Integration of Energy & Sustainability Management Is Crucial to Carbon Accounting

73% of all emissions are estimated to come from energy consumption, a fact that is often overlooked in conducting sustainability goals. Because emissions are largely derivative of energy use, it is integral to preach the integration of energy and sustainability data across business functions in order to capture an accurate reflection of total emissions, where they are coming from, and who is capable of tracking them within the organization. 

The complex calculation methods and uncertain political nature of carbon accounting is a major deterrent for its adoption by the majority of businesses today. A holistic strategy towards alleviating the costs and uncertainty of conducting carbon accounting is by operationalizing sustainability functions throughout the chain of business functions. The entire team across an organization should be following a consensus on how to interpret and collect necessary data so as to better pass the necessary knowledge along to the appropriate team member. By operationalizing sustainability you are therefore integrating energy and sustainability management. It simply does not make sense to separate the two and track them separately. Sustainability managers are crucial for spearheading reporting, providing big picture goals and campaigns, and synthesizing data for forward looking results. However, when it comes to implementing projects and affecting operational level change, asset managers, engineers, and facility managers are the backbone of making reductions possible for emissions. 

Data Availability Within Your Organization

A hierarchy of ease in which you can access GHG emissions data is an important first step towards pinpointing which teams within your organization already maintain and collect what data related to sustainability. Ranking scopes and commodities based on the ability to automate data acquisition or the marginal value of the effort required to conduct these calculations is a necessary effort in uniting your business operations with sustainability and energy goals. 

Reduce Greenwashing or Greenwishing

Whereas greenwashing is purposely misrepresenting a certain level of sustainability, greenwishing is the well intended, yet ultimately ineffectual hope that voluntary sustainability efforts are much closer to achieving necessary change than they actually are. If your only goal is to check boxes with sustainability reporting alone, often simply requiring an emissions inventory as a once per year exercise, it is performative. Large scale reporting to multiple different agencies should not be conflated with actual progress on goals, as output does not always equal impact.  Going beyond the simple requirements of an emissions inventory, to the integration of actual emissions reductions goals and decarbonization efforts is crucial towards reducing the possibility of greenwashing within your corporation. Emissions reductions are best achieved through the integration of energy and sustainability as a single source of truth and data acquisition. The more an operation uses their energy operations as the guidepost for how to integrate sustainability goals and collect data, the more effective it will be. 

What to Look For in a Sustainability & Energy Management AI System for Carbon Accounting:

Renewables Tracking 

• REC tracking 
• Tracking on site production in kWh through interval data 
• Computing Renewable % in your portfolio 
• Scope 2 market based factors in addition to location based 

Project Tracking: 

• Reporting to schemas and frameworks 
• Tracking projects 
• Goal achievement and visual trend lines on a yearly and monthly basis 

What is WatchWire

WatchWire is an integrated energy and sustainability management platform that provides utility data  automation along with utility bill management. In addition to delivering all the benefits listed above, WatchWire:

• Statistically audits your utility bills as they are integrated, alerting your team of any anomalies.
• Allows your audited utility data set to be directly integrated with your accounts payable software to streamline the payment of bills.
• Provides you with over 30 standard reports, so you can generate reports based on specific line items to find consumption/demand/cost trends, weather impact, budget performance, facility comparisons, KPI analysis, and more.
• Uses the line-item component breakdown in our Measurement and Verification module to accurately calculate true marginal cost savings due to efficiency projects (rather than simple average unit cost, which is incorrect and potentially misleading).

To discover more about WatchWire and its capabilities, you can visit our website, blog, or resource library, request a demo, or follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter to keep up-to-date on the latest energy and sustainability insights, news, and resources.