The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated the reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States over a decade ago. Over the years, there has been increased pressure on companies to reduce the effects of their operations on the environment, especially related to GHGs.
Investors are critically analyzing how companies are addressing the environmental, social and governance costs of doing business whilst customers are in support of businesses that consider communities within which they operate. For organizations, technology solutions that satisfy stakeholder groups and their requirements is imperative. There are several GHG software solutions on the market that claim to help organizations report on their emissions data to the EPA and allow them to manage environmental and social concerns.
So how do you know which GHG solution works best for your company? We have put together six criteria that GHG software needs to meet.
1. Compliance requirements and sustainability goals
Integration of emissions data with compliance requirements and sustainability reporting goals is requisite. A solution chosen for a task like this needs to be in line with the organization’s sustainability strategy. A successful GHG software can create an e-GGRT report in a shorter period by eliminating excessive manual entry and repetition of metadata. It also needs to smoothly aggregate all the necessary data across all business units and/or processes within the organization — that is, be a one-stop shop for all emission information and reporting tools.
2. Multi-language functionality
Users are more likely to use a system and enter information more accurately if they are able to do so in their home language. IsoMetrix is available in several languages and offers text translation using Azure Translation. This allows for translation of text into many different languages, allowing users’ descriptions of events and the other information they enter into the system to be automatically translated into the company’s principal language.
3. Calculation capabilities
The GHG software you choose for your organization needs to have a range of calculation capabilities. A transparent and agile solution that allows for a varying number of calculations to be made and caters for the diverse number of methods required to produce analytics is necessary. It should also cater for Emission Factor updates. A GHG solution should allow you to:
- Recalculate existing monitoring records where calculations of past, present, and future data values are possible
- Use different units of measure to cater for operations in different countries where units are not uniform
- Compare set-targets and actuals against industry standards and previous company performance
4. Visual data analytics
The software needs to visually display real-time analytics in the dashboards with exceedance reporting. Customizable dashboards that allow you to control what data is visible and how it is displayed according to user profile makes interpreting the data easy and aids in reporting. Managers can track, view performance and filter until the desired information is displayed.
5. Integration with other internal systems
Seamless integration of the solution with other systems and processes is valuable. This enables managers to gather emissions data from various sources and allow platforms to pass and receive data from other systems.
6. Notifications and reminders
It is important to have a GHG software that alerts or notifies you when data does not conform or of any exceedance of Clean Air Act emissions for criteria air pollutants. This allows managers to track and rectify the source of non-compliance and exceedance.
Conclusion
Emissions reporting is a challenge without the right software that meets all your strategic and operational objectives. The IsoMetrix solution simplifies this complex task by creating a complete report with all the necessary data in a concise format to better track emissions and consolidate data for reporting to the EPA.
