Accounting engine calculates total carbon emissions for businesses

A new platform helps businesses to calculate their total carbon emissions – taking into account everything from office energy use to the supply chain

Spotted: For many businesses, an important initial step in reducing carbon usage is to keep track of all the carbon being used – from energy use to production. But this is extremely difficult, especially as it can be next to impossible to account for emissions in the supply chain – a majority of emissions for many businesses. This is the situation that Normative, an emissions “accounting engine”, is hoping to solve.

Normative calculates emissions based on what and where businesses spend. Financial data is uploaded to Normative and the engine uses this to map transactions and calculate their carbon footprint. The data used includes everything from invoices for heating and transportation, to business travel, raw materials and production costs. Their process standardises the process of carbon accounting.

The company also offers a variety of products to help businesses make use of the emissions data that is generated. These include a full climate footprint, an emissions hotspot analysis (to discover what purchases have the highest carbon footprint) and reporting of sustainability data to comply with regulations and engage stakeholders.

Normative co-founder and CEO Kristian Rönn has said, “Ahead of COP26, it is time for everyone and businesses, in particular, to be courageous …But businesses also need to be pragmatic – and realise that removing carbon inside their operations and their supply chains makes good business sense. The cost of carbon is a huge liability on your balance sheet and you need to act to ensure that your business will survive.”

Cutting carbon has become very urgent, and this urgency is spurring a wide number of innovations and platforms designed to help businesses cut their carbon use. Recent developments include a building management platform that uses AI to optimise space, energy consumption and carbon usage, and a carbon offsetting platform that provides fully traceable projects.