.

Embedded regulatory content, by the numbers:

15 Compliance requirements for dangerous goods management
92 Compliance requirements for occupational exposure limits
102 Compliance requirements for safety data sheet management
142 Compliance requirements for safety data sheet authoring
273 Compliance requirements for product marketability
858 Embedded regulatory graphics
Over 31,000 Embedded regulatory phrases
Over 370,000 Embedded listed substances and other listed substance content

To see which compliance requirement versions are available, check out the SAP Help Portal pages for:

There are also two new read APIs for phrase-enabled fields and compliance requirement versions. These APIs help fill in any gaps in the regulatory content. For example, if you have a phrase imported that only contains the Phrase ID, you can use the read API to retrieve the rest of the information and translations that match the Phrase ID. You can find both APIs on the Business Accelerator Hub here.

A first step toward the vision of allowing users to import and view content which has been brought into the system is here. A new app, Manage Regulatory Content Updates, is available to view information on content imports to your product compliance system from the Regulatory Content Service. This app is currently only available in public cloud systems.

In this demo video you will see setting up a third-party content provider communication arrangement to product compliance for regulatory content as well as a glimpse at the new app.

You can find the help portal documentation for Communication Scenario SAP_COM_0666 (Product Compliance - Regulatory Content Partner Integration) here.

You can also check on upcoming features in the Roadmap Explorer. For information on all new product compliance features, visit the What's New section of the SAP Help Portal.

SBTi Forest, Land, and Agriculture (FLAG) in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management

2026-01-21T11:25:42.467000+01:00

As companies work towards meeting their climate targets, the distinction between fossil and land-based emissions is becoming increasingly relevant. Emissions from forests, land, and agriculture (FLAG) follow fundamentally different dynamics than those from fossil fuels and materials. FLAG emissions have a significant share in global greenhouse gas emissions, play a critical role in climate mitigation, biodiversity protection, and food system resilience, which provides several advantages in environmental impact mitigation within value chains.

However, these emissions are often bundled together with Fossil GHG Emissions within corporate inventories without the level of detail to credibly manage them. This makes it difficult for companies to set realistic targets, assess progress, or transparently communicate the role of land-based emissions and removals within their GHG inventories.

When properly understood as part of the natural carbon cycle, FLAG emissions become an important part of net-zero strategies: They are governed by biological processes that allows them to interact directly with removals and carbon storage within shorter timeframes compared to Fossil emissions.

Against this backdrop, the latest updates to SAP Sustainability Footprint Management mark a significant evolution from a single-impact focus to a holistic environmental footprint analysis. The new capabilities expand impact coverage and explicitly distinguish between fossil and biogenic emissions and removals, enabling companies to reflect land-based dynamics more accurately.

Why distinguishing FLAG emissions matters at corporate and product level

Distinguishing FLAG emissions from Fossil emissions is not just an accounting exercise. At the corporate level, separating FLAG from non-FLAG emissions allows companies to determine whether they are required to set dedicated FLAG targets under certain criteria and to incorporate mitigation pathways that reflect the realities of land-based systems.

At the Corporate level, this differentiation enables a more realistic target setting, prevents the inappropriate use or double counting of removals within corporate inventories, supports transparent reporting, and progress toward emissions reductions. Without this separation, land use impacts can get hidden behind corporate totals, making progress appear stronger than it actually is.

Within a corporate level inventory, consistently separating FLAG emissions within Scope 3 improves transparency, avoids misleading pictures of progress, and enables more comparable and credible reporting across companies and sectors. To do this, a value chain perspective is needed to ensure all FLAG emissions are accounted across upstream and downstream activities, in order to avoid the risk of them being lost into broader corporate emissions totals, making it difficult to apply removals appropriately or to reflect the distinct mitigation dynamics of land-based systems. This approach is especially important given the limited and evolving guidance on corporate-level inventories for agriculture, forestry, and other land-use (AFOLU) activities.

At the product level, the distinction becomes even more critical. For many products, particularly agricultural commodities, food, apparel, and bio-based materials, land use change and land management emissions dominate the product's carbon footprint. Without clear FLAG attribution, product claims can become misleading; comparisons across suppliers and materials lose validity, and the climate benefits of bio-based materials or regenerative practices may be obscured. Explicit identification of FLAG emissions is therefore essential for credible product carbon footprints, meaningful supplier engagement, and alignment between product level claims and corporate transition strategies.

What is Science Based Targets initiative framework for Forest, Land and Agriculture (SBTi FLAG)

The Science Based Targets initiative framework for Forest, Land and Agriculture (SBTi FLAG) guidance provides a dedicated framework for setting science-based targets that address emissions and removals from forests, land, and agriculture, alongside a company’s near-term and long-term climate targets. It clarifies which emissions fall within the FLAG boundary, how land-based emissions and removals should be accounted for, and how companies are expected to demonstrate progress over time in a way that reflects the biological and physical realities of land systems.

Under the SBTi FLAG, companies are required to set a FLAG-specific target separate from other emissions targets when either of these conditions is met:

Sector-based requirement: Companies operating in SBTi-designated FLAG sectors, including forest and paper products, food production (animal source), food and beverage processing, food and staples retailing, and tobacco.

Emissions-threshold requirement: Companies in any sector whose FLAG-related emissions exceed 20% of total gross emissions across scopes 1, 2, and 3. This threshold must be assessed on a gross basis and cannot be netted against removals.

When a FLAG target is required, companies must report emissions and removals across clearly defined categories that reflect distinct land-based processes:

Land-use change emissions: Refers to CO2 released from carbon stock losses due to the conversion of land between land use categories, such as deforestation for cropland expansion.

Land management emissions: Refers to both CO2 and non-CO2 gases arising from practices within the same land-use category, including tillage, cropping systems, livestock management, and rice cultivation.

Carbon storage and removals: Refers to CO2 removed from the atmosphere through biological processes such as photosynthesis and stored in long-lived biogenic carbon pools such as forest biomass and soils.

To ensure transparency and comparability, companies setting FLAG targets are expected to provide disaggregated information that enables meaningful interpretation and review. This includes:

FLAG emissions and removals reported per commodity and per region

Separation of land-use change and land management emissions

Separate reporting of CO2 and non-CO2 emissions from land management activities

Removals reported by commodity, with further disaggregation across scope 1 and scope 3 categories encouraged

These reporting expectations align with the GHG Protocol Land Sector Guidance and the SBTi FLAG Annex submission requirements, supporting consistent and credible treatment of land-based emissions across corporate inventories.

That’s where our new SBTi FLAG feature comes in.

