ERP for Carbon Accounting
Ryan Miller, VP & GM of Private Markets at Persefoni, on building an ERP for carbon
The opening for software is that carbon accounting is mostly a data translation problem, not a bespoke consulting craft. Companies already produce the raw inputs, fuel use, electricity bills, shipping miles, materials data, supplier activity. The hard part is mapping each input to the right emissions factor and rolling hundreds of unlike units into one audit ready footprint. Once that rules engine lives in software, the same workflow can serve far more companies at much lower cost.
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The old workflow was consultant heavy and spreadsheet based. Carbon accounting covered around 260 distinct calculations across things like fuel, power, materials, logistics, and disposal. Persefoni describes software as replacing the manual matching of activity data to emissions factors, while the underlying company data collection still stays in place.
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This looks more like financial software than like a one time compliance service. The benchmark is systems like SAP, NetSuite, and QuickBooks, where software turns messy recurring close processes into a repeatable system of record. That is why carbon ownership is shifting from sustainability teams toward the CFO org.
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The category is filling in as a real software stack, not a single tool. Watershed packages measurement, reporting, supply chain engagement, and carbon project procurement, while Sweep positions around modular climate and sustainability data management. In the same stack, Patch handles offset procurement, which shows how carbon accounting can become the system of record that other climate tools plug into.
Going forward, the winners should be the platforms that make carbon data as routine as financial data, with monthly closes, audit trails, and direct links into procurement, supply chain, and reporting. As standards like the GHG Protocol stay central and customer requirements move toward product level and Scope 3 detail, carbon software should become a normal operating system inside finance, not a side project inside sustainability.