SINTEF invested in a new start-up to assess the impact of a company’s carbon footprint on its carbon footprint.
As part of its climate change strategy, the EU is preparing a new directive to regulate corporate sustainability reporting. In addition, the Norwegian government has decided that all companies in the state’s portfolio are obliged to report their company’s direct and indirect emissions on an annual basis.
This will require skill development in entirely new areas, including approaches to climate accounting that cover the entire value chain in which the final product is produced, including across borders.
“Providing support in relation to sustainability reporting is in the process of becoming a whole new business in itself, and Norway has a great opportunity to contribute,” said senior researcher Ulf Johansen. .
Supporting companies with sustainability reporting
To help companies understand how they generate their emissions, Johansen and his team founded MoreScope with the support of SINTEF. The company assists companies with climate and sustainability reporting.
Johansen explains: Numerous contractors and sub-suppliers all contribute to the climate his footprint of a particular product. However, very few companies have the in-house skills to calculate the scale of these various contributions. MoreScope sees an opportunity here. “
MoreScope utilizes economic models and environmental datasets developed over many years by SINTEF and its partners. “While SINTEF has adopted an applied user perspective in this area, NTNU has been at the forefront of research. MoreScope has its roots in this collective know-how,” said Johansen. .
“Thanks to the research conducted here in Trondheim, quantifying the climate-related and sustainability impacts of our activities across our global value chains is becoming a Norwegian area of expertise.”
The core of the economic model is based on so-called input-output analysis. It is a well-known approach that quantifies all exchanges of goods and services between different countries and commercial sectors in different ways and determines the impact of corporate emissions caused by these exchanges.
According to Johansen, a key factor in creating MoreScope was that it was no longer acceptable for companies to make undocumented sustainability claims related to specific products.
“Such claims need to be firmly grounded in data and testable and transparent methodologies,” he said. “Our job is to make such tools available to companies in all corporate sectors. There is none.”
Sustainability reporting is a growing global market
Initially, MoreScope will be promoted to a Norwegian client, but the team sees potential worldwide. “We believe that the know-how we provide will also help the global market for sustainability reporting grow,” said Johansen.
Startup investor SINTEF Venture VI co-owns the company’s emissions detection technology. His SINTEF own company, SINTEF TTO, dedicated to commercializing research results, is actively working to attract more professional investors.
Asle Jostein Hovda, Investment Director at SINTEF TTO, said: “These will allow us to strengthen our position in the market. We expect to hear a lot of exciting news from MoreScope in the next six months.”
