Dow bagged the 2026 CIO 100 Award from Foundry’s CIO, recognising its Carbon Footprint Ledger (CFL)—an enterprise-wide digital platform designed to enable transparent and scalable delivery of low-carbon products to customers. The platform allows Dow to issue Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) certificates, helping customers track and verify the carbon footprint of products while supporting their Scope 3 emissions reduction goals.
Recognition for Digital Innovation
The CIO 100 Awards honour organisations that effectively use information technology to create business value, drive innovation, and strengthen competitive advantage. By recognising Dow’s Carbon Footprint Ledger, the award highlights how digital platforms can play a critical role in advancing sustainability and enabling climate-focused solutions across industrial value chains.
Digital Platform for Low-Carbon Product Transparency
The Carbon Footprint Ledger is an enterprise-wide digital system built on global Product Carbon Footprint standards, including ISO 14067 and the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Product Standard. Using advanced optimisation algorithms, the platform dynamically identifies the lowest greenhouse-gas production pathway for products across Dow’s operations. Once the optimal production pathway is determined, the system generates verifiable PCF certificates and maintains residual balances within a secure and auditable digital ledger. This enables Dow to offer trusted low-carbon product options while ensuring transparency and traceability for customers. As a result, customers can access reliable carbon data that supports their sustainability reporting and accelerates value-chain decarbonisation.
Supporting Customers’ Sustainability Goals
The platform plays an important role in helping companies address growing regulatory and supply chain requirements related to carbon reporting. By providing verified carbon data at scale, Dow enables its customers to better manage Scope 3 emissions—which often represent the largest share of a company’s total carbon footprint. At the same time, the system strengthens Dow’s ability to deliver low-carbon products across multiple markets, reinforcing the company’s sustainability strategy.
Integrated Data and Advanced Analytics
Dow developed the Carbon Footprint Ledger by integrating its proprietary product and material mapping capabilities into the company’s Integrated Data Hub. The platform combines supply chain, sustainability, and financial data into a single scalable architecture. Through a user-friendly interface, Dow teams can generate low-carbon product offerings, issue and manage Product Carbon Footprint certificates, track carbon data across operations and implement sustainability strategies across the enterprise. The integrated system enables faster decision-making and improves the company’s ability to operationalise sustainability initiatives at scale.
Leadership Perspective on the Achievement
Debra Bauler, Chief Information and Digital Officer at Dow, highlighted the complexity and impact of the platform. “The Carbon Footprint Ledger is an example of taking an extremely complex product and carbon data model and operationalising it through a standards-based, ledger-driven digital platform to deliver meaningful customer solutions for decarbonisation while reinforcing Dow’s leadership in climate innovation,” she said.
Collaboration and Technology Partners
Dow developed the Carbon Footprint Ledger platform on the Databricks platform in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The initiative forms a key component of Dow’s broader digital transformation and sustainability strategy, which focuses on using advanced data analytics and digital technologies to support climate innovation and low-carbon industrial solutions.
CIO 100 Awards: Recognising Enterprise IT Excellence
The US CIO 100 Awards recognise organisations that use information technology in innovative ways to deliver measurable business value. Winning projects typically demonstrate excellence in areas such as process optimisation, customer engagement, growth enablement, and competitive advantage. Richard Smith, Head of Event Content for the CIO 100 Awards and Conference, noted that the 2026 winners showcase how modern CIOs are integrating AI, data, cloud, and cybersecurity to drive business transformation. As per the press release, executives from the winning organisations will be formally honoured at the CIO 100 Awards and Conference, where industry leaders gather to highlight technology-driven innovation across global enterprises.
