What are Climate Management and Accounting Platforms?

Climate Reporting

Reporting on climate performance was once a niche process. Now, as the intensifying effects of climate change increase climate-related risk and stakeholder scrutiny, climate reporting has become central to sustainable development and growth.

The prospect of measuring and disclosing the full scope of a company's carbon footprint and creating ambitious goals for reductions is daunting. It requires the collection of a vast number of activity data points, which must then be mapped to relevant emission factors from multiple sources to calculate a greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory. Once the initial and most challenging step of accurately measuring emissions has been completed, goals can be set and reduction strategies can be determined with confidence.

To assist companies in simplifying their carbon accounting and climate disclosures, a whole host of frameworks and standards have been developed. Aligning your carbon accounting approach with recognized guidance such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol provides a framework to systematically measure emissions. Climate technologies have also been developing at breakneck speed to keep up with the increasingly extensive variety of data that must be collected. It is clear that climate change is no longer just an environmental problem, it is a data problem.

A Growing Need for Software

As pressure from regulators, investors, and other key stakeholders mounts to measure emissions more often, more accurately, and more extensively, data collection and reporting of increasingly complex climate data has become a growing issue.

Firms that disclose carbon emissions as part of their climate performance disclosures have typically tracked emissions data through cumbersome Excel spreadsheets and email communications. These methods are labor-intensive, expensive, and prone to errors. Software is an obvious solution for organizations to ensure that their reporting is accurate and transparent. Both the companies disclosing their climate data and stakeholders who use that information will benefit from the level of trust, transparency, and insight measuring carbon with software brings.

Climate Management and Accounting Platforms

Climate Management and Accounting Platforms (CMAPs) have been developed as a cutting-edge modern tool to perform carbon accounting in a completely software-based environment. Through a Software as a Service model, CMAP companies can deliver substantially more efficient and cost-effective carbon accounting, with an interface anyone can use without needing previous carbon accounting experience.

CMAPs have codified the key climate disclosure and carbon accounting frameworks and standards, such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP), Task Force for Climate-Related Disclosure (TCFD), Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), and others to ensure their emissions calculations are accurate.

Companies' emissions can be easily benchmarked to enable comparability between other companies, geographies, and sectors. These platforms can also help organizations, to model reduction commitments in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement to keep global temperature rises below 1.5C or well below 2.0C through climate trajectory modeling.

Companies are utilizing CMAP technology to meet regulatory and stakeholder disclosure requirements, with high amounts of transparency and accountability. Typically, carbon data has been uploaded once a year, whereas with CMAPs this can be done in real-time by uploading data through a fully automated Application Programme Intermediary (API).

CMAPs bring climate disclosure and carbon accounting tools into the digital age, with fast and efficient data uploads and calculations, which can be performed by anyone. Providing companies with the most accurate measure of where the majority of their emissions are coming from across their services enables them to make better decisions as they attempt to meet critical decarbonization goals.

For companies to meet the growing demands of investors, regulators, and other key stakeholders, CMAPS will be an essential part of the disclosure process, offering a single source of carbon truth and enabling them to disclose their climate performance with the same rigor and transparency as financial disclosures.