Collaboration between Stanford Sustainable Solutions Lab and Watershed to maintain and enhance open access to the world’s most widely used Scope 3 carbon accounting models.
Merger of USEEIO and CEDA into a single global open multi-regional input-output model to improve emissions data and broaden environmental impact assessments.
Leadership team includes former EPA USEEIO architect Dr. Wesley Ingwersen, CEDA developer Dr. Sangwon Suh, and Stanford sustainability expert Dr. Steve Davis.
Climate solutions provider Watershed has launched the Cornerstone initiative in partnership with Stanford University’s Stanford Sustainable Solutions Lab to preserve and expand access to critical sustainability datasets. These datasets underpin how companies measure Scope 3 value chain emissions, a key component of corporate carbon accounting.
Cornerstone will serve as the open-access hub for two leading models: the US Environmentally-Extended Input-Output model (USEEIO), developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the Comprehensive Environmental Data Archive (CEDA), created by VitalMetrics and acquired by Watershed in 2023. Together, these models account for about 65% of Scope 3 corporate carbon measurements globally, according to CDP data.
In the coming months, USEEIO and CEDA will merge into a single global open multi-regional input-output model managed by Cornerstone. The unified model will not only enhance Scope 3 measurement accuracy but also expand environmental impact analysis to cover regional air and water quality, water use, and waste generation.
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The Stanford Sustainable Solutions Lab, part of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and led by Dr. Steve Davis, will direct research applying the model to identify solutions to sustainability challenges in energy and food systems, while supporting ongoing model improvements.
“By combining the most trusted environmental data models and keeping them open to the world, we hope to help companies and organizations build and maintain momentum on sustainability,” said Christian Anderson, co-founder of Watershed.
Cornerstone’s leadership team includes Dr. Wesley Ingwersen, former EPA lead and architect of USEEIO, as Technical Director, alongside Dr. Sangwon Suh, Head of Science at Watershed and developer of CEDA, and Dr. Steve Davis as Technical Advisors. Ingwersen, who was dismissed from the EPA in July after publicly opposing the agency’s new direction, will guide the initiative’s technical strategy.
Beyond technical development, Cornerstone will foster a global community of researchers and practitioners and offer education on using Environmentally Extended Input-Output (EEIO) data for corporate sustainability and policy research.
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