How Digital Tools Simplify Carbon Accounting for Businesses
Key Points
- Digital tools simplify carbon accounting by automating data collection, ensuring precision, and scaling across supply and distribution chains.
- Accurate carbon accounting builds trust, ensures regulatory compliance, and enables businesses to create focused sustainability strategies.
- Actionable insights from digital tools help businesses identify emission sources and develop customized solutions for better sustainability.
The realities of climate change have changed how businesses, both great and small, are regulated.
Regulations and expectations are made even more difficult as companies need to consider indirect Scope 3 emissions.
Digital tools rapidly change how businesses do these tasks by offering tenable solutions.
This article will analyze these solutions and the benefits they bring.
Why Carbon Accounting Matters
Corporate sustainability is more than just a catchphrase; it is a call to action from the global community.
As such, businesses are increasingly being pressed to measure, manage, and reduce their greenhouse emissions.
Step one on the path to achieving corporate sustainability is identifying how and where carbon emissions come from.
Carbon accounting remains one of the most daunting tasks businesses have to deal with.
Businesses that solve this big data problem with crude tools find inaccuracies, inefficiencies, and an inability to scale up and across supply chains.
The difficulty of finding even the most remote links in emissions, fundamental for Scope 3, is a sign that better tools are needed.
Learn more about Scope 3 carbon emissions accounting here.
How Digital Tools Are Revolutionising Emissions Measurement
Modern digital tools are designed to address these pain points by offering automation, precision, and scalability.
Here are a few ways that is achieved:
Automated Data Collection and Analysis
Digital platforms consolidate data collection from all sides of a business’ flow stream of value.
This matters because carbon accounting starts from materials acquisitions and flows all the way down to how the product is disposed of after use.
It also involves all the logistics and peripherals associated.Automated programs also eliminate errors and save time, which is always good for business.
The bottom line of accurate data is that the business can establish a reliable baseline against which it can track progress.
Scalability Across Supply and Distribution Streams
Managing emissions from raw materials to the end of product life manually is impossible.
Digital tools centralize and standardize the process, enabling businesses to engage with both ends of the chain.
Hence, the best way to use carbon accounting tools is to integrate them into B2B systems.
That way, they can eliminate the need for guessing or estimates and offer precise emissions measurements instead.
More importantly, these tools can scale up quickly to keep up with business growth, as the case may be.
Actionable Insights from Collected Data
Digital tools offer more than just gathering and analysing data to help businesses identify emission sources.
These tools can be used to generate various solutions and customized strategies to help businesses improve sustainability performance.
How Accurate Carbon Accounting Helps a Business
As was mentioned earlier, the world is watching how businesses respond to climate change action.
Consumers wield powers of accountability and reward good performers with trust and respect.
Companies also find it easier to stay on top of various levels of government regulations.
The insights that digital tools give businesses the right sectors to target allow them to focus their efforts where it counts most.
At the end of the day, simplifying carbon accounting is just the first step towards achieving real climate goals.
Businesses have to actually put in the effort to reduce their emissions on all sides of the value chain.
