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Overview
Carbon accounting software is a unique digital platform that helps businesses prepare, measure, report, and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions from their business activities. Carbon accounting software in Australia facilitates environmental reporting for businesses, achieving sustainability goals, and meeting compliance with emissions regulations. The software speeds up data collection across teams, emissions analysis, and reporting to promote transparency and enhance investor confidence.
If you are reading this is because your organisation is exploring better ways to measure its emissions or doing so for the first time.
As the climate crisis intensifies and we move from voluntary to regulated reporting, manual carbon accounting via spreadsheets or being fully dependent on external consultants is no longer a viable option. Expectation has grown in terms of accuracy and the use digitised solutions for accurate and reliable emissions measurements and disclosures.
The good news is that many businesses already report on their carbon emissions. The not so good news is that they spend too much time preparing data and do so in different ways which complicates comparison between companies challenging.
Governments have now made great strides recently towards standardisation to streamline the reporting of carbon emissions and mitigate the very real financial risks associated with its management. In Australia, mandated reporting in 2024 for large organisation has levelled the playing field for businesses in what and how they have to measure. In turn, it has put pressure on all suppliers and many SMEs across Australia.
To speed up this process, a crucial first step is to understand what current carbon accounting software entails. This software is an accessible solution to many of the carbon reporting issues we face today. Let's dive into the details:
What is carbon accounting software?
At its core, carbon accounting software is designed to help organisations measure and manage their carbon emissions. By leveraging the right automation and technological solutions, companies can accurately track their emissions data and gather the necessary information to begin strategically reducing or even eliminating carbon emissions—a process known as decarbonisation.
Outputs from carbon accounting software can also be used to achieve certifications like carbon neutrality with the aid of offsets or submit your carbon inventory to 3rd parties like Science Based Targets (SBTis) or CDP.
To provide clarity within the fast emerging field of carbon accounting software, it's important to distinguish between this and an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) software solution.
Carbon accounting software is mostly linked to the “E” in ESG and the measurements are grounded in the principles of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol).
The term "carbon" used in carbon accounting software is used broadly by the GHG Protocol to encompass all gas emissions from businesses’ scope 1,2, and 3 that contribute to global warming, including:
- Methane
- Water vapour
- Nitrous oxide
- Hydrofluorocarbons
- Perfluorochemicals
- Sulfur hexafluoride, and more.
More robust carbon accounting accounting can also provide solutions for the “S” and “G” of ESG. Most often buyers can opt to use different modules depending on their needs and how advance their sustainability plan is.
Australian companies that use audit-ready carbon accounting software solutions, meaning that they can ‘trust’ the numbers to disclose their carbon footprints faster to relevant stakeholders. This can mean external auditors, clients, investors or use them for grant applications or establish Science-based Targets (SBTi), and answer any data requests.
Key Features to Look For in Carbon Accounting Software
Choosing the right carbon accounting software can significantly impact an organisation's ability to responsibly manage its carbon footprint. Emissions regulations in Australia are complex and vary across regions, making it essential to select software with the right features. Here are some critical aspects to consider when evaluating carbon accounting solutions for Australia:
Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions measurements and reporting
Your Australian carbon accounting software should allow you to measure emissions across all scopes referred to in the GHG Protocol. Scope 3 is significantly important as it can account to 90% of your business emissions. Automated reporting is a key feature to ensure you can answer any requests for information and make sharing sustainability progress effective for your team.
Rapid Implementation - The ideal time to start tracking your emissions and energy consumption was yesterday. Therefore, the software should be able to quickly commence its calculations and furnish actionable insights as soon as possible.
Cost-Effectiveness - The pricing for carbon accounting software can vary significantly, from a few thousand to several hundred thousand dollars for large-scale enterprise solutions. Select a solution that is both affordable and scalable to meet your business's growing needs.
Compliance and updates - The software should adhere to the latest industry standards and incorporate the most recent emissions factors. This ensures you are well-prepared for Australian regulatory disclosures or third-party audits.
Sustainability education material
Your Australian carbon accounting software needs to be paired with high quality sustainability education material to upskill you and your team in carbon accounting and other relevant topics. Your software partner should host frequent webinars and give you access to on-demand courses.
Supplier engagement and benchmarking
Understanding who you are buying from can have a large impact in your emissions and decarbonisation strategies. Your software solution should give you tools to engage and benchmark your suppliers and give you access to a vetted database of suppliers
Personalised onboarding and support
Beyond software features, personalised advice and real-time support for you and your team is key to a good carbon measurement. No two businesses are alike and ensuring that everything is ready to go from day 1 is critical to a successful emissions measurement and improvement over time. Finally, when its time to pick solutions an expert should be able to guide you on this matter.
