Carbon as an Operating System
Ryan Miller, VP & GM of Private Markets at Persefoni, on building an ERP for carbon
The real shift is from carbon reporting as a yearly compliance task to carbon management as an operating system for day to day decisions. When emissions data is updated monthly or quarterly, finance, procurement, travel, and supply chain teams can see which activities are driving the footprint while there is still time to change vendors, reroute shipping, or redirect spend. That is what turns carbon software from a filing tool into decision software.
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Carbon accounting is hard to do once a year because the data comes from many different business systems and units. Persefoni describes hundreds of calculation types, from fuel and electricity to cotton inputs and shipping miles, which is why continuous closes reduce year end scramble and make the process usable for operating teams.
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This also changes who owns the workflow. The job started in sustainability teams, but the center of gravity is moving toward the CFO because the same people who run financial close already collect much of the underlying operational data. Carbon starts to look more like monthly accounting than an annual CSR report.
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The broader carbon stack reinforces this. Carbon accounting tools like Persefoni and Watershed measure and model the footprint, while partners like Patch handle offset procurement after reductions are planned. That separation matters because companies need a live measurement layer first, then a transaction layer for the residual emissions they cannot cut.
The category is heading toward continuous carbon close, where emissions are reviewed alongside spend and operations, then eventually embedded into purchasing and planning systems in near real time. The winners will be the platforms that become the system of record for emissions data, then expand into reduction planning, capital allocation, and the workflows that sit downstream of measurement.