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management for SBTi FLAG

To facilitate detailed external reporting, especially frameworks like SBTi FLAG that require specific categorization of impacts, SAP's Sustainability Footprint Management introduces a powerful multi-impact category feature. This enables you to map calculated impact category results directly to relevant reporting categories, ensuring alignment with SBTi FLAG requirements.

For this use case, the integration and calculation setup follow the same procedure as described in our "Multi-Impact Categories in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management" blog post. For SBTi FLAG, the process utilizes your ERP data to automate activity data collection, map to emission factors for the relevant impact categories, and execute one centralized footprint calculation. The critical difference is ensuring that the relevant impact categories for FLAG are selected during the Footprint Inventory setup.

Here, you'll define the boundaries and specific impact categories to be assessed in your environmental footprint calculation. This step is crucial for FLAG reporting and the following categories must be selected:

Fossil GHG Emissions from Land Management

Biogenic Non-CO2 Emissions

Land Use Change Biogenic CO2 Emissions

Land Management Biogenic CO2 Removals

Additionally, Climate Change is always calculated as a mandatory impact category in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management; you can also choose to calculate additional categories, like abiotic resource depletion, in parallel with the FLAG analysis.

For details, see Manage Footprint Inventory Scopes.

You also need to ensure the inclusion of impact factors for the relevant categories using the Manage Emission Factors app. Each impact category requires a specific emission/impact factor. When populating either the LCA or Simple Template, input a separate entry for each category, even if they relate to the same product, energy source, or business activity, as they are distinguished by distinct Impact Category IDs.

For SBTi, you must include the following categories are included via data packages:

Fossil GHG Emissions from Land Management (CCFL)

Biogenic Non-CO2 Emissions (CLCN)

Land Use Change Biogenic CO2 Emissions (CLCLU)

Land Management Biogenic CO2 Emissions (CLCM)

Land Management Biogenic CO2 Removals (RELM)

Climate Change (CLCH) impact factors must also be added, as this category is always mandatory in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management. Consuming apps like Manage Purchase Products Footprints, Model Energy Flows, Manage Waste Footprints, or Manage Business Activities will utilize these factors for relevant calculations.

For detailed guidance on maintaining emission factors data, see Emission Factors Data. You'll find a table under Impact Categories, listing all categories, including their IDs, dimensions, and indicators.

Aside from the impact categories being reported, other calculation parameters like master data, energy flow models, and periodic data remain unchanged. This ensures you can effortlessly scale calculations across different impact categories, allowing existing setups to smoothly adapt and include these additions

For analyzing the calculated footprints, the Footprint Overview app offers a high-level summary of your impact calculation results, while the Corporate Balance app provides a consolidated view of your organization’s environmental performance. The Purchased Products analytics app now allows display of calculated footprints by impact category using a filter option.

While the initial dashboards emphasize the Climate Change impact category, clicking on them allows for further detailed analysis. See Using the Footprint Overview Application for more information.

The Corporate Balance app provides an overarching summary of your organization’s environmental performance. For more on viewing organizational emissions, see Using the Corporate Balance Application.

The Purchased Products analytics app now provides a detailed understanding of the environmental burden associated with specific procured products across all selected impact categories, offering a richer perspective beyond CO2e. For more insights, see Using the Purchased Products Application.

Map Calculation Results to Reporting Standards

The Impact Categories from Sustainability Footprint Management are designed to be standard-agnostic, serving as building blocks for supporting multiple reporting standards simultaneously. This versatility, however, requires final results to be mapped to the appropriate reporting categories for the chosen standard. The following table illustrates this:

ID	SAP Impact Categories for Climate Change Group	SBTi FLAG Reporting Categories
CLCH	Climate Change	Not applicable, always calculated
CLCF	Fossil GHG Emissions	n/a
CCFL	Fossil GHG Emissions from Land Management	Land Management (non-CO2 emissions)
CLCB	Biogenic CO2 Emissions from Combustion	n/a
CLCN	Biogenic Non-CO2 Emissions	Land Management (non-CO2 emissions)
CLCLU	Land Use Change Biogenic CO2 Emissions	Land Use Change Emissions
CLCLM	Land Management Biogenic CO2 Emissions	Land Management (CO2 emissions)
RELM	Land Management Biogenic CO2 Removals	Carbon Removals and Storage
RECCS	Technological GHG Removal by Direct Capture of Industrial Emissions	n/a
REDCC	Technological GHG Removal by Direct Air Capture	n/a
REPCC	Product Biogenic CO2 Uptake	n/a

SAP Business AI & Sustainability: WHY

2026-01-30T01:31:32.978000+01:00

How AI Powers Sustainable Business Transformation

Sustainability is no longer optional—it’s a business imperative. With over 600 global sustainability reporting regulations and growing stakeholder demands, companies must act now. AI is a game-changer, helping businesses turn sustainability challenges into opportunities.

AI’s Impact on Sustainability

Emissions Reduction: AI can cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 5-10% by 2030, supporting the 1.5°C climate goal.
Healthcare Advancements: AI improves cancer diagnosis accuracy by up to 36.1%, enhancing patient outcomes.
Food Waste Prevention: AI-driven inventory optimization could prevent 907,372 tons of food waste annually, saving $2 billion.

How Executives Can Leverage AI

CFOs: Automate ESG reporting and risk management for compliance and cost savings.
COOs: Optimize supply chains for lower emissions and waste.
CPOs: Screen suppliers for ESG compliance and sustainable sourcing.
CSOs: Track carbon footprints and embed sustainability across the business.

Overcoming Sustainability Challenges Despite its potential, sustainability efforts face hurdles:

Data Silos: Fragmented data slows decision-making.
Manual Processes: Inefficient workflows increase errors.
Complex Insights: Distributed data makes actionable insights hard to find.

AI helps by automating data consolidation, improving accuracy, and providing real-time insights—freeing teams to focus on impact.

The Bottom Line AI isn’t just a tool—it’s a catalyst for sustainable growth. By integrating AI into sustainability strategies, businesses can drive efficiency, compliance, and positive global impact.

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management for the Chemicals (Together for Sustainability)

2026-01-30T07:19:08.336000+01:00

Chemical value chains are naturally complex. Products are diverse; production routes vary, and materials move through multiple transformation steps across global supply networks. This complexity makes emissions difficult to trace, methodologies hard to align, and results challenging to compare in a meaningful way.

One of the major obstacles is limited upstream transparency within the value chain. Without consistent supplier-specific data, companies are forced to rely on proxies and averages to determine Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) which may weaken the credibility of calculations and make effective decarbonization harder to achieve.

Agnostic carbon accounting standards provide an important baseline, but they were never designed to fully capture the realities of the chemical industry. Methodological choices, such as system boundaries, allocation rules, or data granularity, can significantly influence results, leading to divergent outcomes even when companies follow the same high-level standards. This lack of sector-specific alignment is why initiatives like Together for Sustainability (TfS) were created, to translate generic guidance into a consistent, chemical-industry-specific approach that improves transparency and comparability.