User-Friendliness - Even with advanced features, the software should be intuitive and easy to use, minimising the need for lengthy training and complex setup processes. Companies new to carbon accounting will benefit from platforms that offer guidance on how business activities influence emissions and provide strategies for reducing them. An effective sustainability platform should also educate and engage stakeholders by delivering insights on priorities and progress.
The 7 best carbon accounting software in Australia of 2024
As the carbon accounting space evolves in Australia, so does its list of vendors. Here’s our current list of the top 7 in the Australian market that can help your business.
NetNada
NetNada, a leading Australian carbon accounting platform, is recognised by the Australian government and the University of NSW as a leader in carbon accounting and sustainability software. NetNada carbon accounting software combines business automation and artificial intelligent to cover scope 1,2, and 3 business emissions aligned with NGERS and GHG protocol.
As carbon accounting platform, NetNada is a unique software that serves enterprise, governments, and SME in an effort to democratise access to emissions measurement. Having helped 100+ businesses of all shapes and sizes, and 1000+ suppliers efficiently get a grip on their emissions with tools, on-demand education, and expert support, it places itself as a solution to facilitate access to sustainability data regardless of your expertise and team size.
- For enterprise businesses, NetNada helps meet your obligations and disclose your impact with confidence and well as understand your climate disclosure obligations, prepare and file reports, and benchmark against peer companies.
- For SMEs, NetNada is the best way to make sustainability a strength in your business and unlock new opportunities. Secure new deals and reach the growth milestones you need.
NetNada supply chain feature can fast-track supplier benchmarking by tapping into our vetted database of suppliers or assist you in launching a engagement campaign - leveraging our automation, it can be as easy as clicking one button.
For those who want to neutralise their emissions, NetNada carbon accounting software offers Australian business commission-free offsets and carbon credits to ensure that all your money is driving impact.
Trace
Trace carbon accounting software primarily focuses on businesses who want to buy offsets.
Trace was co-founded by Joanna Auburn & Cat Long in Australia and offers a straightforward measurements for businesses who are seeking carbon neutrality.
SMEs who are looking for a quick and fast way to invest in carbon offsets can use Trace’s carbon accounting platform. However, while Trace is affordable it might not suit businesses who are looking for emissions analysis that calculate all categories of scope 3, need robust reporting, or supply chain engagement.
Sustain.life
Sustain life is a carbon accounting software that provides businesses with a platform to measure, report, and reduce their carbon emissions. Its features include benchmarking, customisable dashboards, and progress tracking.
Sustain.life is heavily reliant on back-end manual services. As a result, it also runs into the same scalability problems as many of the other carbon accounting software.
Avarni
Avarni is an Australian sydney-based carbon accounting software driven by AI. The goal of the platform is to help businesses cut carbon emissions, identify hotspot, and forecasting reduction opportunities.
Avarni was co-founded by Misha Cajic and Anuj Paudel, and while it started as a traditional carbon accounting software it now focus on mostly decarbonisation strategies and scope 3 analysis.
Terrascope
Terrascope is an enterprise-grade carbon accounting software based in Singapore but recently starting operations in Australia.
The carbon accounting software has the capability of analytics and the tools to help large company decarbonise. The team at Terrascope is mostly focused on the needs of large companies; so pricing and user friendliness for Australian companies that don’t have previous sustainability experience or large budgets might be a problem.
Sumday
Sumday is one of the most recent carbon accounting software in Australia and was created by a Tasmanian team. Sumday counts with a strong network of partners to deliver the carbon accounting software solution and businesses using it are expected to have a dedicated person or consultant managing the software.
While Sumday still improves it’s software offering, many of the calculation are reliant on completing spreadsheets for data-input and uploading them to the platform.
Sumday also offers a good educational platform to learn about carbon accounting.
Pathzero
Started by a carbon consultant and tech entrepreneur in 2020. Pathzero carbon accounting software is one of the oldest in Australia. It was co-founded by Carl Prins and Charbel Ayou to provide a simpler and more affordable way for businesses to join the movement to net zero emissions.
Pathzero now mostly focus on asset owners and asset managers and is mainly target at financial institutions. Instead of calculating emissions as per GHG protocol, Pathzero helps with financed emissions reporting for private markets
Carbon accounting software for your Australian business and operations
Today, numerous carbon accounting software platforms are available, enabling growing businesses to do better in carbon accounting and reporting. Many of these platforms offer free demos, allowing you to explore their features before making a commitment.
As you evaluate your options, prioritise a platform that is user-friendly, cost-effective, data-driven, and packed with advanced features that can grow alongside your business.
Interested in experiencing it firsthand? Contact us to schedule a demo today.
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