The Paris Agreement ties 193 countries (including the EU) to a net zero emissions target by 2050. More than 7,000 companies have joined the Race to Zero, an alliance to drive climate change from a grassroots operational perspective. These numbers demonstrate lofty commitments and targets, but drilling down into the practicality of what this means for businesses now, and as inevitable policy changes take shape in the future, requires a more systematic, nuanced approach. Concise carbon calculations and sustainability reporting are becoming the daily reality for organisations all over the globe, which was the driving force behind our CAPEXinsights feature: the Sustainability Calculator.
Responsible for the future product direction of CAPEXinsights, Product Manager Stuart Escott leads the development of features based on what organisations need to manage their capital portfolios. This latest feature is designed to quantify the environmental footprints and handprints of capital projects. Stuart explains why it's a vital piece of the capital portfolio puzzle.
“Our clients not only need to align with carbon-reduction policies and market requirements, they genuinely want to understand how to be better.”
Why calculating your carbon footprint is important.
When we looked at large enterprise organisations, one of the greatest challenges that surfaced was that every business has a wide range of sustainability influences that need assessment - from supply chain impacts to geographic variances and even project-specific factors.
One of the core drivers behind every CAPEXinsights product development decision is retiring as many needless processes as possible in favour of systemised data capture.
Our Sustainability Calculator tool has been built into the system to capture and assess the environmental footprint of projects across the portfolio, removing reliance on manual collation and aggregation of data across multiple platforms and disciplines. This could include collating data on energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, waste, transportation, and materials used to name some of the biggest contributors.
How does it measure the carbon footprint of your portfolio?
The CAPEXinsights Sustainability Calculator progressively guides engineers and project managers step-by-step through the process of completing a sustainability assessment for their project.
Intuitive assessment - you are prompted to input data which is measured against pre-configured parameters to identify variance at the appropriate phase of the project lifecycle.
Automatic risk triggers - outputs are automatically calculated based on a set of controlled and fully auditable carbon factors, and the relevant person (like your organisation's sustainability manager) is notified if risks become too great or if outliers occur.
Flexibility and scalability - responding to varying impacts of international supply chains, the Sustainability Calculator is dynamic in its ability to calculate across multiple dimensions, and scalable to add new impacts or carbon footprint measurements in future as practice evolves.
Reporting and verification - the configurable solution aggregates the average carbon footprint of the portfolio, as well as individual project footprint calculations to create a holistic approach to risk throughout projects and across the entire portfolio to support continuous learning, quality control, offsetting activities, and executive decision-making.
How does measuring sustainability in projects benefit your organisation?
It can be tremendously difficult for businesses to get an accurate picture of their carbon impact. The intuitive Sustainability Calculator plays a critical role in early identification of the inputs required through clear pre-screen questions, and appropriate configuration to calculate the differing impacts across multiple geographies with varying carbon taxes and auditing requirements.
From a project engineering perspective, the Sustainability Calculator delivers a guided and simple assessment that reduces double-entry of data, and simplifies reporting up the chain.
For finance teams, especially across regions where carbon tax is applied, the accuracy of information is key, with configurable reporting, real-time data insights and exception reporting.
At a portfolio level, managers have the same fundamental benefit that CAPEXinsights delivers across all its functions - transparency. This visibility across the portfolio creates perspective and the ability to hone resources.
For executives, the solution acts as an early warning system, with the trigger alerts and robust risk management tools ensuring oversight from a project and portfolio lens across different regions and areas of the business.
Calculating your ecological footprint for the future
As the world accelerates towards a low-carbon future, knowing where you stand is crucial. Every business needs to understand their environmental impact, and pivotal to that understanding is capturing the right data to generate actionable insights at the right time and place.
Our carbon footprint calculator can help your organisation access the information needed to measure resources consumed and your project portfolio carbon calculation.
For more information on how our CAPEXinsights Sustainability Calculator can help future-proof your business and help you simplify the complex, reach out to us here.