Carbon consultancy vs. carbon software: Which is best for corporate carbon reporting
When it comes to getting your company’s carbon footprint measured, there's a key choice you need to make – to use a consultancy or to use a carbon software platform. There are pros and cons to both and we set them out below:
Quality. If you want an accurate and credible greenhouse (GHG) inventory, it might surprise you when I say that consultancies are best. Yes, carbon software is second to none when it comes to doing the calculations – they are infallible at multiplying one number by another – but consultancies with proper quality management systems and peer reviews should be able to do this too.
Where carbon software falls over, and consultants excel, is in ensuring the correct data is entered into the system in the first place. A good consultant will listen to you and really understand your business and emission sources. From there they’ll be able to identify data needed for the calculations, factoring in the hierarchy of methods that the GHG Protocol allows, and ensure there are no duplications and nothing is missed. They’ll also understand the nuances of emission factors and be able to apply the correct factors. With software the onus on this largely rests with you, the client.
Validity. The work of a carbon consultant is no more externally credible than the work of a carbon software company unless it comes with third party verification. This is because there is no industry accepted qualification of competence at an individual or entity level. There are points of expertise (for example I am a SBTi Certified Expert) but there is no equivalent of the ACA qualification for accountants in the carbon footprint world.
However, some carbon software communications can be misleading on this. They often promote the fact that they've had their systems and methodology reviewed and assured to be aligned with best practice (e.g. ISO 14064 and the like). But it’s the tool that's been validated rather than what you put into the tool, and as discussed above, that is where most inventories fall over.
Effort. Using a consultancy usually requires less effort from your company than using carbon software does. For software you will inevitably need to set the tool up with details of your buildings, your emission sources and most likely, you will also be the person entering your raw data into the system, either directly, or by populating one of their templates that they upload. A good consultancy, however, will take your data as you have it and do the reformatting for you, leaving your input limited to providing a list of pre-agreed data and answering a few clarification questions.
Audit trail. Software companies have excellent audit trails for their carbon calculations. They will record the data entered, the calculations, and the output. However, and this is key, as they require data to be entered into their system in a specific way, which is usually not as you have it, outside-of-system data manipulation has to be done. This isn’t captured by the software and so the onus is on you, the client, to diligently file it for audit purposes. A consultancy, in contrast, will have done this work for you and so, with appropriate filing, will have full end-to-end audit-ready evidence.
Method transparency. The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard (the near universally used carbon accounting rules) require a methodology to accompany a public GHG inventory. Fundamental to this is understanding your reporting boundaries and approach (e.g. operational control); what type of data has been used for different emissions sources (e.g. activity data, spend data, supplier-specific data); which emission factor sources have been used; and how assumptions and estimations have been applied. A lot of this information is buried inside software tools and whilst it may be able to be extracted, it usually is not summarised in a way that can be used to convey the overarching methodology. With a consultancy, they will write you an inventory-specific methodology with all the information you and other stakeholders need to understand your inventory calculation process.
The human touch. Consultancies are fundamentally people, which comes with benefits - we get to know each other, you can contact us directly and you get company-personalised expert GHG advice. The downside of course, is that we make mistakes and software doesn’t make mistakes. Good consultancies (like Rawstone) limit those mistakes with peer reviews and quality management systems, and when they happen, we’re open about them and fix them swiftly. It’s rare but it does happen.
Data dashboards. Software excels at producing plentiful and dynamic data visualisations. Consultants using Excel, do not. But, what good consultants do is produce strategically chosen graphs and visualisations that highlight the information you need to know, rather than a generic set of information that you might need to know and you might not.
Cost. It may surprise you but carbon consultants (or Rawstone at least!) are often cheaper than carbon software companies. Why? Well we charge our clients for time that we spend doing what needs to be done for them. Carbon software companies on the other hand build all-singing, all-dancing tools that cater for every type of company, and the cost of this complexity is inevitably passed onto their client.
For me it’s clear. If you want some nice visualisations of your carbon footprint and aren’t too bothered about it being quite right or having to do a lot of work yourself, go for carbon software. If you want accurate figures and a less effortful process led by real people, go to a consultancy.
To talk to us about your company’s carbon footprint, get in touch here.
Authored by Caroline Johnstone.