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management’s new multi-impact capability further supports this sector-specific guidance, by strengthening its alignment with the TfS calculation methodology and reporting categories. Embedding these requirements directly into Corporate Scope 3.1 (Purchased Goods and Services) inventories and PCF workflows and data structures, supports more transparent and comparable PCFs across chemical value chains, helping companies operationalize the TfS guidance at scale and move toward insights driven by high-quality, supplier-specific data.

What is Together for Sustainability about

Together for Sustainability (TfS) was created in response to a shared challenge across the chemical sector: sustainability efforts were being slowed down by unaligned approaches to Scope 3 and Product Carbon Footprints. Despite the existence of GHG standards that define the rules for PCF calculation, differences in interpretation and application across companies have led to PCFs and Scope 3.1 figures that are influenced as much by methodological choices as by actual performance. This lack of consistency makes data difficult to compare, exchange, or use with confidence.

The objective of the TfS Guideline is to address this gap by defining a consistent, sector-specific approach to carbon data collection and calculation for the Chemical Industry. At its core, the guideline establishes clear boundaries and principles for PCF and Scope 3.1 accounting. It provides a uniform process for data collection and emission calculation, and a robust, audit-ready framework that can be applied consistently across companies and suppliers. In doing so, it harmonizes how PCFs are calculated in the chemical sector, reducing variability driven by interpretation instead of real differences.

A central focus of the guideline is the integration of supplier-specific PCF data into both corporate Scope 3.1 inventories and downstream PCFs. High-quality supplier data is a prerequisite for meaningful cradle-to-gate calculations, enabling chemical companies to link upstream raw materials to their own production processes with better accuracy. This is particularly important in a sector where purchased goods often represent the largest share of total emissions, and where companies have significant influence over sourcing choices.

How SAP Sustainability Footprint Management supports Together for Sustainability

To support industry-specific standards like TfS, that include a specific categorization of impacts, SAP's Sustainability Footprint Management introduces a powerful multi-impact category feature. This enables you to map calculated impact category results directly to relevant reporting categories, ensuring alignment with TfS requirements.

For this use case, the integration and calculation setup follow the same procedure as described in our "Multi-Impact Categories in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management" blog post. The process utilizes your ERP data to automate activity data collection, map to emission factors for the relevant impact categories, and execute one centralized footprint calculation. To support the TfS use case, it is important to ensure that the relevant impact categories for reporting are selected for the calculation

Footprint Inventory setup

In this step, you'll define the boundaries and specific impact categories to be assessed in your environmental footprint calculation according to TfS requirements, in this case, it would be cradle-to-gate. Here, the following categories should be selected, in TfS datamodel Version 3.1 September 2025:

SAP Environmental Impact Category	TfS Mandatory/Optional
Climate Change	Mandatory
Fossil GHG Emissions from Land Management	Optional
Fossil GHG Emissions	Mandatory in 2027
Biogenic Non-CO2 Emissions	Optional
Land Use Change Biogenic CO2 Emissions	Mandatory in 2027
Land Management Biogenic CO2 Emissions	Mandatory in 2027
Land Management Biogenic CO2 Removals	Optional
Technological GHG Removal by Direct Capture of Industrial emissions	Required under Condition
Product Biogenic CO2 uptake	Required under Condition

For details, see Manage Footprint Inventory Scopes.

Emission Factors for Calculation

Additionally, you also need to ensure the inclusion of impact factors for the relevant categories using the Manage Emission Factors app. Each impact category requires a specific emission/impact factor. When populating either the LCA or Simple Template, input a separate entry for each category, even if they relate to the same product, energy source, or business activity, as they are distinguished by distinct Impact Category IDs.

For TfS, depending on which impact categories selected, you must include the following categories are included via data packages:

Climate Change (CLCH)

Fossil GHG Emissions (CLCF)

Fossil GHG Emissions from Land Management (CCFL)

Biogenic Non-CO2 Emissions (CLCN)

Land Use Change Biogenic CO2 Emissions (CLCLU)

Land Management Biogenic CO2 Emissions (CLCM)

Land Management Biogenic CO2 Removals (RELM)

Technological GHG Removal by Direct Capture of Industrial Emissions (RECCS)

Product Biogenic CO2 Uptake (REPCC)

Model Footprint Parameters

Aside from the impact categories being reported, other calculation parameters like Manage Periodic Data, Energy Flows, and Footprint Parameters remain unchanged but must follow TfS requirements to comply with the standard.

TfS details specific requirements around allocation of co-products and waste that can be set up on SAP Sustainability Footprint Management. Calculation Parameters such as Allocation rules and factors can be defined in SAP Sustainability Footprint Management under Manage Calculation Variants. This is important in multi-output process as TfS follows a strict allocation hierarchy.

Transport

TfS requires upstream transport, internal transport within a company site, and transport of intermediate products between sites to be calculated. Outbound transport to clients is outside the boundary scope. Transportation emissions shall be calculated on a well-to-wheel basis with allocation based on mass or volume. Additionally, aircraft emissions require special consideration to the Radiative Forcing Index.

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management Manage Transport setting app, allows to setup both supplier and internal transportation; mass allocation is supported. When calculating for TfS, if mode of transport Air is selected, you must ensure that the Emission Factors applied correspondingly take RFI into account when relevant for the calculation.

Footprint Calculations

A core principle of TfS is that GHG emissions are calculated by multiplying activity data by the corresponding emission factors (expressed in CO2e per declared unit).

This is reflected in the Calculate Footprints app which includes all relevant data as defined in the Footprint Inventory Scope, Calculation Variant, and Period. Before starting the calculation, it’s important to verify that the footprint inventory data is complete to ensure accurate results across all selected impact categories. The calculation engine will then process all assigned impact factors against the activity data.

Analyze Footprints

While the initial dashboards emphasize the Climate Change impact category, clicking on them allows for further detailed analysis. See Using the Footprint Overview Application for more information.

