With tens of thousands of companies now impacted by sustainability legislation like CSRD, SEC Climate Disclosure, and CBAM, measuring and disclosing carbon footprint data has become a regulatory requirement. The issue is that carbon accounting by humans is time-consuming and prone to errors, increasing the risk of inaccurate reporting and non-compliance. This underscores the need for a reliable and efficient carbon accounting solution.
However, “most of the available solutions ultimately still require human beings to look at their data sources and transcribe them by hand into some kind of summary spreadsheet,” explains the cofounder and chief carbon officer of this ESG startup.
Their team saw a gap in the market for a solution that would unify carbon accounting with AI to reduce workload and human error. The platform uses AI to extract carbon data from various formats: “regardless of its file structure, its language, its format, it will process the data into emissions results.”
Challenge: Reducing the resources needed to build a carbon accounting solution while ensuring high emission factor data quality
“We want our customers to use the gold standard of emission factors in their emission calculations,” their cofounder explains. However, the team soon realized that this was easier said than done. “When we broke down the challenge of obtaining and normalizing the emission factor datasets we wanted to offer, it became clear that it would require significant resources to source, update and maintain the datasets at the necessary level of accuracy.”
While assessing whether to build this out internally, they were faced with three main challenges:
- Quality of data: Data has to be checked and then flagged in the case that it doesn’t meet standards, which requires in-depth scientific knowledge.
- Resource demands: The team hadn't anticipated the need for extensive human involvement in compiling and maintaining data sources.
- Time investment: The process of collecting and normalizing data is exceptionally time intensive.
This made Climatiq the clear choice. “Our solution is all about trying to give customers the easiest possible route to credibility and best practices. Climatiq offers a plug-and-play solution to help us get there, saving us much of the work we would have otherwise needed to handle ourselves," the cofounder explains.
Solution: Climatiq provides 80,000+ trusted and up-to-date emission factors, accelerating time to market
“It was obvious that Climatiq would be a significant time saver for us.” The team reviewed Climatiq’s database and were quickly convinced it covered all of the emission factors that they deemed best practice for their customers.
After consulting with Tim Croker, head of carbon accounting at Climatiq, the startup’s team was confident in the Climatiq database's reliability and quality. Climatiq’s Science and Data team continuously updates and maintains the database, incorporating the latest emission factors, with input from the Climatiq Scientific Advisory Board for reviews and updates where needed. “Climatiq’s solution has saved us a huge amount of time in securing the high-quality emissions factor datasets we need.”
Climatiq integrates seamlessly with their platform to output GHG-protocol-aligned emissions estimations. This allows their customers to:
- Save time with automated mapping and calculations: The AI analyzes corporate activity records, instantly matching data with emission factors from the Climatiq database for streamlined carbon calculations.
- Ensure full compliance: Calculation results are audit-ready and fully traceable, supporting regulatory compliance (e.g., SECR and CSRD), third-party assurance, and voluntary reporting initiatives.
- Future-proof carbon accounting: Their platform provides a single source of truth for emissions data management, leveraging advanced automation to reduce human error and ensure scalable and accurate carbon accounting.
Results: The startup empowers businesses to reduce carbon accounting resources by 70%
By the end of this year, they plan to include scope 3 emissions measurements in their carbon accounting platform. Climatiq’s database will continue to play a key role in supporting them throughout this development journey.
