Emissions Transparency: Moving Toward a More Rigorous Verification

For years, many companies — including those in tech — have relied on limited emissions assurance, a process that provides a basic review of reported emissions. This level of verification is common and often thought of as “good enough,” but it doesn’t have the level of depth that exists in other business functions to dig deep into how emissions are measured or to challenge the accuracy of the data.

Imagine if financial reporting worked the same way; that is, if companies estimated their revenue and expenses without audits or detailed documentation. It wouldn’t build much confidence.

Customers, employees, and investors want more than just numbers in a sustainability report. They want confidence that those numbers truly reflect a company’s impact. They want to trust that when we say, “We’re reducing our carbon footprint,” we can prove it with robust, independently verified data.

That’s why Akamai is evolving our approach to emissions verification and moving toward reasonable assurance, a more rigorous, transparent process that strengthens trust in our climate commitments.

Tech companies like Akamai operate in a world in which precision and transparency matter, not just in the services we provide but also in how we track our sustainability impact. The challenge is that emissions data isn’t always straightforward.

Akamai’s emissions fit into the three categories established by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol:

1. Scope 1 — Direct emissions from sources we own or control, such as backup generators

2. Scope 2 — Indirect emissions from the purchased energy that powers our offices and infrastructure

3. Scope 3 — Indirect emissions from value chain activities that we do not directly control, including the manufacturing our servers, our operations in third-party data centers, and the delivery of content to users around the world

Like many tech companies, the majority of Akamai’s emissions are in Scope 3 — areas in which we have an influence but don’t directly control. These emissions are harder to measure and verify because they rely on data from suppliers, partners, and industry estimates.

Across all three emissions categories, companies need to delve deeper into their inventories to ensure completeness and avoid overlooked emissions. There is a global push to ensure that organizations are accounting for the full impact of their operations and supply chain, creating relevant targets, and driving meaningful progress toward these targets.

That’s why having a stronger verification process matters: It helps ensure that we’re making impactful decisions and measuring progress based on the most robust and accurate data available.

By moving toward a stronger verification process, we gain:

• More confidence in the data we report
• Expanded partnerships with our stakeholders
• A better sustainability strategy
• Stronger customer and partner trust
• Accountability and long-term transparency

Strengthening verification helps us identify any gaps, inconsistencies, and uncertainties in our emissions estimates, helping to ensure that what we report is accurate, complete, consistent, and backed by real data.

Improving our data means a deeper collaboration with our leadership, operational teams, internal audit team, and suppliers — not just for reporting, but also for increasing the data’s robustness and accuracy, improving our validation processes, and our fine-tuning long-term sustainability strategy.

More reliable data means we can focus our emissions reduction efforts on where they will have the biggest impact, rather than relying on rough estimates or assumptions.

Many of our customers include Akamai’s emissions in their own carbon footprint calculations. Providing those customers with highly credible, third-party–verified data helps them report more accurately and make better sustainability decisions.

Sustainability is an evolving journey, not a one-time achievement. By improving our data and verification process as an element of our environmental management system (EMS), we’re helping to ensure that the progress we report is real and measurable, while continuing to uncover opportunities that tie directly into our business operations.

Global sustainability reporting is evolving, with stakeholders increasingly seeking data that is both transparent and credible. At Akamai, we are embracing the shift to enhance emissions inventory verification up to levels of assurance and transparency comparable with those of financial statements.

In working toward reasonable assurance for 2025, we are reinforcing our commitment to robust, reliable reporting — enabling an approach that is thorough, actionable, and aligned with industry best practices to drive meaningful progress.

This shift won’t happen overnight. Strengthening emissions verification and moving toward reasonable assurance is a process that requires investment, collaboration, and innovation. But at Akamai, we see this as a necessary step toward greater climate accountability and transparency.