Map Calculation Results to Reporting Standards

The Impact Categories from SAP Sustainability Footprint Management are designed to be standard-agnostic, serving as building blocks for supporting multiple reporting standards simultaneously. This versatility, however, requires final results to be mapped to the appropriate reporting categories for the chosen standard. The following table illustrates this:

ID	SAP Impact Categories for Climate Change Group	Together for Sustainability Reporting Categories
CLCH	Climate Change	PCF excluding Biogenic CO2 uptake
CLCF	Fossil GHG Emissions	Fossil GHG Emissions
CCFL	Fossil GHG Emissions from Land Management	Land Management Fossil GHG emissions
CLCB	Biogenic CO2 Emissions from Combustion	n/a
CLCN	Biogenic Non-CO2 Emissions	Biogenic Non-CO2 Emissions
CLCLU	Land Use Change Biogenic CO2 Emissions	Land Use Change GHG Emissions
CLCLM	Land Management Biogenic CO2 Emissions	Land Management GHG Emissions
RELM	Land Management Biogenic CO2 Removals	Land Management Biogenic CO2 Removals
RECCS	Technological GHG Removal by Direct Capture of Industrial Emissions	CCS Technological CO2 Capture
REDCC	Technological GHG Removal by Direct Air Capture	n/a
REPCC	Product Biogenic CO2 Uptake	Biogenic CO2 Uptake

This new feature focuses on environmental impact categories stemming from Life Cycle Impact Assessments (LCAs). Therefore, currently, there is no dedicated category for the TfS GWP Aviation emissions (cradle-to-gate), as this is considered part of the Distribution and Storage lifecycle step. The environmental impacts from Aviation emissions can be calculated under the Transport Mode: Air and consequently be included in the PCF under this lifecycle stage.

Product Carbon Footprint including Biogenic CO2 uptake is derived by combining all relevant impact categories in line with standard requirements at the point of outbound publication of the PCF.

As part of our ongoing commitment to expanding our capabilities to support TfS, we plan to include Carbon Content attributes in 2026, further enhancing SAP Sustainability Footprint Management to deliver comprehensive well rounded sustainability insights. Stay tuned for these exciting updates!

SAP Business AI & Sustainability: WHAT

2026-01-30T20:48:39.707000+01:00

SAP is leading the way in enterprise management by integrating sustainability into its core business suite, powered by applications, data, and AI. SAP Business Suite isn’t just a collection of tools—it’s a transformation engine that drives continuous innovation. By embedding sustainability into business processes, SAP helps organizations manage risk, achieve compliance, and unlock new value while meeting regulatory and environmental goals.

SAP Drives Sustainability with Applications, Data, and AI

Applications: Embedded Sustainability SAP’s end-to-end business suite ensures that every transaction is part of a unified framework. This standardization allows sustainability data to flow seamlessly across processes like procure-to-pay and record-to-report. By embedding sustainability into core applications, businesses can track, report, and improve sustainability metrics efficiently.
Data: A Single Source of Truth Sustainability data is often fragmented across different systems. SAP’s Business Data Cloud harmonizes this data into one unified model, ensuring consistency and accuracy. This single source of truth enables better reporting, deeper insights, and confident decision-making across all sustainability initiatives.
AI: Intelligent Automation and Insights SAP Business AI goes beyond basic automation by using AI agents to optimize processes in real time. These agents help reduce errors, lower costs, and improve efficiency while ensuring sustainability-aware decisions. AI also enhances predictive insights, helping businesses balance profitability with environmental impact.

Key Sustainability Focus Areas

SAP supports sustainability across four critical areas:

Sustainability Management – Helps set strategies, track ESG metrics, and ensure compliance with global standards.
Carbon Accounting – Measures and manages emissions while integrating with financial accounting.
Sustainable Supply Chain – Ensures transparency, circularity, and ethical sourcing across the value chain.
Operational Compliance – Maintains adherence to environmental, safety, and ESG regulations.

Why SAP’s Approach Stands Out

Unlike siloed sustainability solutions, SAP integrates sustainability into the core of business operations. This ensures that sustainability isn’t an afterthought but a strategic driver of growth. By leveraging AI, businesses can automate complex sustainability processes, gain actionable insights, and make data-driven decisions that reduce risk and unlock new opportunities.

SAP Business AI & Sustainability: HOW

2026-01-30T23:32:31.917000+01:00

Sustainability is no longer optional—it’s a strategic imperative. Businesses must integrate sustainability into their core operations to meet regulatory demands, investor expectations, and societal responsibilities. SAP Business AI provides powerful tools to automate processes, enhance decision-making, and accelerate sustainability initiatives.

Embedded AI for Seamless Sustainability Integration SAP’s embedded AI capabilities streamline sustainability management by automating ESG reporting, carbon accounting, and compliance tracking. This reduces manual effort while ensuring accuracy and regulatory alignment.
Custom AI Extensions for Tailored Solutions Developers can build custom AI applications on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) to address unique sustainability challenges, ensuring flexibility and scalability.
Advanced AI Techniques for Smarter Decisions
- Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG): Combines large language models with business data to generate context-aware insights.
- Vector Embeddings: Converts complex data (documents, images) into analyzable vectors for precise sustainability analytics.
AI Use Cases Across SAP Sustainability Solutions
- ESG Reporting: Automate report generation in SAP Sustainability Control Tower.
- Carbon Accounting: Analyze emissions data in SAP Green Ledger with AI-driven insights.
- Supplier Compliance: Automate compliance checks in SAP S/4HANA for Product Compliance.
Executive Benefits by Role
- CFOs: Unify financial and ESG data for better reporting and risk management.
- COOs: Optimize operations with AI-driven risk prediction and automation.
- CSOs: Embed sustainability across the business with AI-powered tracking and reporting.

SAP Business AI empowers businesses to achieve sustainability goals efficiently. By leveraging embedded AI and custom solutions, companies can reduce costs, improve compliance, and drive meaningful environmental and social impact.

How to Calculate Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) in SAP Sustainability Control Tower – End-to-End

2026-02-04T08:20:35.283000+01:00

Hello Everyone,

This is my first blog post on SAP Community, and I’m excited to share my hands-on experience with the Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) feature in SAP Sustainability Control Tower.

In this blog, I walk through an end-to-end, practical guide on how organizations can capture, calculate, review, and analyze greenhouse gas emissions using CCF. The focus is on explaining the functional flow, key configuration steps, and how emission results are generated and analyzed within the system.

I hope this guide helps anyone who is getting started with CCF or looking for a clear, structured walkthrough of the feature. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF)

The Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) process in SAP Sustainability Control Tower helps organizations calculate their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions based on business activities across different locations. It uses form-based manual data entry and emission factors to compute and report emissions.

Steps involved in CCF Calculation E2E:

Update master data
Maintain emission factors
Create business activities
Create GHG data collections
Enter data in forms in the collection apps
Review data and send to analytics

Update Master Data

Import data into the Legal Entity and Business Location dimensions in the Manage Master Data tile.

When exporting the Business Location template, maintain the ‘Legal Entity’ field to establish a relationship link between the legal entity and the business location.

This relationship is required for the CCF feature.

