Why we built cobank against DEFRA + BAFU and not ecoinvent.

Novartis, Swisscom and ABB cite DEFRA and IEA in their published methodology. ecoinvent is the Swiss-built database every climate consultant suggests first. This note explains the gap, and where ecoinvent IS the right call.

Draft. Body to be written by Frédéric. The structure, audience, and source list are defined in investor-data-room/NOTES-OUTLINES.md. Every factual claim must trace to a primary source cited in-line.

The shape of the note

Audience: a finance or accounting professional — especially auditors — who has heard the ecoinvent name and wonders why cobank doesn't use it as default.

Goal: explain the factor-library decision in plain language, with the procurement implications laid bare.

  • Lede: the moment we discovered Swiss corporates (Novartis, Swisscom, ABB) cite DEFRA and IEA in their published methodology — not ecoinvent.
  • What the four sources actually are: DEFRA 2025 (UK, Open Government Licence v3.0, free for commercial redistribution); BAFU (Swiss federal office, fact sheet versioned, licensing pending official confirmation); IEA grid factors (standard, accepted in every Swiss / EU sustainability report); ecoinvent (Swiss-based, paywalled per-workspace for SaaS redistribution).
  • Why default to free, government-published sources: reproducibility (versioned, public); no per-workspace license cost (preserves SaaS economics); sufficient for VSME and CSRD limited-assurance contexts.
  • Where ecoinvent IS the right call: specific Scope 3 lifecycle assessments where granularity requires it; customer-procured add-on; cobank passes through at cost.
  • What this means for cobank's pricing: voluntary tier is fully audit-defensible without ecoinvent; enterprise tier offers ecoinvent as opt-in.