The WBA Digital Inclusion Benchmark measures and ranks the world's most influential companies on their efforts to advance digital inclusion, tracking how companies are expanding access to digital technologies, improving digital skills and literacy, and ensuring safe and inclusive digital environments for all. The 2026 edition assessed 200 companies across key sectors of the digital economy including telecommunications, software, hardware, and digital platforms. The benchmark is developed in close collaboration with an Expert Review Committee and partners including GRI, ITU, and the Alliance for Affordable Internet, with a methodology designed to incentivise companies to understand where digital exclusion risks are highest and act to bridge the digital divide, while keeping human rights and social impacts at its core.
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Emissions among digital companies rose by 8% between 2020 and 2022. Regardless, GHG emissions reporting by digital companies suffers increasingly from transparency issues. According to the GHG Protocol guidance, disclosing scope 2 location-based emissions is mandatory, while market-based emissions should only be included if applicable. However, some companies only report the generally lower market-based figure, which can be misleading as it does not accurately reflect their actual emissions from electricity consumption. Furthermore, as companies increasingly consider upstream and downstream emissions (scope 3), they sometimes shift emissions from one scope or category to another, hampering transparency and comparability.
Some digital companies have large supply chains with significant GHG emissions. Supply chain emissions generally far outnumber companies’ operational emissions. It is, therefore, crucial for companies to work with their supply chains to reduce emissions. Some companies already obligate suppliers to meet some type of environmental obligations, particularly for GHG emissions (e.g. reporting emissions inventories, moving to renewables, establishing an emissions reduction target).
Research Guidance:
This element will be BASIC if:
ALL of the following conditions should be true:
Valid Accounting
Disclosure Level is in Basic,Relevant,Full
Additional conditions to be STANDARD:
Disclosure Level is in Relevant,Full
Additional conditions to be ADVANCED:
Disclosure Level = Full
Additional conditions to be NEXT PRACTICE:
Valid Methodology = Yes
Additional conditions to be LOW-CARBON ALIGNED:
Independently verified is in Tags