For further details, refer to:

Update Master Data | SAP Help Portal: https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SUS_SCT/8aa9148b4141433fa2808f9808b65480/66fd41bbe3a646998146f7ed11f4496d.html?locale=en-US#procedure

Maintain Emission Factors

Maintaining emission factors is optional but recommended for accurate carbon footprint calculations. Emission factors can be uploaded via file or entered manually and are used to calculate emissions for business activities.

The Manage Emission Factors app provides default data packages from the GHG Emission Factors Hub (U.S. EPA, DEFRA, GLEC, UBA, EMBER), including:

EPA-2023
EPA-2023-Spend
EPA-2024
UBA – 2022
EMBER_2023
DEFER – 2024

If no custom datasets are available, the default packages can be used. However, they primarily cover Scope 1 (Stationary combustion) and Scope 2 (Purchased electricity, steam, and heat) for the United States. Custom emission factor datasets may be required for other locations or scopes.

For further details, refer to:

Maintain Emission Factors | SAP Help Portal: https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SUS_SCT/8aa9148b4141433fa2808f9808b65480/06ae39b98a3d4789948e81ab8f4bab65.html

Create Business Activities

This app is used to define business activities (in any GHG category) for which emissions data will be manually collected and calculated. Activities are linked to specific locations and associated with emission factors. Users later enter consumption data (for example, fuel used or distance travelled), and the system calculates emissions based on the maintained setup.

Separate activities must be created for each location and activity type.

For example, to track emissions for air travel across your organization, a separate Air Travel business activity must be created for each location.

Let’s see an E2E example with screenshots.

Open the Manage Business Activities tile to create a new activity for calculating emissions at a specific location.
Click the Create button to create a new business activity
Enter the required details. In this example, a new business activity for Air Travel is created under GHG Category Scope 3.6 – Business Travel. The GHG Category field offers a list of available categories along with their supported calculation methods for reference.
Calculation Methods by GHG Category | SAP Help Portal: https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SUS_SCT/8aa9148b4141433fa2808f9808b65480/e6790f0245674b89a27397b5d4ae26eb.html
Emission factors can change over time. To reflect these changes, Emission Factor Periods are maintained within the Manage Business Activities app.

Each period stores updated emission factors and calculation details for a business activity. During footprint calculation, the system uses the emission factor valid for the relevant period, ensuring accurate and time-specific results. Create Emission Factor Periods by clicking on the Create button.
When a new emission factor period is created, it defaults to the activity’s end date. For the next emission factor period, enter the new start date — the system automatically updates the previous emission factor period’s end date.
Under Footprint Details, select the Preferred Footprint Type to define the kind of data users will enter in the Record GHG Data tile.

There are three types:

Manual Emission Footprint
Quantity-Based
Spend-Based

For GHG Category Scope 3.6 – Business Travel, supported calculation methods are Fuel-Based, Distance-Based, and Spend-Based.

Quantity-Based and Spend-Based footprints calculate total CO₂e using emission factor data.
For Manual Emission Footprints, users enter the total CO₂e directly.

In this example, select Quantity-Based footprint type with Fuel-Based calculation method, choosing Manual Entry as the Data Source.

(This is because default emission factor packages are currently only available for Scope 1 and Scope 2.)

After selecting Manual Entry, enter the emission factor:

2.68 kg CO₂e per liter of fuel.

Note:

The entered value represents the total CO₂e produced per quantity.
The system uses this to automatically calculate emissions based on the quantities that users record in the Manage GHG Data Collections and Record GHG Data apps.
To simplify maintenance, you can use a mass upload feature to import multiple business activity records at once.

For further details, refer to: https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_SUS_SCT/21ecfb83f8d14e5982b7af315da5889a/f8f943508363488ba184965cf4442d46.html

Click Apply to save the details.

Then, click Create button.

Create GHG data collections

Use this app to create a periodic data collection form to capture business activity data for each location within a given period.

The Manage GHG Data Collection app helps in recording footprint data linked to business activities. You create a data collection for the relevant period, and users can enter data through GHG data forms, accessible from both this app and the Record GHG Data app

Let’s see an E2E example with screenshots.

After setting up the business activity with the necessary Emission Factor Periods, open the Manage GHG Data Collection app.
Click the Create button to create a GHG Data Collection for the relevant period.
Then select the Footprint Inventory Scope is “Default (DEFAULT)” and the relevant period.
Then click Create button.
After creating the new data collection, it appears in the table with the status "In Progress" and 0% Data Recording Completion. Select the created GHG Data Collection to capture business activity data.
After selecting data collection item in the tables, the GHG Data Collection screen displays general information along with the GHG Data Forms table, which shows all in-scope locations and their data collection progress.

Enter data in forms in the collection apps

After selecting a specific location (e.g., Chennai (53002)), you’ll be redirected to the Record GHG Data Form screen, where you can enter GHG data for the selected period and any business activities maintained for that location. Click the Edit button to record GHG Data.
Enter the quantity of fuel used for the business activity at the selected location, then click the Save button to store the data.
The value 7.01624 represents the total CO₂e emissions generated from the consumption of 2618 liters of petrol. This result is expressed in metric tons, where 1 ton = 1000 kilograms.

The system used the emission factor of 2.68 kg CO₂e per liter, so:
2618 liters × 2.68 kg CO₂e/liter = 7016.24 kg CO₂e,
which is 7.01624 tons CO₂e after converting kilograms to tons.

This calculation helps quantify the carbon footprint based on the amount of fuel used.
You can mark entire locations or specific business activities as Not Applicable if no data needs to be collected for that specific period. These settings are remembered for future collections, reducing repetitive maintenance.
Once all required values are entered, the Data Recording Completion will show 100%, but the status remains In Progress. To finalize the entry, click Set Completed and then Save. The status will change to Completed, and the data becomes available for footprint calculations.

Note: You can still make edits to a form marked as Set Completed or Set Not Applicable by clicking Reopen.

Review data and send to analytics

Step 1: Review and Publish GHG Data

Before GHG data can be analyzed or published in the View Emissions Data app, it must be reviewed and confirmed.

Open the Manage GHG Data Collections app.
Select the relevant reporting period and business locations.
Click Review, enter a comment, and click Confirm.

Once confirmed:

The Review Status changes to Reviewed.
Data becomes available in the View Emissions Data app.

Note: If any data is modified after review, the status updates to Outdated, and a re-review is required.

If the review fails, try again.

Note:
Use the Regenerate option when changes are made that affect an existing GHG Data Collection. For example, if new business activities are created after a data collection has already been generated, regenerating the collection updates the data forms to include those new activities. Previously entered data is retained and not lost during regeneration

Step 2: Analyze Recorded GHG Data

Use the View Emissions Data app to analyze the collected and confirmed data.
The Emissions Dashboard provides insights into:

Gross GHG Emissions
Net Emissions
Emissions Avoided by Renewables
Offsets

This helps monitor trends and evaluate sustainability performance across locations and periods.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. I hope this end-to-end walkthrough of the Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) feature in SAP Sustainability Control Tower was helpful and provided clarity on how emissions can be captured, calculated, reviewed, and analyzed in the system.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or would like to share your experiences, please feel free to leave a comment below. I’d be happy to engage and learn from the community.

Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts, where I’ll continue sharing practical insights on SAP Sustainability solutions, new features, and technology-focused topics in SAP PaPM Cloud.

SAP Sustainability Control Tower: Product Updates (HY2-2025) and Road Map Highlights (HY1-2026)

2026-02-04T08:30:00.021000+01:00

Introduction

Sustainability reporting is shifting from annual disclosure to continuous, operational performance management, and that requires sustainability intelligence that runs inside the business, not beside it. SAP’s 2026 position is straightforward: sustainability AI must run where the business runs, inside your ERP, or it won’t be truly intelligent, scalable, or manageable.

SAP Sustainability Control Tower supports this by grounding sustainability insights in a trusted enterprise context and embedding them into the end‑to‑end lifecycle of scope definition, governed data collection, analysis, and AI‑assisted reporting, to enable faster, lower‑effort compliance and measurable business impact.

With that framing, the updates in HY2 2025 focus on strengthening the end-to-end path from scope → data → insight → disclosure, and our HY1 2026 roadmap continues to expand regulatory coverage, auditability, data quality controls, and AI-enabled reporting so that customers can achieve faster, lower-cost compliance with measurable business impact.

Q3 & Q4 2025 Highlights for SAP Sustainability Control Tower

Content Factory: Accelerating regulatory metric content at scale

To support customers on their ESRS journey, SAP SCT continues to expand SAP‑provided sustainability metric content, covering both quantitative and qualitative ESRS requirements, while reducing duplication and improving mapping quality.

We significantly increased ESRS coverage to help customers meet ESRS data-point requirements, with clear visibility into coverage progress. As communicated in our Help Portal, SAP SCT’s ESRS datapoint coverage and the number of released/planned metrics increased substantially through 2025, with the aim to enable ESRS reporting based on a strong data foundation and sourcing capabilities.

Reporting Scope Management: Turning DMA results into actionable data requirements

ESG data collection relies on a clear reporting scope, usually based on a company’s double materiality assessment (DMA), to determine what to report, when, how, and by whom. SAP SCT’s Reporting Scope features help turn disclosure requirements into specific, system-managed data needs.

With Reporting Scope Management, you can:

Capture the outcome of materiality assessments (“what to report”) and map it to SAP-provided ESRS metrics or your own custom metrics.
Define scope items across organizational structures and reporting cycles so the scope becomes the backbone for workflows, analysis, and reporting.
Ensure traceable collection and reporting over periods to make scope changes transparent and auditable over time.

Formula-based metric definition: Configure sustainability KPIs with a flexible Formula Builder

Sustainability reporting rarely ends with out-of-the-box metrics alone. That’s why SCT supports the creation of custom sustainability metrics with the same metadata richness as SAP‑provided metrics, and now with a Formula Builder that makes defining calculation logic far more accessible.

With a formula-based metric definition, you can:

Create custom sustainability metrics that are not part of SAP delivery and assign consistent metadata.
Define variables mapped to source measures and apply dimension filters (for example, restrict to a specific entity, location, or category).
Use the formula builder to define expressions that support arithmetic, conditional, and aggregation logic, helping you align internal KPIs or industry-specific requirements with your reporting model.

Analyze ESG Data app: Personalized insights, drilldowns, and governed access

In HY2 2025, we continued to evolve the analytics experience with the Analyze ESG Data application, a flexible, personalized way to explore both SAP-provided and custom metrics, replacing static KPI tiles with a more dynamic analysis layer.

Key capabilities include:

Drilldown analysis across organizational and metric dimensions (for example, business location, reporting line, legal entity, time period, and predefined metric dimensions).
Filtering and grouping by time, hierarchy, sustainability matter, reporting frameworks (like ESRS / EU Taxonomy), or user-defined categories.
Personalization: save and share views to align analysis across stakeholders and teams.
Governance: instance-based authorization supports secure data access and separation of duties.

Enriched AI-based ESG reporting: Customizable templates + in-app AI actions

SAP SCT’s AI-assisted reporting capabilities continue to mature, focusing on reducing manual effort while increasing control, structure, and reusability. In HY2 2025, we strengthened report generation with:

User-defined templates to structure ESG reports and include SAP‑shipped quantitative metrics alongside charts and tables from a pre-shipped list.
AI actions for in-app editing, enabling users to refine generated text (e.g., shorten or lengthen it) directly within the report.

This allows sustainability teams to move quickly from data to narrative while maintaining consistent, reviewable reporting results that align with internal disclosure requirements.

Our Initiatives: Linking sustainability ambition to execution

SAP SCT is designed to help organizations move beyond compliance into performance management, including tracking sustainability initiatives with transparency into benefits and costs. Our Initiatives App capabilities focus on turning goals into actionable work with traceability.

With Our Initiatives, organizations can:

Create and manage initiatives across lifecycle statuses with detailed metadata (impacted metrics, financials, benefits, actions).
Capture CapEx / OpEx, business-as-usual comparisons, and sustainability impact with system-supported calculations and guidance.
Break initiatives into actions, assign owners, and track changes to support structured planning and measurable execution.

One API: Unified Sustainability Metrics API for reporting & disclosure consumption

To simplify integration with disclosure tools, reporting platforms, and external consumers, SCT introduced a unified Sustainability Metrics API (One Read API) for metric value consumption.

Key capabilities:

Unified retrieval of metric values across quantitative and qualitative metric types.
Exposure of metric metadata, including ESG standard references for tagging purposes (important for downstream disclosure).
Bulk retrieval based on reporting scope, period, and hierarchy; plus flexibility for time aggregation and hierarchy selection.
Ongoing support for current APIs remains, but updates are planned primarily in the unified API going forward.

CPE‑UM value scenarios: extensibility for advanced ESG scenarios

SCT’s value scenarios can be extended with CPE‑UM, which enables read/write access to SCT’s data foundation for advanced customer scenarios.

This helps implement scenarios such as:

Sample reporting (read scenario) using a connector architecture for performance and flexibility.
Custom metric calculation (read/write) by consuming SCT data and writing back calculated values.
Custom data consolidation (write scenario) to operationalize ESG data provisioning into SCT.

H1 2026 Roadmap Highlights

Forward-looking statement: The following roadmap items are planned and may change.

For HY1 2026, SCT priorities focus on: expanding regulatory coverage, market-ready reporting scope & data collection, enhancing analytics & reporting, and wider adoption & integration options.

