INPUTS · 01.1 – ECONOMIC DATA
National supply & use tables
Money flows between every industry sector: who buys what from whom, and how much.
Methodology - how the data is made
The science behind our data.
Exclusively licensed from the Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory (IELab), derived from global publicly available statistical databases and peer-reviewed methodologies.
Full technical documentation and metadata available.
Licence
FootprintLab holds the exclusive commercial licence for data from the Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory (IELab), a joint research program between the University of Sydney and UNSW. Dozens of PhD researchers across both universities have built the framework, the models, and the data infrastructure.
Infrastructure
The code runs on the University of Sydney's School of Physics HPC Lab. The dataset draws on 100s of source datasets from around the world, continuously maintained through the academic research process.
Expertise
IELab’s methodology has been published across the input-output literature for more than a decade. Lead researchers Prof Manfred Lenzen (USyd) and Prof Tommy Wiedmann (UNSW) are among the world’s most-cited academics in this field, with more than 56,000 and 39,000 academic citations respectively.
Prof Manfred Lenzen
University of Sydney
Prof Tommy Wiedmann
UNSW Sydney
How the factors are built.
Two streams of data, combined in a single model, produce one auditable number for every dollar spent.
INPUTS · 01.2 – ENVIRONMENTAL DATA
Industry emissions & resource accounts
Total greenhouse gas emissions, energy, water, labour and materials attributed to each industry sector.
Combined in
Model · 02 — IELab EEIO
Environmentally extended input‑output model.
FootprintLab combines economic and environmental data into a single mathematical model. Traces every dollar through the economy, capturing direct and full upstream supply chain impact.
Produces
OUTPUT · 03 – EMISSION FACTOR
0.170
kg CO₂e per dollar spent
A single, auditable number for every sector, in every country, for every year. Traceable to peer-reviewed national sources.
What this data is (and isn't).
It's built for screening and disclosure.
If you need to compare two suppliers in the same sector, process-based LCA or primary supplier data is the right tool.
It's a benchmark alongside primary data.
Spend-based factors are not a replacement for primary data if it's available. They are the most accurate fallback option for estimating emissions in the parts of your value chain where you don't have primary. And they're also a reliable benchmark for the primary data that you do receive directly from your suppliers or from other sources.
The real test isn't spend versus primary.
It's whether the factor behind your number is current, regional, and defensible for the part of the value chain primary data can't yet reach. Most of it, for most companies, for some time.
Get access
Test the data for yourself.
Talk to us about coverage, methodology, and licensing. We'll point you at the dataset that fits your reporting.