Integrating Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG) with Watershed

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Integrating Operational Sustainability Management (formerly ESG) with Watershed

    The integration of Operational Sustainability Management with Watershed allows organizations to effectively measure and manage their carbon emissions, renewable energy usage, and overall sustainability impact. This integration is essential for ESG Management users to calculate Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, which classify greenhouse gas emissions based on their sources.

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    Key Features

    • Scope Emissions Calculation: Users can calculate Scope 1 (direct emissions), Scope 2 (indirect emissions from electricity), and Scope 3 (indirect emissions from various sources).
    • Data Importing: ESG program managers are required to import data from Watershed spreadsheets into the ESG Management application, ensuring accurate tracking of metrics.
    • Metric Integration: Activate the Operational Sustainability Integration with Watershed plugin and configure metric integrations to support data importation.
    • Automated Metrics: Only automated metric definitions with 'External source' as the Method type can be imported. Manual definitions must be converted to automated before data import.
    • Data Mapping: Create data mappings to import data from custom columns in the Watershed spreadsheet and establish record identifiers for efficient entity mapping.
    • Verification: Users can verify imported data to identify any errors during the import process, ensuring data integrity.

    Key Outcomes

    This integration enables organizations to efficiently manage their sustainability metrics, enhancing their ability to report on carbon footprint reduction efforts. Users can expect streamlined data handling, improved accuracy in emissions reporting, and the capability to import various sustainability-related metrics beyond carbon emissions, such as water usage and waste disposal.

    Watershed is a tool that enables organizations to measure their carbon emissions and renewable energy and its impact. It also enables organizations to act to reduce emissions, and to report on the progress to reduce their carbon footprint.

    ESG Management users can use Watershed to calculate their Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions for their business. A company’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are classified into three Scopes. The following table explains the difference between each Scope.
    Table 1. Difference between Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions
    Scope 1 Scope 2 Scope 3
    Direct GHG emissions from the following sources:
    • Fuel combustion
    • Emissions from company vehicles
    • Emissions from chemical production in owned or controlled process equipment
    • Fugitive emissions
    		 Indirect emissions from the following sources:
    • Purchased electricity
    • Heat and steam.
    		 Indirect emissions from the following sources:
    • Purchased goods and services
    • Business travel
    • Employee commuting
    • Waste disposal
    • Use of sold products
    • Transportation and distribution (up- and downstream)
    • Investments
    • Leased assets and franchises

    Watershed maintains its data in spreadsheets and provides those spreadsheets to the ESG Management program manager. As an ESG Management program manager, with the role sn_esg.program_manager, you must import the data from the spreadsheets into the source tables in the ESG Management application. The source tables are then specified in the metric definitions in a ServiceNow instance.

    To use the features of Watershed, you must activate the Operational Sustainability Integration with Watershed plugin and configure the metric integrations.
    Note:
    • To successfully import data, you must add the import_admin role to the sn_grc_metric.admin role.
    • Only automated metric definitions with External source as the Method type support data import. If you already have a manual metric definition in your system, you must change its Type to Automated and the Method type to External source before you can import data. For more information, refer to Create an automated metric definition.

    Before you import data from the spreadsheets, you can either create the metric definitions or you can rely on the system to create placeholders and add the details later.

    The metrics are generated based on the frequency that you have defined in the metric definition. The metric values, along with their units, are displayed on the metrics related list in the metric definition. The values are then rolled up based on the formula specified in the metric definition.
    Note:
    You can convert any metric data into a preferred reporting unit.
    By default, the ServiceNow AI Platform provides the following data that you can import from Watershed.
    • Carbon emissions
    • Renewable energy
    • Non-renewable energy

    You may also want to import other data such as water usage or waste disposal. To import other types of data, you can use the Metric integrations to import your data.