nir-vana innovation network

A Start-up from northern Germany developed a web tool which calculates an enterprises’ entire climate footprint – incl. scope 3 emissions – using data from financial spending transactions. A quick export from the enterprises’ accounting software, safe import into the web tool and a short questionnaire, and the annual report can be created. It shows the overall emissions and which categories contribute most and least to it. This way processes and actions in everyday work responsible for CO2 output can be easily identified. After two yearly footprint calculations and an indication of planned emission reduction measures, the start-up also provides a degree-Celsius-KPI for easy and effective benchmarking and progress tracking – showing the increase of global temperature if every enterprise in the sector would act the same. After the data upload the suppliers, products and services are mapped to the start-up’s categories with a specific emission intensity. To determine the diverse emission intensities across all EU countries, the start-up uses different leading databases (such as exiobase.eu). An important factor is the the kind of calculation: not territorial-based accounting, but state-of-the-art consumption-based accounting, allocating emissions globally across borders to the countries where the products and goods are demanded and consumed. So e.g. when buying parts of a machinery in Germany the emission intensity for that would include embedded emissions from machinery production in other countries from which Germany imports machinery, including logistics’ emissions. The underlying scientific method has been verified by one of Germanies largest auditing companies. And it is constantly improved by a PhD physicist. Since 2022, the start-up collaborates closely with a large German bank, helping them to offer climate footprint analytics to its customers.