In short
- Accountability for the figure and responsibility for the data are different jobs. Assign them separately.
- Ownership that lives in one person's inbox is not ownership. Write the mandate, the register and the decisions down.
- Agree the escalation route before the first cycle, because an owner rarely has authority over the data holders.
Ownership splits three ways, and only one of the three is a job. One person is accountable for the figure: they run the cycle, hold the method and answer when someone questions the number. Several people are responsible for supplying their own data and nothing else. One person approves the figure before it leaves the building. Assigning ownership properly means writing that split down against named people and dates, giving the accountable person a route to escalate when data does not arrive, and leaving the whole arrangement legible enough that a successor can pick it up.
What are you actually assigning?
Four different things get bundled into the word ownership, and most of the trouble comes from merging them.
The answer. Being accountable for the reported figure and explaining it to a customer, an evaluator or a board. One person, always.
The method. Deciding the boundary, the base year, the factor set and how estimates are made. Often the same person as the answer, and it should be a deliberate choice rather than an accident, because method authorship is what makes next year comparable to this one.
The data. Supplying twelve months of records for one category. Several people, each with a bounded task that is not carbon accounting and should not be described as such.
The release. Approving the figure before it is published, submitted or sent to a customer.
Merge the third and fourth and someone is approving their own numbers. Merge all four into one overloaded person and the programme ends the day they change jobs.
Who is accountable, and who is only supplying?
Map it against the deliverables of the cycle rather than against job titles. Column two never holds more than one name.
| The deliverable | Accountable | Supplies or contributes | Approves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boundary and reporting scope | Owner | Finance, legal, operations | Sponsor |
| Base year and any restatement | Owner | Whoever built the earlier figure | Sponsor |
| Factor set and estimation rules | Owner | Adviser, where one is used | Reviewer |
| Category data, per category | Owner | The named data owner for that category | Owner |
| The consolidated figure | Owner | Finance, for the reconciliation | Reviewer |
| The published statement or claim | Owner | Marketing, for wording only | Director or board |
| Answers to follow-up questions | Owner | Data owners, on request | Owner |
Two things fall out of that table. The owner appears in every row, which is why the role needs protected hours rather than goodwill. And marketing contributes wording to one row only, which is the guardrail that keeps an unsubstantiated environmental claim out of a sound report.
What has to be written down?
Five artefacts. None takes more than an hour, and if they only exist in an email thread they do not exist.
The mandate. One paragraph in the owner's objectives naming the deliverable, the deadline, the agreed hours per month and who signs off. Ownership that is a favour does not survive a busy quarter.
The category register. Every emissions category, the system or document it comes from, the named person who supplies it, the format and the due date. This is what turns a vague obligation into a schedule.
The decision log. Boundary, base year, factor set, exclusions and estimation methods, each dated and attributed. It is short, it is the first thing an assurance provider asks for, and it is what a successor cannot reconstruct.
The calendar. Request date, close date, review date, sign-off date, anchored to your financial year end rather than to whenever a customer last asked.
The escalation route. Who the owner goes to, and on which date, when a category has not arrived. Agree it before the first cycle, because agreeing it mid-cycle is a negotiation the owner usually loses.
How does an owner get data from people who do not report to them?
This is the real problem with the role, and it is a design problem rather than a personality one. The owner is accountable for a figure built almost entirely from other people's records, and has authority over none of them.
Four things help.
Make the ask small and specific. A named report, from a named system, for a named period, in a stated format. Not "your energy data". Bounded requests get done, open ones get postponed.
Give it a date that repeats. The same date every year turns a favour into a routine, and routines survive interruptions.
Report status, not people. Publish a simple view of which categories are in and which are outstanding. It applies pressure without the owner having to chase anyone personally.
Escalate to the sponsor on the agreed date. Not earlier, not never. The sponsor exists precisely because the owner cannot compel anyone, and using them on schedule is the point of having one.
It also helps to tell data owners what their number is for. A fuel report arrives faster when the person knows it is going into a customer's supply chain questionnaire with a deadline on it.
How does the arrangement survive someone leaving?
Run a handover test now rather than during a notice period. Five checks, answerable this week.
- Can somebody other than the owner open the current year and see where it stands?
- Does the decision log live somewhere that is not the owner's mailbox or laptop?
- Do the data owners know the annual date without being reminded by the owner?
- Would a successor be able to tell which figure was published, where, and on what basis?
- Is there one named person who can answer a customer question while the owner is away?
Any no on that list is a single point of failure, and each is cheap to close. Name a deputy who attends the review, keep the register and the log in a shared system, and put the calendar where a manager can see it. Continuity comes from artefacts, not from a well-organised individual.
What changes as the obligation grows?
Ownership designed for one customer questionnaire will not carry a regulated or assured figure, and the upgrade is predictable. Separate the reviewer from the person who entered the data. Add the external auditor as a participant with read-only access instead of an email thread. Attach evidence to entries during collection, because retrofitting it is far more expensive. And buy judgement rather than hours for the genuinely specialist parts: a boundary change after an acquisition, or a newly material category, is what carbon footprint consulting is for. If your trigger is a customer request built on the voluntary SME standard, our guide to VSME covers what that deliverable asks for.
What does a platform change about ownership?
It changes how many people the work can spread across, which is the constraint the design runs into.
The platform lets you invite colleagues, consultants and auditors as data owners, auditors or managers, with entity management across locations and sites, so a category supplier can load their own records without touching anyone else's. An AI guide takes you through GHG Protocol setup, inventory building, data upload and reporting, and will chat through your data sources, data owners and documents, which is a useful way to draft the category register. Human GHG experts are reachable in-app. A free account needs no sales call, and Pro starts at EUR 1,200 a year.
Two honest limits if you design the role around a product.
Some of the artefacts stay yours. A mid-market reviewer rated us 3.5 out of 5 on G2 in June 2026 and noted there is no data source management feature and no decarbonisation target monitoring. The register and the decision log above are documents you will keep and maintain yourself.
Spreading the work does not remove it. A small business reviewer said on G2 in August 2026 that loading data takes a lot of manual labour, and that it works perfectly once the data is in. Ownership design decides whether that labour lands on one person or on eight.
What should you do first?
Write the mandate paragraph and the category register this week, in that order, and send both to the sponsor in one email. Everything else here depends on those two documents existing.
Then find out how big the work is by building one category end to end. You can do that on a free account with no sales call, and book a meeting if you want a second opinion on structuring the role for your group.
Sources: Hedgehog platform, Hedgehog on G2. Re-verified 17 September 2026; underlying facts dated 27 August 2026.
Facts on this page were last verified on 2026-09-17.