IFRS S1 / S2 coverage (Regulatory expansion & interoperability)

We plan to expand regulatory content beyond ESRS by adopting IFRS S1 and S2 where interoperability exists and by providing preconfigured metric definition content to help customers address investor-oriented baseline disclosure requirements.

Link to Road Map Item

Evidence Management (MVP) for Audit Readiness

To strengthen auditability across the ESG lifecycle, SCT plans an Evidence Management capability (MVP) as a central application to attach, manage, and access documents related to ESG data entries.

Planned core capabilities include:

Central repository for attachments linked to reference objects with metadata.
Upload/download / metadata updates/deletion, including multiple attachments per object.
End-to-end scenario staged across quantitative data and qualitative ESG data, with later integration into data collection forms.

Link to Road Map Item

Data products: Sustainability Metrics (consumption & integration scenarios)

We plan to strengthen “data product”- style consumption and integration scenarios so customers can adopt prebuilt integration paths for key measures (e.g., energy consumption and workforce data), with mapping and low-touch operations.

Link to Road Map Item

DMA process coverage & Reporting Scope enhancements

To operationalize the DMA-to-disclosure pipeline, roadmap items include improvements around reporting scope import/export and interfaces to push DMA lists into reporting scope, plus enhancements in data collection configuration driven by scope.

Link to Road Map Item

Multiple language and format support in AI reporting

Planned enhancements for AI-assisted reporting include:

Ability to generate reports in multiple languages.
Improved output formats (for example enhanced export options) and more flexible generation options (such as filtering at hierarchy level).

Link to Road Map Item

Custom validation rules & plausibility checks for data import

To improve data quality and reduce the risk of incorrect disclosure, SCT plans configuration options for custom validations and plausibility checks, including rules for value ranges, dimension governance, dependency rules across value combinations, and time-based plausibility checks using historical comparisons and tolerance thresholds.

Link to Road Map Item

Stay tuned for more and check the SCT Roadmap Explorer.

Additional Information

For in-depth details on SAP Sustainability Control Tower, we recommend browsing the SAP Help Portal. For an overview of all new features and functions, check the What’s New section, which is updated with every new software release.

How SAP Business AI Drives Sustainability in Automotive Manufacturing

2026-02-10T01:04:20.675000+01:00

Sustainability is no longer optional—it’s a business necessity. SAP Business AI helps companies integrate eco-friendly practices by analyzing environmental impact and suggesting sustainable alternatives.

Take Martur Fompak International (MFI), a leader in automotive seat production. MFI’s innovative solution uses SAP AI Core, SAP AI Launchpad, and SAP Sustainability Footprint Management to suggest sustainable fabric alternatives for seat covers. By analyzing their catalog with AI, MFI helps customers and internal teams compare materials based on carbon impact, enabling data-driven sustainability choices. Read the full story here.

Key benefits of SAP Business AI for sustainability include:

AI-driven recommendations for sustainable materials.
Carbon impact tracking to compare environmental footprints.
Seamless integration into business operations for long-term sustainability.

Summary

SAP Business AI helps businesses analyze environmental impact and identify sustainable alternatives.
MFI uses AI to suggest eco-friendly fabrics and measure carbon footprints in automotive seat production.
SAP Sustainability Footprint Management provides data-driven insights for informed decision-making.
AI integration embeds sustainability into core business operations for long-term impact.

Championing Ethical and Sustainable AI with SAP

2026-02-10T23:29:09.056000+01:00

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping industries, but its rapid growth demands responsible development. SAP is leading the way by embedding ethical principles, security, and sustainability into AI solutions.

Responsible AI at SAP SAP’s approach to AI is built on three pillars:

Ethical and Safe AI – Guided by ten principles, including fairness, sustainability, and human oversight, SAP ensures AI benefits users and society.
Secure AI – Robust security controls protect AI systems from threats, maintaining trust in data and business processes.
Compliant AI – SAP ensures AI solutions meet regulatory standards, helping businesses operate confidently.

Sustainable AI for a Greener Future AI’s environmental impact is a growing concern. SAP minimizes its carbon footprint through:

Renewable Energy – Powering data centers with 100% renewable electricity.
Optimized Training – Scheduling AI model training during peak energy efficiency.
Net Zero Commitment – Aligning AI initiatives with SAP’s 2030 net-zero emissions goal.

By prioritizing ethical, secure, and sustainable AI, SAP ensures technology drives progress without compromising trust or the planet.

Key Points

SAP’s responsible AI focuses on ethics, security, and compliance to build trustworthy solutions.
Ethical AI follows ten guiding principles, including fairness and human oversight.
Sustainable AI reduces emissions through renewable energy, optimized training, and net-zero goals.
SAP ensures secure and compliant AI to protect data and meet regulatory standards.
The goal is a positive emissions ROI, where AI avoids more emissions than it generates.
SAP earns ISO 42001 certification for AI governance and provisioning, setting the global standard for responsible AI with certified governance across Joule, SAP AI Core, and key SAP Business AI solutions.

Welcome to the SAP Sustainability Learning Group

2026-02-16T14:59:45.826000+01:00

In this space, you can connect with SAP experts and fellow learners across the entire spectrum of corporate sustainability—from ESG reporting to the "Green Ledger." The Sustainability Learning Group is where you will be the first to hear about our plans for introducing new courses, updates to existing sustainability learning journeys, new live sessions, and certification updates.

Our Focus: Learning for a Sustainable Future

The focus of this community is learning and knowledge building. It is not meant to replace existing SAP Community groups that focus on product-specific technical discussions or troubleshooting. Those communities still exist and should always be used whenever you have a technical question or need help with a bug on a specific product feature. There, you are more likely to reach a huge number of developers and consultants who can support your technical implementation.

This learning community is a dedicated space to ask questions and join discussions around SAP Sustainability learning content, such as:

Courses and Learning Journeys
Certification preparation
Live sessions and expert webinars

This is a safe space to ask even the most basic questions as you develop your expertise in sustainability management. We welcome questions related to the exercises and systems used in our official learning journeys. However, please note that this is not the place to seek support for troubleshooting product issues encountered on your own or your customer's live systems.

Empowering Your Sustainability Journey

Always remember: everyone in this group is a learner, just like you. Whether you are a sustainability officer or an IT consultant, don't hold back with your questions. We are here to help you get started and to support you if you run into trouble with topics in the learning content. Look out for blog posts from the experts that will help guide you through the complexities of ESG data.

