Ten finalists, one question
The UK government has published Smart Data Challenge Prize: significant insights and outcomes, the official report on its flagship Smart Data innovation programme. Mycelium was one of the ten finalists selected for the Challenge, and the report dedicates a full chapter to our work on automated carbon reporting.
The Smart Data Challenge Prize was run by Challenge Works (part of Nesta), in partnership with the Open Data Institute and the Smart Data Foundry, on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade. It sits inside a much bigger policy push: the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 is now law, at least 36 million pounds of investment is planned, and the government's stated ambition is to build the world's first Smart Data economy on the back of Open Banking's 18 million UK users.
The question the Challenge asked was simple. If people and businesses could share their data securely, what better services could appear? Ten finalists tested answers across energy, property, transport, finance and retail. Ours was about carbon.
"The finalists in this Challenge Prize are showing us how cross-sector data can solve systemic inefficiencies, empower consumers, and accelerate progress towards Net Zero." Baroness Lloyd of Effra CBE, Minister for Space, Cyber and Regulatory Reform, in the report's foreword.
Our use case: carbon reports that write themselves
Carbon reporting today is manual, spreadsheet-based, and leans heavily on estimates and industry averages. Our proposition to the Challenge was to replace a large part of that manual work with something better: verified energy-use data flowing straight from a business's gas and electricity smart meters, processed by a licensed carbon accountant, and converted into Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions figures. Where the business agrees, the verified result is published through Mycelium's open-access emissions database, where it can support benchmarking and be used by customers, investors, lenders and regulators.
In the report's words, the value of the approach is "making emissions reporting faster, more accurate, and more reusable". Instead of static annual reports built on approximate figures, businesses get a trusted, scalable way to evidence their emissions performance from the meter up.
Consent sits at the centre of the model. Nothing moves without the business's permission. We adapted the licensing framework from Project Perseus, the Icebreaker One initiative for trusted sharing of energy and carbon data, into a scheme agreement backed by three data licences: one covering the transfer of smart meter data to the carbon accounting platform, one covering company metrics used for benchmarking, and one authorising the processed emissions data to flow into Mycelium. Businesses control every step, and users of the database get confidence that every published figure came through a trusted, auditable route.
What we tested in the Challenge
The Challenge gave finalists a synthetic data sandbox, grant funding and structured expert support. We used it to build a prototype that integrates Smart Energy Data into existing carbon disclosure processes, automating part of Scope 1 and Scope 2 reporting from real energy consumption patterns. That let us test how direct energy-use data improves scoring, benchmarking and data provenance on top of the open emissions database we already run, and to work through the legal and permissioning model that trusted data sharing needs.
The prototype drew on gas and electricity smart meter data, half-hourly consumption data, grid carbon intensity from the NESO API, Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting disclosures from Companies House, and the DESNZ greenhouse gas conversion factors.
What it could be worth
Our submission to the Challenge included estimates of what fully automated smart-meter-to-carbon reporting could save UK businesses. These are our figures, prepared for the programme, and the report presents them as finalist estimates rather than government-validated analysis.
£1,120
estimated annual saving per SECR-mandated business from automated data collection
£12.65m
estimated total annual saving across all SECR-mandated UK businesses
£126m
potential annual saving if 10% of the wider UK business base reported voluntarily
The bigger prize is not the admin saving. Simpler emissions reporting helps businesses demonstrate performance to customers, procurement teams, investors and lenders at exactly the moment carbon disclosure is becoming a condition of doing business in supply chains and international markets. And once carbon data is real-time and automated, businesses can start shifting energy use towards periods of higher renewable generation, turning a reporting exercise into an operational tool.
What has to happen next
The report is honest about the dependencies, and so are we. Reliable access to business smart meter data needs the Market-Wide Half-Hourly Settlement programme to complete, because many industrial and commercial meters still are not settled half-hourly. There is currently no standardised, industry-wide method for business-to-business sharing of Smart Energy Data, so data flows depend on a fragmented set of supplier and third-party APIs. The proposed Smart Meter Energy Data Repository would change that by creating a central, secure home for meter readings that approved third parties can access.
These are precisely the gaps the government's Smart Data programme, and the secondary legislation now possible under the Data (Use and Access) Act, exists to close. The Challenge tested feasibility, not national deployment, and the report is careful to say so. What it shows is that the pieces exist, the legal model works, and the demand is real.
Read the report
The full report, including our chapter, is on GOV.UK: Smart Data Challenge Prize: significant insights and outcomes (Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, September 2026). The Mycelium chapter starts on page 45.
And the database the Challenge helped us strengthen is open to everyone, right now. Search any company's emissions at mycelium.global/search, or explore the full open dataset at mycelium.global/data.
