About the data
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.
More information can be found here.
More information can be found here.
Methodology
Growing digitalisation is resulting in increasing use of natural resources. For digital inclusion to be truly beneficial, it must not lead to environmental degradation. Monitoring and improving energy use and water pollution helps ensure that digital expansion does not come at the cost of environmental harm, which can affect the same populations that digital inclusion aims to empower.
Environmental sustainability is closely tied to digital inclusion and rights because communities that benefit from digital inclusion efforts may also bear the environmental costs associated with digital infrastructure, such as energy-intensive data centres and potential water pollution from manufacturing facilities. Ensuring that digital inclusion initiatives are sustainable helps protect these communities from environmental harm, supporting their right to a clean and safe environment.
Research Guidance:
For water use: The company must report on both withdrawal and consumption for its entire operations. It must report year-on-year, absolute reductions for three consecutive years on one of the two. If the company reports data on withdrawal and consumption, but is only improving in one, the element is only Met if it is not worsening in the other.
For renewable energy share:‚‚The company must demonstrate monotonic, quantitative reductions or improvements in relevant topic-specific metrics over the previous three years (i.e. three years in a row with continuous year-on-year improvement). The company must demonstrate:
- Quantitative absolute or relative reductions in its non-renewable energy consumption.
- Increase in renewable energy metrics.
The company must report reduction in non-renewable energy consumption must include at least one of the following:
- Absolute reductions in non-renewable energy consumption.
- Reductions in emission intensity are accepted only if the company discloses that the reductions in emission intensity lead to absolute emission reductions.
- Relative reductions in their rate of energy consumption relative to their activity. For this indicator, this would mean that the company would need to report quantitative metrics related to their activity and their energy consumption reporting data, to obtain a rate of energy consumption.
This element applies to both energy and water consumption for companies in the following sectors: Content Production and Distribution, Financial Services, Hardware, Retail of Goods and Services, and Software and Information Services. For the Telecommunications sector, only energy consumption is applicable.
Environmental sustainability is closely tied to digital inclusion and rights because communities that benefit from digital inclusion efforts may also bear the environmental costs associated with digital infrastructure, such as energy-intensive data centres and potential water pollution from manufacturing facilities. Ensuring that digital inclusion initiatives are sustainable helps protect these communities from environmental harm, supporting their right to a clean and safe environment.
Research Guidance:
For water use: The company must report on both withdrawal and consumption for its entire operations. It must report year-on-year, absolute reductions for three consecutive years on one of the two. If the company reports data on withdrawal and consumption, but is only improving in one, the element is only Met if it is not worsening in the other.
For renewable energy share:‚‚The company must demonstrate monotonic, quantitative reductions or improvements in relevant topic-specific metrics over the previous three years (i.e. three years in a row with continuous year-on-year improvement). The company must demonstrate:
- Quantitative absolute or relative reductions in its non-renewable energy consumption.
- Increase in renewable energy metrics.
The company must report reduction in non-renewable energy consumption must include at least one of the following:
- Absolute reductions in non-renewable energy consumption.
- Reductions in emission intensity are accepted only if the company discloses that the reductions in emission intensity lead to absolute emission reductions.
- Relative reductions in their rate of energy consumption relative to their activity. For this indicator, this would mean that the company would need to report quantitative metrics related to their activity and their energy consumption reporting data, to obtain a rate of energy consumption.
This element applies to both energy and water consumption for companies in the following sectors: Content Production and Distribution, Financial Services, Hardware, Retail of Goods and Services, and Software and Information Services. For the Telecommunications sector, only energy consumption is applicable.
License
Topics
Framework Mappings
Value Type
Category
Options
Yes
No
Not Applicable
Assessment
Steward Assessed
Report Type
Aggregate Data Report