Counting carbon just got easier
This women-led startup is leveraging AI and data to help businesses tackle their carbon emissions.
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Carmen Vicelich is the founder of Generate Zero.
With mandatory climate disclosures in effect this year, a raft of Aotearoa companies are busy tallying up their carbon emissions.
It might seem like just another carbon-bean-counting exercise. But in order to take action to reduce emissions, a company first has to figure out what’s being emitted, and where it’s spurting out along the value chain. This includes indirect carbon emissions arising from a business’ customers or supply chain, too. It’s a tricky undertaking – one that’s historically been plagued by guesstimates and wide margins of error.
Enter Carmen Vicelich, a tech entrepreneur with a passion for “using technology and data for good, and doing purposeful things that have impact.” Her latest brainchild is Generate Zero, a data-driven startup that helps businesses measure, track and reduce their carbon emissions via a product called Footprint.
“Businesses have a responsibility to make a difference on sustainability – but they didn't have a way to do that,” says Vicelich. “And that's where we saw this massive gap in the market to deliver something that is reliable and uses data, not opinion.”
Footprint’s model has been validated with Toitū, a certification programme with rigorous global standards. This, combined with the underlying accounting methodology, means it’s more accurate than previous efforts, according to Vicelich.
It’s also designed to stimulate emissions reduction in a straightforward way. “The dashboard allows users to drag and drop, and go, if I change that thing, what will it do?” Vicelich explains. “If I let my team work from home three days a week instead of two, what does it do? Or if I bring them back into the office, how do I encourage ridesharing and public transport and cycling?”
It’s this “reduction module” that the Generate Zero team sees as a tool for transformation. “We’re really trying to democratise data and share lessons from companies who have already reduced their emissions. It’s about creating an ecosystem to learn from one another,” says Caroline Knowles, chief product officer. Artificial intelligence turns the library of reduction ideas into a recommendation engine, enabling businesses to take action – and perhaps even pursue carbon positive status.
Vicelich says they’ve had great uptake so far, especially among the banking, insurance and property sectors – driven not just by disclosure reporting, but also by a push for emissions reductions. “I think recent weather events have really shown us that actually, this is happening now,” says Vicelich. “It’s definitely not just a future thing. We have to make a difference now.”
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Image credit: Muhammad Arief Irfan (via Nature).
You might be wondering: what’s with the image of the nondescript concrete building? I present to you: the world’s first house built using nappies. Yes, diapers. Used ones. Researchers at the University of Kitakyushu in Japan figured out that you can swap up to 40% of the sand used to make concrete with shredded nappies. They built this small 36 m2 house in Indonesia as a proof-of-concept using 1.7 m3 of nappy waste.
Hope your week is concrete sweet,
Ellen
Got some feedback about Future Proof or topics you’d like covered? Get in touch with me at futureproof@thespinoff.co.nz
