Business Model Options for an Environmental Footprint Database
This report sets out 3 business model options for an EF database. For each we have detailed the key building blocks of the model: revenue generation, supplier remuneration and legal structure. We have also estimated key financial figures such as revenue, costs etc.
Read and download the full report here.
Executive Summary
Finding a business model for the environmental footprint database is important: it will cost significant resources to sustain and it has an important public interest role across a broad area of policy-making and society more generally – it is essential infrastructure to any green transition.
We can categorize all potential business models into two major categories:
- Proprietary with user fees, and
- Open with assorted revenue models
Within these broad categories, we have set out three business model options:
- A proprietary fee-based model run as either a regulated for-profit or non-profit
- An open, fully public funded model
- An open model drawing on mixed funding sources: public funding, user fees from dual licenses and third-party contributions
Each of these models has the option of adding paid complementary services as an additional source of revenue.
For each we have detailed the key building blocks of the model: revenue generation, supplier remuneration and legal structure. We have also estimated key financial figures such as revenue, costs etc. We emphasize that these figures, especially on revenue, are necessarily rough estimates given the information available from existing market participants regarding pricing, demand and costs. Nevertheless, there are clear bounds.
Within those bounds, several business models are feasible and sustainable including open ones. Key factors making this possible include:
- The relatively low cost of developing and maintaining the database, at least relative to demand both for data itself and associated services.
- The high social value and public interest for this database.
Alongside the economic background and description of the three business model options, the report also contains a number of appendices. These give more detail on the following topics:
- The advantages of open models for this type of digital public infrastructure.
- The diverse revenue options that are available for open models: public funding, third-party support (financial or in kind), user fees from dual licensing and complementary services.
- Discussion of two possible models we did not include as options: a part public funded, proprietary fee-based model and a commons-based peer production model.
- The full range of business model building blocks, constraints on assembling them and their features.
- The importance of supplier remuneration mechanisms and the specifics of how remuneration fund mechanisms work.
- The role of legal structure in avoiding mission drift.
Full report
Read and download the full report here.
