Accelerating Your Decarbonization Plans: How Technology Can Help You Achieve Your Net-Zero Commitments

The need to decarbonize our world has become abundantly clear in recent years. The climate crisis is apparent in the increasing number of severe weather and climate events we are experiencing around the world. No location is immune to its effects; it is impacting everyday life and the conduct of business.  

“85% of 300 surveyed companies (UK, US, Germany) have net-zero strategies, but the majority are failing to incorporate them into daily business operations.” 

Source: Sphera’s report “Operational Landscape: The Inside View of Industrial Decarbonization from Operations Managers”, January 2023

Organizations will soon need to demonstrate progress toward their decarbonization targets. However, there is still a great deal of uncertainty that hinders the achievement of net zero. Concerns are growing about how to accurately capture, analyze and reduce complex Scope 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which typically represent the largest portion of most organizations’ combined Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions. Real progress toward net zero cannot happen without the accurate measurement of Scope 3—or value/supply chain—emissions, followed by a concerted effort to reduce them.  

Get the Support You Need to Measure and Report GHG Emissions

Collecting data and measuring and reporting GHG emissions can be complex and daunting—both in terms of the methodology and the management of the data involved. The task often involves tedious manual processes and data challenges that include collection, validation, external audits and reporting—all of which can overwhelm an organization.

The good news is there are resources that can help:

With the recent launch of Sphera’s CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY SOFTWARE RELEASE 8.8, companies gain additional functionality to help them better track their own sustainability performance against defined sustainability KPIs, as well as ensure data quality and accuracy. 

Leverage Innovative Technology to Accelerate Your Decarbonization Efforts

Increase the efficiency of your decarbonization programs by digitizing and automating the data collection process, emissions calculations, sustainability data management and reporting. Sphera’s award-winning ESG and sustainability management solution will help you collect and validate your data and standardize the measurement of emissions, including Scope 3 emissions. It will also provide auditable data of high quality for disclosure requirements, which is critical given ESG regulations such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the International Sustainability Standards Board’s (ISSB) IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards and the Indian Business Responsibility and Sustainability Report (BRSR). 

With the new and enhanced software capabilities in our latest Corporate Sustainability Release 8.8, companies can achieve even greater efficiencies in their data collection, ensure investor-ready data and manage their actions against their established net-zero targets.  

Here, we highlight three areas that can make a significant difference to your sustainability and ESG management and reporting program. 

SpheraCloud Software Brings Greater Efficiency to Your Data Collection

The primary benefits of modern enterprise solutions for GHG emissions data collection include uniformity, immediacy, continuity of access and the means to trace back dates, sources and other key metadata needed for robust reporting and auditing.  

“There needs to be rigor around it in terms of verification and audibility. It’s great getting the data, but you need to think about the trail of where that data’s come from.”

Preyasi Patel, Director, Client Services Sphera
Reuters-Hosted Webinar: Collecting Quality, Comparable, and Transparent Data

To address the needs for data verification and auditability, Sphera has added new features in its latest SpheraCloud Corporate Sustainability Release 8.8. The software offers new capabilities for organizations to manage sustainability data collection efforts more efficiently and with a new level of transparency. The SpheraCloud Workflow Manager simplifies multi-level approval workflows for complex data collection and harmonizes data entry and validation processes based on the organization’s internal approval processes. Export of the chronological workflow log supports both internal and external audit requirements. 

Focus on Audit-Ready, Investor-Grade Data

“Moving from spreadsheets to a software system greatly improves the data collection efficiency, as well as increases transparency and traceability of the data, which helps when it comes to external auditing. This means no spreadsheets allowed.”

Tina Armstrong, Global Sustainability Director for Impact and Systems, Arcadis
ESG Virtual Summit 2023 | Keynote – The Secret to ESG Is to Measure, Then Manage

Strong data quality ensures confidence in the accuracy and auditability of data and optimizes decision–making. With the new SpheraCloud Workflow Manager, you can map your custom workflows with all the necessary validation levels and involve all the necessary stakeholders (data collectors, validators, managers, etc.) to ensure that the data entered is properly validated for all upcoming steps in your reporting period and internal and external audit planning.  

Manage Actions Against Your Targets

In order to develop an effective sustainability strategy, it is essential to understand, aggregate and analyze your collected data. SpheraCloud Corporate Sustainability helps identify the gaps between goals and performance, so companies can adjust strategies and track progress toward their goals. 

This not only reduces costs and risks, but is also the first step toward becoming a net-zero business.

SpheraCloud Corporate Sustainability Targets and Actions is used globally by organizations such as Mahindra, Lumileds, ZF Group and ista International to track progress and set targets. The module enables the creation and management of a portfolio of actions and projects to improve business practices and sustainability performance. It helps companies design and execute an action plan to achieve the most cost-effective improvements. The module comes with enhanced functionality to create new goals and actions more easily and intuitively, improved goal and action management (based on roles and permissions), better visualization of the action overview report and more. 

Accelerate Your Decarbonization Plans with the Right Software

Technology won’t solve the climate crisis, but it will certainly help organizations take the necessary steps toward net zero.  

Choosing the right software can make all the difference. Find out why SpheraCloud Corporate Sustainability software was recently recognized as the market leader in Carbon Management Software (2022), EHS Software (2023) and ESG Reporting and Data Management Software (2023) by independent analyst Verdantix.  

Learn more about Sphera’s award-winning Corporate Sustainability Software by watching our on-demand webinar, “How software, expertise and data accelerate your net zero approach,” or get in touch with one of our experts.