Solutions Covered in this Community:

The solutions we cover in this community include the core of the SAP Sustainability Portfolio:

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management (Product and corporate carbon accounting)
SAP Sustainability Control Tower (Holistic ESG reporting and steering)
SAP Sustainability Data Exchange (Transparency across the value chain)
SAP Responsible Design and Production (Circular economy and plastic taxes)
SAP S/4HANA Cloud for EHS (Environment, Health, and Safety)
Circular Economy & ESG Integration within the SAP Digital Core

Moderated by Experts

The community is moderated by SAP experts who are instructors and learning content developers. This means you are connecting directly with the team who developed the course materials and certifications and who present the live sessions.

Positioning SAP Sustainability Solutions: A Guide for Businesses

2026-02-16T15:38:32.645000+01:00

Sustainability is no longer just a buzzword—it’s a business imperative. Companies worldwide are under increasing pressure to reduce their environmental impact, comply with regulations, and meet stakeholder expectations. We offer a suite of SAP Sustainability Solutions designed to help organizations measure, manage, and optimize their sustainability performance.

Why SAP Sustainability Solutions Matter

SAP’s sustainability solutions provide businesses with the tools they need to:

Track and report emissions
Optimize resource usage (energy, water, waste)
Ensure compliance with global regulations (e.g., CSRD, SEC climate rules)
Drive circular economy initiatives through better supply chain visibility

By integrating sustainability data with core business processes, companies can make informed decisions that align profitability with environmental responsibility.

Key Features of SAP Sustainability Solutions

SAP Sustainability Footprint Management – Helps organizations calculate and reduce their carbon footprint.
SAP Responsible Design and Production – Supports sustainable product lifecycle management.
SAP Sustainability Data Exchange – Enables seamless data sharing across supply chains.
SAP ESG Reporting – Simplifies compliance with evolving environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards.

Who Should Take the Course?

The Positioning SAP Sustainability Solutions course is ideal for:

Sustainability professionals looking to leverage SAP tools
Business leaders aiming to integrate sustainability into their strategy
IT and ERP consultants supporting sustainability initiatives

Conclusion

As sustainability becomes a key driver of business success, SAP’s solutions provide a structured way to embed ESG principles into operations. By taking this course, professionals can gain the knowledge needed to position SAP Sustainability Solutions effectively and help their organizations achieve long-term sustainability goals.

Ready to learn more? Explore the course here.

Comprehensive Overview: Analyze ESG Data Application in SAP Sustainability Control Tower

2026-02-17T14:51:37.820000+01:00

Disclaimer: This blog post reflects the state of the SAP Sustainability Control Tower as of February 17th, 2026.

The Analyze ESG Data application in SAP Sustainability Control Tower (SCT) has evolved into a central workspace for exploring and reporting sustainability data. Recent enhancements – such as configurable drilldown dimensions, public analytics configurations, extended period selection, and flexible export options – make it easier than ever for users to navigate ESG metrics, create consistent views, and share insights across teams. This overview summarizes the key capabilities that support faster, clearer, and more collaborative sustainability reporting and provides a practical, user-focused supplement to the SAP Help Portal documentation.

Getting Started: “My Views” & Filters

The application requires users to select a reporting period and structure before displaying data, ensuring relevant and targeted analysis:

Once you have selected the relevant Period and Reporting Structure you can also save this using the “My Views” functionality and set it as default. These views are only visible to you, and don't affect other users.

Manage Overviews: Customization and Collaboration

The “Overview” dashboard organizes metrics into groups, which are defined in the “Manage Overviews” section. Users can switch between public and private overviews, edit groupings, and add or remove metrics to tailor the dashboard to their needs.
Public overviews allow teams to share standardized metric groupings, while private overviews support individual customization.
Metrics can be reordered within groups for better visibility, and the system provides clear feedback when no data matches the selected filters.

Analytics: Deep Dive, Drill-Downs, and Shared Views

Users can access the “Analytics” tab by selecting a metric for a prefilled view or starting from scratch via the analytics tab, supporting both guided and exploratory analysis.

Option 1: Selecting a metric from the “Overview” page:

Option 2: Select the metric within “Analytics” tab

Independent whether you clicked on the metric from the “Overview” tab or you selected it directly within the “Analytics” tab, the metric is visualized with a grouping by “Period” per default (if nothing else is applied).
Public and private analytics views allow admins and data managers to predefine drill-down configurations for each(!) metric, which can be set as defaults for all users. This ensures consistency in reporting and facilitates knowledge sharing across teams.

The “Manage Analytics” section provides a centralized location to view and edit all saved analytics configurations, with public views editable by authorized users. Any public view can be edited by anyone with the required authorizations.

Advanced Filtering, Drill-Downs, and Export

Users can filter and drill down by multiple dimensions, such as period, reporting structure, and energy source type, with up to five drill-downs per metric. This flexibility supports detailed analysis and custom reporting.

Within the “View Settings” you can also create additional filters by “Period”, “Reporting Structure” or “Drill-down Dimension”. Please note that filters within “View Settings” overwrite settings in “My Views” if applied. For filtering within “View Setting” there is a current limit of 12 nodes for multi-selection in hierarchies, set for performance and visualization reasons. Depending on customer feedback this limit might be expanded.

If filtering is applied via the “View Settings” and “My Views” is overwritten, this is also highlighted as an info:

Export functionality enables users to download chart data as PNG images and tables as Excel files, making it easy to share insights and integrate with other reporting tools.

Drill-downs for each metric can be set up in the “Manage Metrics” application for up to 5 drill-down dimensions. Select the relevant drill-down dimension(s) and by clicking on saving, this directly calculates the drill downs. Once it has been calculated and saved, the drill-downs can then directly be visualized in the “Analytics” tab of the Analyze ESG Data application

Upcoming Features & Further Resources

Key priorities for upcoming releases include displaying targets within the “Analytics” tab, enabling multi-selection in the global filter for reporting structures, support for more chart types with saved custom chart views and saving “Analytics” settings for the whole page across multiple charts further enhancing flexibility and usability.
If you are driving a project with SCT, please upvote or submit improvement requests via SAP Influence to ensure that future updates align with real-world needs and use cases.

For further details, consult the SAP Help Portal and the SAP Roadmap for SCT:
- Using the Analyze ESG Data Application | SAP Help Portal
- SAP SCT Roadmap
- Don’t forget to subscribe the What’s New section within SAP Help:
  What's New in SAP Sustainability Control Tower | SAP Help Portal

Part 1: Introduction & Overview	Link
Part 2: Integration of Employees from SAP SuccessFactors	Link
Part 3: Integration of Business Partners & Material from SAP Master Data Governance (MDG)	Link
Part 4: Integration of Functional Locations & Equipment from SAP S/4HANA On-Premise System	Link
Part 5: Extensibility Scenarios & Further Implementation	Link
Part 6: Summary & Outlook	Link