Carbon reporting firm Plan A is offering a digital platform to help companies keep track of their climate pledges and help ensure they aren't "greenwashing."
Unlike other carbon accounting and sustainability tools, Lubomila Jordanova, Plan A founder and CEO, said the firm is offering a digital platform that uses automation and prediction to process companies' data.
The platform, she said, does not make carbon-neutral companies. But it helps companies to monitor their carbon emissions realistically and, at the same time, identify areas for improvement.
300 Businesses
Over 300 companies in 51 industries across 29 countries signed The Climate Pledge in March.
These companies have committed to reducing the carbon footprints of their operations and supply chains.
The signatories have agreed to the following:
- Measure and report greenhouse gas emissions regularly.
- Initiate decarbonization strategies by implementing real business changes and innovations, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy, materials reductions, and other carbon emission elimination strategies.
- Neutralize any remaining emissions with additional, measurable, real, permanent, and beneficial carbon offsets to attain net-zero annual carbon emissions by 2040.
Vast Tools, But Going Nowhere
Jordanova said these companies have vast tools to keep track of their pledges.
In some cases, these companies employ tactics that seek to reduce their carbon emission, only to fail to some extent.
Some companies, according to a report by Carbon Market Watch, have several claims of reducing their carbon footprints but ended "greenwashing."
The Plan A CEO, however, believes these greenwashing tactics are by accident. Greenwashing happens when a company employs communication and marketing strategy to make it appear as ecologically responsible but is going nowhere.
"I don't think all greenwashing is intended," WIRED quoted Jordanova.
For Jordanova, businesses play a crucial role in combating climate change because they have all the resources to effect a substantial mark in the campaign.
She discovered, however, that no matter how sincere these companies were in tackling the issue by reducing their footprints, they were not going the right way.
Plan A Digital Platform
With pressures coming from all directions, including the investors and consumers, these companies have themselves entrenched with a variety of tools to make them appear ecologically compliant.
In reality, Plan A CEO said, these companies are not making progress in reducing their emissions.
She blamed the low level of education among players for the fiasco.
Some of these companies, she said, are honest in their beliefs about their carbon accounting tools, thinking they are doing the right thing.
Jordanova said Plan A's digital platform seeks to offer a tool to help companies move in the right direction.
The platform begins with data mapping. Using the data made available by the company, it proceeds to identify gaps and use proxy measurements.
The platform will proceed to plan after the mapping, where the company official at the helm of the sustainability program will have a to-do list on how to proceed with decarbonization.
According to Jordannova, this list explains what specific material is needed to switch to, the actors involved in the process, and the person responsible for the decarbonization activity.
After planning, the next logical step is reporting, which is important to the stakeholders. The automated report covers three areas, namely: direct emissions, indirect emissions, and emissions from the value chain.
A realistic analysis of the company's data and target setting requires a science-based approach, the Plan A CEO said.
Reduction of carbon emissions must come before mere carbon offsets while allowing companies to balance out emissions that are hard to avoid.
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