As legislators across the world are moving to make reporting of indirect carbon emissions mandatory, the tools we use need to keep up. Tacton’s CPQ tools will be able to show a product’s climate footprint according to all relevant standards and legislation, which helps buyers find the most climate-friendly options while helping manufacturers reach their climate targets.
Things are moving in the sustainability reporting sector. The European Union is processing a proposal that will enforce all companies with operations in the EU to report their scope 3 emissions. This means that all emissions connected to their operations, including emissions caused by the products and services bought by the company, as well as emissions caused by their customers when their products are used, need to be calculated and included in their sustainability reports. In the US, the Security Exchange Commission has made a similar proposal to enforce scope 3 reporting for US companies. This kind of legislation means that most sectors will have much more accurate climate data. For example, in the transport sector, scope 3 emissions represent more than 90% of the company’s total emissions. Before, only the most ambitious companies included these numbers in their reports. Now everyone will be brought up to their level!
These new standards will bring both challenges and opportunities. Before we can report these scope 3 emissions, we need tools to measure them. At Tacton, we are integrating the possibility to show products´ environmental data into our CPQ tools. We are partnering with actors providing life cycle analyses to calculate the environmental impact of products sold through our platform and showing the data to the buyer, making sure to meet all applicable reporting standards. 
Configuration, pricing and quote software adopted for an elevator. Tacton is looking into to how to add environmental choice point in CPQ, based on products energy use, material use and more.
While challenging, embracing these new standards is also a huge opportunity. As a buyer, this helps you make sure that you choose the most sustainably sourced products, and at the same time, it helps sellers reach their climate goals. To give you an example from the retail industry, IKEA states that one of the main reasons that they are reaching their climate goals is that their customers are buying more energy-efficient products. In terms of climate impact, customer behavior is extremely important. An example from professional manufacturing is from one of the world’s leading manufacturers of process equipment which has recently decided to work towards science-based targets. The targets include the use of their products by their customers — scope 3 emissions — in the climate goal. Compressed air is used in many applications within manufacturing. Their updated set of air compressors, a commonly sold product range, has an 11% reduced carbon footprint over its lifetime. This equals 510 metric tons of CO2 for one compressor, or a mind-blowing 9 million metric tons of CO2 if all compressors worldwide would use this technology. If these figures were visible in the company’s CPQ, customers would be nudged to choose this more energy-efficient technology at the time of purchase.
We look forward to the developments that we will see once these legislations are rolled out. What do you think will happen to climate reporting and communication?
•
57 w
Communication flow between the involved parties is vital
•
•
61 w
This is great, having the right tools is already half the work done!
•
•
61 w
Not only the proposal should be to calculate emissions but also to put penalties
•
•
60 w
@annett_michuki This is a very interesting idea, to introduce an option for automatic carbon pricing into the tool!
•
61 w
Such a brilliant concept
•
61 w
Very impressive, and important
•
61 w
This is very important.