Skip to main content

Advancements in Carbon Accounting and Management Software: A Game-Changing Catalyst to Drive Sustainability Action

A woman sitting at a desk in front of a computer

As sustainability becomes a global priority, businesses are looking for comprehensive tools and approaches to manage their environmental impact. Among various strategies, Carbon Accounting and Management Software has emerged as a robust and scalable solution to provide organizations with a precise, reliable, and efficient way to manage their environmental footprint. Carbon Accounting and Management Software is designed to measure and track greenhouse gas emissions, a task that is exceedingly complex and intricate due to the multifaceted nature of emission sources and data collection.

According to the 2024 Gartner® Market Guide for Carbon Accounting and Management Software report, “Making progress on greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction commitments is an enterprise-wide endeavor that requires data and analytics tailored to the roles and responsibilities that can take action.” The report outlines four drivers fueling carbon accounting and management software evolution and maturation:

  • Materiality: New demands from regulators, investors and large customers mean that shortcomings in GHG data are starting to have greater financial, legal and risk implications than they did previously.

  • Actionability: Concrete decarbonization measures call not only for better data in passive carbon accounting, but also new decision-making capabilities to enable active carbon management.

  • Availability: Data collection, integration and modeling requirements are becoming more challenging, especially due to the growing urgency to measure Scope 3 emissions.

  • Accessibility: Solutions will become more intuitive for nonexperts and the trend toward cloud solutions, including low-cost self-service solutions, will drive mass adoption and use.” 

As per the report, executive leaders should “evaluate vendors based on their strengths in GHG data collection, categorization, calculation, and emissions reduction planning, as well as alignment with your material emissions sources...”

Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure™ Resource Advisor provides a corporate performance and energy management platform that offers an end-to-end approach to manage energy and sustainability data, allowing organizations to visualize site energy performance and cost, emissions summary by source, scope and pollutant. The solution also offers custom ESG data management and reporting tools, tying data to regulatory requirements, including TCFD, SASB, CDP, and CSRD (read this latest announcement).

The platform can be tailored to meet specific data collection requirements, allowing users to select from thousands of existing data streams or create custom data streams unique to their strategy – across environment, energy, GHG emissions, diversity, safety, compliance, community, and governance categories. Schneider also leads the charge with next-gen technology advancements – Resource Advisor features a conversational AI chatbot, designed to help businesses interact with their enterprise energy and sustainability data at even greater speed.  For more information, visit Schneider Electric’s Resource Advisor.  

Access the 2024 Gartner Market Guide for Carbon Accounting and Management Software report here.

Want to learn more? Contact us today and let our global experts help guide you to a net-zero future with strategy and technology that drives action and impact.

Gartner, Market Guide for Carbon Accounting and Management Software, By Chet Geschickter, Lillian Oyen-Ustad, Melanie O'Brien, Kristin Moyer, Aapo Markkanen, Nate Suda, 17 January 2024.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.