Final report on bridging data gaps

The Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) started a workstream on Bridging Data Gaps in July 2020. A Progress Report (May 2021) underlined how persistent climate data gaps hindered the achievement of climate objectives and identified three building blocks to bridge them under the triptych “disclosures / taxonomies and alignment approaches / metrics.”
This Final Report makes actionable recommendations to improve the quality, availability, and comparability of climate-related data through increased reporting requirements, sector-based methodologies, technological innovation, and intensified cooperation among financial regulators, financial institutions, and non-financial sector stakeholders.
Second, the Final Report advances a climate information architecture by laying out the rationale, organization, content, and the description of the “directory” – a practical solution to identify important and relevant climate-related data sources.

Key points

Based on the findings of this report, the largest gaps are for biophysical impact12, emissions and geospatial data types, limiting the usability of the “Physical vulnerability” and “Transition sensitivity” metric types.

The directory points to a number of key challenges to closing climate data gaps:
• Auditability is needed to build trust and enhance the quality of data
• Analysis of the directory shows that climate-related data often rely on estimations and modelling.
• The directory points to granularity issues (geographical data at entity and asset levels in particular lack specific location information) and, where granular data are available, it is often at a cost, which limits accessibility.
• Analysis of the directory showed that forward-looking data13 are limited for transition risk, while “physical risk” metrics rely on a combination of forward-looking, biophysical and geospatial data. Forward-looking metrics still remain a challenge given that data items on biophysical impact and geospatial information are often unavailable.
• Understanding science-based metrics requires capacity building.
• Finally, the information on climate-related data in the directory is, at times, incomplete, and could benefit from further extensions, harmonisation and cleaning efforts.