Innovative Design and Application of the Digital Sustainability Cloud

This study addresses the challenges faced by Taiwan's manufacturing industry in carbon emissions data exchange and management, proposing an innovative solution. To meet the requirement of international policies such as the EU's CBAM and the U.S.'s CCA, businesses need more effective mechanisms to collect carbon emissions data across their supply chains. However, current challenges include inconsistent data formats, lack of a trusted data computation framework, disparities in digitalization among enterprises, and inadequate digital data sharing. To address these issues, this study adopts the PACT framework promoted by WBCSD, designing and implementing a carbon data exchange platform called the digital sustainability cloud, which complies with the Pathfinder standard. The platform is designed to protect supplier privacy with commercial consideration, leveraging innovative technologies to enable efficient and secure carbon data exchange. The platform has been successfully tested under PACT compliance and applied to the supply chains of 12 hub manufacturers, demonstrating its practicality and reliability. The primary contribution of this study is to provide a standardized platform architecture to address the carbon information exchange needs of the manufacturing sector. This architecture is not only applicable to Taiwan enterprises but can also be extended to international companies complying with PACT specifications. The proposed digital sustainability cloud is expected to serve as a critical tool for aligning carbon management in the manufacturing industry with international standards.