The MASSIV+ standard is open — read it, challenge it, shape it

Most Scope 3 numbers today are still built on assumptions — a purchase value multiplied by an industry average. It's the best many companies can do, and it's not good enough to act on. The idea we keep coming back to is simpler than the workarounds it replaces: my Scope 1 and 2 become your Scope 3. When every organization can measure and share its own actual emissions in a standardized way, the whole chain finally has real numbers to build on instead of generic benchmarks.

Today that idea has a written specification. We've published the MASSIV+ standard — the full technical description and the reasoning behind it — as an open draft at docs.massivplus.org.

What's in it

At its core the standard takes a node approach: it models the value chain as a directed network of nodes, where each node is an organizational unit that measures its own Scope 1+2 and allocates it proportionally forward to its customers. That level is deliberate — granular enough to guide where to actually intervene, aggregated enough to be achievable in practice, and sitting squarely in the gap between broad corporate-level reporting and detailed product-level lifecycle assessments. A few principles hold the node approach together:

• Bilateral accounting. One node's Scope 1+2 becomes the next node's Scope 3. Each node reports its own emissions and allocates them proportionally to its customers, so the chain adds up — no double counting, no gaps.
• Actual vs. estimated, kept separate. Factual data and unknowns are structurally distinguished, so no one mistakes a placeholder for a measurement.
• Shared emission factors. Every node calculates from the same baseline values, which is what makes numbers comparable across companies in the first place.

The documentation is written to be read, not just referenced. Alongside the specification there's an introduction to the problem and the concept, a positioning section comparing MASSIV+ with the frameworks people already know — the GHG Protocol, the relevant ISO standards, PACT/Pathfinder — and a set of deep dives into the harder questions: the accounting analogy, methodological risks, internal trade and allocation, even where the model creates friction for startups.

Why we're publishing it as a draft

A standard only works if the people who have to live with it believe in it. So this is an open-access draft, under active development, and we're publishing it precisely to get your input. We want companies, researchers, system providers, authorities — anyone with a stake — to review it, challenge it, and help shape it.

And we've kept the threshold low: all you need is a GitHub account. Two easy ways in. You can comment right where you're reading — every page has a link to suggest a change or flag a problem on that exact passage — or you can open up a broader conversation in GitHub Discussions. Both are open, and we read everything that comes in.

One practical note: the standard is written in Swedish for now. That's deliberate — the Swedish text is the authoritative version while the thinking is still moving fast, and official reviewed translations (English first) will follow. If Swedish isn't your language, your browser's built-in translation handles the documentation well enough to read and comment on — and input is welcome in any language.

This work is supported by Vinnova through the Advanced Digitalization program. Thanks to everyone who has shaped the thinking so far — the reasoning on these pages is the result of a lot of hard conversations, and the next round starts now.

Read the standard: docs.massivplus.org