User Update: Climate Neutral Tools
Since our last user update, our engineering team and volunteers have developed exciting software improvements. These updates will help you do the easy tasks faster and shift focus to important reductions work.
As an impact-driven nonprofit, we work to create accessible tools for measuring and managing corporate carbon emissions. Our software tools complement our programs and provide a carbon management option for companies focused on accelerating their climate action.
Since our last user update, with the help of incredible volunteers and contributors, our team has released significant user improvements that will help companies complete small tasks faster and more accurately (such as inputting carbon data) so they can spend more time taking action on important work (like emissions reductions).
We’re excited to share our latest software updates as a part of our commitment to being transparent about how our software tools work. If you’d like to go a level deeper, check out our methodology documentation here.
Our emissions calculations run on licensed emission factor libraries. So we regularly update our physical emissions factor library to keep pace with our primary data provider, Ecoinvent.
We updated to Ecoinvent 3.8. This update keeps pace with the latest life cycle assessment science, as well as improvements in methodology and changes in the real world.
Available to: all licensed users
All first-time users begin the measurement process by estimating their emissions sources. Historically, returning users also had to begin from scratch with estimation each year. Not anymore!
This feature allows you to start with last year’s data and then input new annual data. It fast-tracks the data collection process and enables us to provide you with year-over-year trends for better insight.
Available to: all licensed users
Users input their organization’s facilities during the estimation phase of measurement. You used to not be able to add new facilities without restarting your entire measurement. Thanks to user feedback, this pain point is gone!
Now, if you need to add a facility because you opened a new retail store or began working with a new contract manufacturer, you can easily make that update from the measurement landing page.
Available to: all licensed users
We also improved the way you can set up your facilities. This process is now more aligned to how you think about your operations.
You can now specify different facility types such as offices, factories, warehouses, and retail stores. We can also handle multiple offices that support a company producing goods.
Available to: all licensed users
Climate Neutral has always allowed you to submit carbon inventories prepared by other firms and measurement tools. This improvement streamlines that data sharing process.
You can now enter key details from your external carbon inventory directly into the Certification Portal—which means no more long emails full of attachments!
It also improves data collection efficiency and ensures all of our certifying brands are held to the same, rigorous Standard—regardless of the tool they are using for carbon measurement. We’re excited about this new feature, especially as we’ve expanded our Open Certification network.
Available to: all certification users
Users can now enter custom LCA data directly into the BEE. This update allows you to study specialized materials or products with experts and then use the BEE to round-out the rest of your carbon inventory. You will no longer have to piece these components together offline—you can view your custom entries directly in the BEE.
Available to: all licensed users
We enhanced data visualizations on the Review tab. Many of these updates help illustrate how your organization’s emissions have changed year over year. The goal of this update is to help you see—and think more critically about—emissions hotspots and potential areas for reduction actions.
Available to: all licensed users
This update builds on our library of Reduction Recommendations and helps you set specific, actionable reductions. You will be invited to adopt our high quality, pre-defined plans, and then customize those plans to your unique operations using an approachable Mad Libs-like template.
The new template provides you with a meaningful starting place, nudges your organization towards greater ambition, and standardizes our certification cohort around pre-specified actions. We’re excited this new feature will help certifying organizations collaborate more easily on reductions.
Available to: all certification users
Similar to the new reductions planning tools above, we’ve also introduced templates to help you set science-aligned targets. These templates are in line with guidance from the Science Based Targets initiative. They are designed to be approachable and actionable so you can quickly move from target setting to reductions implementation.
Available to: all certification users
Since our last update, we released a user-friendly carbon credit provider directory. It is designed to build confidence in your carbon credit researching and purchasing processes.
The directory currently includes 11 eligible, verified partners. We work with each provider regularly to screen projects and ensure they meet our uniform, rigorous Standard. We hope this directory will help you easily source credits that meet both your organization’s unique goals and our certification requirements.
Available to: all certification users
As a final note, this summer we are rolling out a small change in the name of the platform itself. The “BEE” began as the “Brand Emissions Estimator.” As we add capabilities for more detailed measurement, and for reduction target setting and planning, we are changing the name to “Business Emissions Evaluator.” This name change better reflects the features we have available now and will continue to build. It’s a small but fun recognition of the expanded ways in which we are accelerating corporate climate initiatives around the world.
We are currently working on additional improvements to upgrade team collaboration capabilities, carbon credit submission details, and more, based on user feedback.
If you are one of our regular software users, we invite you to jump into your account to explore these improved features. If you’ve been thinking about leveling-up your organization’s climate action, now is the time. Create a free account and begin estimating your emissions today.
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The Change Climate Project is on a mission to eliminate carbon emissions by making climate neutrality a priority for companies and individuals.
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At this stage in the game, it’s baffling that such a fundamental question remains unanswered: how - and how much - are companies investing in the climate transition? The proposed Standard will look directly at this question.
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Every corporate sustainability leader who is now laying out a climate plan for 2024 or 2025 will wonder at some point: should I spend money on carbon credits?
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Thousands of people around the world study emission factors full time, and their research improves the data so that we can better understand the impacts. We just finished updating the emission factor library in our measurement tools, an annual process that brings our datasets - tens of thousands of emission factors - up to date with the latest releases and scientific research.
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