Cornerstone Sustainability Data Initiative

Our Goal

Our goal is to provide high-quality, open sustainability data for businesses, governments, researchers, and other organizational users worldwide. As a first step, we're bringing the two most widely used scope 3 emissions models under one roof – USEEIO and CEDA – ensuring continuity and reliability for institutional sustainability measurement.

In the coming months, we'll bring these two leading models together as a single global, open MRIO (Multi-Regional Input-Output) model that can offer a durable common standard for companies, governments, and researchers.

Quality data is the foundation of great sustainability work. We aim to provide the cornerstone.

Cornerstone is a collaboration between:

CEDA

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CEDA is Watershed’s Multi-Region Input Output Model, first released in 2001 and built primarily for the professional use case over the last two decades.

CEDA covers 400 sectors and is globally representative, capturing emissions variation across 148 countries and regions. It is available as an open dataset (Open CEDA) and in a supported, enterprise edition.

Access CEDA 2025 downloads and submit inquiries at openceda.org.

USEEIO

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USEEIO is the US Environmentally-Extended Input-Output family of models, originally developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Cornerstone will provide support and updates for USEEIO going forward.

USEEIO provides open emission factors across >400 sectors for the US economy and is widely used for corporate measurements, policy and academic research.

Access the most recent USEEIO datasets on zenodo.

Roadmap and Contributing

Currently, the Cornerstone team is working on:

Harmonizing the U.S. modeling approach between USEEIO and CEDA (more information coming soon)
Expanding the U.S. models with updated extensions for a range of environmental indicators (such as air emissions, water use, and other resource use)
Updating U.S. state models with the latest environmental and economic data
Engaging and seeking feedback from the broader community of industrial ecologists and input-output modelers

As part of our mission, we work as much as possible in the open. We welcome input in the form of issues, discussions, and pull requests on Github.

Questions & Support

We encourage users to post questions in our Github discussion forums for community support. Members of the Cornerstone team also check these forums regularly and will do our best to provide answers as our time allows.

For more in-depth, paid support or customized model extensions, ERG offers consulting services and direct technical assistance, and Watershed offers a paid, enterprise version of CEDA.

Cornerstone Leadership

The three Cornerstone founding organizations have each nominated leaders to steer the initiative, including the following experts in sustainability and climate data: