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BENGALURU — April 24, 2025 — StepChange, a leading climate and sustainability intelligence platform, and Networks for Humanity (NFH), a global non-profit building open, interoperable digital infrastructure, today announced the launch of the Climate and Sustainability Data Exchange (CSDX) — a pioneering, open digital rail for trusted, high-quality climate and sustainability data. The launch coincides with Earth Day, underscoring the initiative's mission to transform fragmented climate data into a global foundation for accountability, innovation, and action at scale.
The climate crisis is no longer a distant threat — it is a lived reality. In 2025, global temperatures reached 1.48°C above pre-industrial levels, while climate-driven disasters cost the global economy more than USD 400 billion. Yet despite the availability of proven solutions — from solar and wind energy to regenerative agriculture, electric vehicles, and carbon markets — collective action remains insufficient to meet the scale and urgency of the challenge.
The barrier is not a lack of knowledge, innovation, or will. It is the absence of trustworthy, high-quality, and accessible data — and the coordination infrastructure to act on it. Today's fragmented, costly, and siloed data systems leave capital mispriced, supply chains misaligned, and genuine progress invisible.
CSDX is conceived as a new category of infrastructure: an open, interoperable digital rail for decision-grade climate and sustainability information. Much like railways, container shipping, or the internet before it, CSDX provides a minimal, shared foundation that allows any actor — business, government, financial institution, or civil society — to publish and access sustainability records in a common language, at near-zero marginal cost.
Built to serve three interconnected systems — ESG management, carbon accounting, and climate risk — CSDX ensures that sustainability data is not merely reported, but embedded into markets, regulation, and everyday decisions. For example, an exporter in the Global South can publish verified climate data — emissions, energy mix, water use — once through CSDX, rather than across fragmented ESG, audit, and compliance systems. Banks, buyers, insurers, and regulators can then securely pull the same trusted record, enabling finance to be priced accurately, compliance verified in real time, and markets to reward sustainable performance at scale.
The logic of CSDX is compounding: standardisation improves data quality, access broadens participation, participation builds trust, and trust attracts capital and innovation.
“Earth Day is a reminder that climate progress is not just limited by ambition but increasingly constrained by the quality, trust, and usability of the data that connects markets, supply chains, and institutions. CSDX is our effort to help build the shared digital rails for climate and sustainability data, so information can be published once, trusted at source, and used across finance, trade, regulation, and risk management. We are proud to partner with Networks for Humanity on this vision, because solving climate at scale will require open infrastructure, not more fragmented silos. We invite governments, financial institutions, enterprises, technology providers, and civil society organisations to join us in shaping and building this shared infrastructure for the future.”
— Ankit Jain, Co-founder & CEO, StepChange
Open networks have already proven they can unlock equitable access and scale in commerce, mobility, and energy; CSDX brings that same architecture to sustainability data, and we're excited to build it on the NFH Fabric. When data is published once, trusted at source, and flows freely across finance, trade, and regulation, isolated efforts finally compound into systems-level change.
— Sujith Nair, Co-creator Beckn, Co-founder Networks for Humanity
StepChange and NFH are inviting a small group of governments, businesses, financial institutions, and civil society organisations to join as founding stewards of the Climate Sustainability Data Exchange (CSDX).
Early partners will help shape how the rail is built, governed, and trusted — setting the norms others will follow. Each early connection strengthens trust, accelerates decarbonisation, and scales collective action.
We believe climate data infrastructure is not a competitive advantage to be held, but a public good to be built together.
Write to us at contact@stepchange.earth or at connect@networksforhumanity.org to express your interest!
StepChange is a unified platform for carbon, ESG, and climate risk management — affordable, accessible, and accredited. Trusted by financial institutions and corporates across the globe, StepChange is the first PCAF regional partner in the Global South and is aligned with leading international frameworks including GRI, TCFD, ISSB, and IFRS. StepChange is headquartered in Boston, MA.
Networks for Humanity is a global non-profit initiative building open, interoperable, and decentralised digital infrastructure that enables broader access and participation in the digital economy. Through flagship missions including Finternet and Beckn, NFH brings together policymakers, technologists, institutions, and communities to design and govern open systems that serve everyone. NFH is supported by global partners including Google.org, the Asian Development Bank, and leading philanthropies.
Media Contact
StepChange | contact@stepchange.earth | stepchange.earth
Networks for Humanity | contact@networksforhumanity.org | networksforhumanity.org
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