Nordic sustainability briefing: ETS paperwork, WMO's COP31 report, data-centre standards and a Swan-labelled festival
Regulatory deadlines and global climate data continue to shape the sustainability landscape this week, from Norway's new ETS reporting windows to WMO's upcoming COP31 climate report, while standardisation and certification efforts advance in parallel through a new data-centre metrics framework and Roskilde Festival's Nordic-first Swan label.
Norway opens allocation reporting for free ETS allowances, due 31 March 2027
Miljødirektoratet has opened forms in Altinn for allocation-data reporting for 2024, 2025 and 2026. They apply only to installations that applied for free allowances for 2026–2030. Emissions-reporting forms for 2026 are planned for late January 2027, and the allocation-reporting deadline is 31 March 2027. This mainly affects industrial operators, not small businesses directly.
WMO to launch its State of the Climate 2026 report at COP31 on 9 November
WMO will launch its flagship State of Climate Report 2026 on Earth Information Day, 9 November 2026, at COP31. In September it noted that August 2026 was the hottest on record according to Copernicus, NOAA and NASA, and that the Northern Hemisphere had its warmest summer.
Green Software Foundation introduces SILO, a vendor-neutral data layer for data-centre operations
The foundation's article of 22 October introduces SILO, which builds on its WDPC standard and defines a common framework for collecting and exchanging operational metrics across compute, power, cooling, networking, storage and facility systems. Existing systems would keep their own protocols, with their data translated into a common semantic model that software can read regardless of vendor. The project is aimed at data-centre operators and vendors rather than small software firms directly.
Roskilde Festival becomes the first Nordic festival certified under the Nordic Swan Ecolabel
Roskilde Festival is the first festival in the Nordic region assessed against the Swan label's 35 mandatory requirements for environment and climate work. A festival representative said that if more festivals and events use the criteria as a practical tool, systematic change may become easier. The report dates from earlier this year, but the criteria are open to other organisers.