Carbon accounting and sustainability software

Counting the carbon and using less

Burning coal, oil and gas releases carbon dioxide, which warms the planet. Carbon dioxide and similar gases, such as methane, are called greenhouse gases. What a company releases is called its emissions. Companies are now asked to measure their emissions, report them and bring them down. They are also asked to use less energy, water and material.

Who is asking. Three groups push companies to do this:

Regulators

In India, the stock-market regulator requires the largest companies whose shares are traded on the stock market to publish a sustainability report every year. Europe has its own, stricter rules.

Investors

who want to know the risks a company carries.

Customers

A large company now asks its suppliers for their emissions, because they count towards its own.

How carbon is counted. Carbon accounting sorts a company's emissions into three groups:

Scope 1

what the company releases itself, for example by burning fuel in its boilers and vehicles.

Scope 2

emissions from making the electricity it buys.

Scope 3

everything else linked to its business, such as its suppliers' emissions and the use of its products. This is usually the largest group and the hardest to measure.

How carbon is counted: Scope 1 is what a company releases itself, Scope 2 comes from making the electricity it buys, and Scope 3 is everything else linked to its business, such as its suppliers' emissions and the use of its products.

Most of these numbers are estimates. A company takes what it used, such as units of electricity or litres of diesel, and multiplies it by a standard figure for the emissions of each unit.

Most of these numbers are estimates: a company takes what it used, such as units of electricity or litres of diesel, and multiplies it by a standard figure for the emissions of each unit.

What is sold. Four kinds of products make up this market:

Carbon accounting software

which collects the data and produces the report.

Environment, health and safety (EHS) software

which older companies in this market have sold for years. It records a plant's emissions, waste, accidents and safety checks.

Tools that cut use

which measure the energy or water a plant uses and show where to save.

Carbon credits and recycling

A carbon credit is a certificate that one tonne of carbon dioxide has been kept out of the air, or removed from it. Companies buy credits to make up for their own emissions.

The buyers are companies' sustainability teams, their safety teams and their plant managers. The market is young and crowded, and Indian start-ups are active in it. (More on reporting rules in Market Segment 11.4, Regulatory compliance software, in Industry Vertical 11, Finance and accounting software.)

Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.

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Carbon accounting, safety software and tools that cut use

Carbon accounting, safety software and tools that cut use

Reporting and carbon accounting

Sphera

with engineers in Bengaluru, Intelex Technologies ULC and Benchmark Gensuite sell environment, health and safety software. Companies use it to manage EHS and to report their emissions.

Sprih

founded in India, with engineers in Pune, sells AI carbon accounting.

Sustainability Economics.ai

in Bengaluru, is another company in this area. It has the most job postings in this Market Segment.

Measuring emissions directly

Picarro

with engineers in Bengaluru, makes instruments that measure greenhouse gases in the air. It also makes the software that reports emissions from those measurements.

Cutting use in the plant

LivNSense GreenOps

with engineers in Bengaluru, builds a digital simulation of a factory's energy use, and uses it to cut that use.

FluxGen

meters industrial water use and analyses it.

Waste and carbon credits

Recykal.com

with engineers in Hyderabad, runs a marketplace for waste. It also handles compliance for producers who are responsible for their packaging. Under India's rules, a company that sells goods in plastic packaging must make sure an equal amount of plastic is collected and recycled. This is called extended producer responsibility.

Varaha

with engineers in Bengaluru, measures the carbon stored by farming practices, and issues carbon credits for it. (More on it in Market Segment 45.2, Agribusiness and farm advisory platforms, in Industry Vertical 45, Agritech.)

Three companies covered mainly in other Market Segments also work here:

Buckman

with engineers in Chennai, is a chemicals company. (More on it in Market Segment 37.8, Advanced materials and specialty chemicals, in Industry Vertical 37, Manufacturing tech.)

Verdethos

with engineers in Bengaluru, traces goods back to their source, to show that no forest was cut down to produce them. (More on it in Market Segment 30.4, Shipment tracking and supply chain visibility platforms, in Industry Vertical 30, Supply chain and logistics.)

Bert Labs

with engineers in Bengaluru, works on the energy use of buildings. (More on it in Market Segment 37.4, Predictive maintenance and industrial IoT platforms, in Industry Vertical 37, Manufacturing tech.)

The emissions measured, not estimated.

Most companies' carbon figures are estimates, worked out from what they spent and from averages. Regulators in Europe, and India's new carbon market, ask for more. Sensors, satellites and AI models now measure methane leaks, energy use and suppliers' emissions directly. Carbon accounting is changing from arithmetic to measurement.

That is the market for counting carbon and using less: software that reports emissions, instruments that measure them, and tools that cut a plant's energy and water use. It is a young market, and many of its start-ups are Indian.

Who they hire

Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What energy and climate tech companies hire for.

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