Open Carbon API – Alexis Normand, Greenly

This is techstrong tv. Welcome back to techstrong tv. I'm Bonnie Schneider, your host for today's dive into the crossroads of technology and sustainability.

Joining us today is Alexi Norman, the, the co-founder and c e o of Greenlee, a company at the forefront of carbon accounting. Alexi brings a wealth of knowledge from his diverse background in public policy consulting and digital health. Green Lee's latest innovation is the Open Carbon api.

This tool assists companies in transparency with a transparency score on their carbon emissions, empowering procurement departments and purchasing software to be better assessed by suppliers in order to reach their net zero goals. Alexi, thank you so much for joining us on techstrong tv. I'm very happy to be here with you today.

That sounds great. Well, first, Alexi, if you could share with us a little bit about your background and the inspiration behind Greenleaf's Carbon open Carbon a p i. Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, um, I come from a family of public servants, so I, I've always been really interested in essentially how, how we could work towards, uh, public good. But what I found out working in tech is that you could have a lot of impact by creating new technologies that, uh, you know, address very pressing problems. So, before, uh, co-founding Greenly, I was actually in digital health, um, working on preventative solutions to our o t.

So, uh, working with health systems in the US to track patients remotely and help them change their behavior today to reduce heart diseases, diabetes, things like that. And in fact, you know, the, the switch to Greenly, uh, came from that. Uh, we thought that, you know, um, building dashboards to help people change their behavior today in healthcare is something we could apply to essentially helping people reduce their carbon footprint.

Um, so, uh, in a few words, that's where I come from. So, I, I, Yeah, no, that makes total sense. Um, as well, um, where are you based now?

Um, so, um, I'm based in Paris actually, but we have an office in New York where I'll be fully based as of September, so. Wonderful. Great.

Well, tell us about the Open Carbon API and how it works and, and walk us through the process. Sure. So, you know, essentially, um, Green's been working with about, you know, a thousand, 1,500 customers tracking their emissions.

Uh, so we track their, um, direct emissions and their indirect emissions linked to their supply chain. So when a company wants to reduce its emission, it needs basically to figure out how it can engage its own suppliers in re in, you know, uh, reducing their own emissions. So, and that's hard to do because a lot of your suppliers don't disclose information on this.

And so, especially when we work with very big companies, uh, manufacturing companies that have thousands of suppliers, they need to figure out who to work with, who is aligned on their net zero objectives, right? Um, and there's a total lack of transparency. So just doing that work, we, we understood that, that we need needed to help our customers disclose, uh, and gain more transparency.

And we actually had a lot of data because we're, we're this very scalable platform where a lot of mid-market companies can come in. So we decided to essentially work on, uh, getting data beyond what we had initially captured, just working with our customer base. And so essentially, our team of data sciences build tools to essentially scrap the whole of the internet, uh, collect all the e s g reports of every company out there, uh, and then, uh, figure out who was disclosing, who is not, um, and then, uh, start scoring them based on how transparent they are.

Um, and there's a bit, you know, of, uh, naming and shaming here. Um, we don't wanna make enemies, but we do think climate is a very important topic, and so we need a kind of radical transparency around this, and what better way to do it than, you know, actually publish stuff and then create tech for anyone else to use it to an api. That makes sense.

Um, so is this the transparency score that you're, that you're talking about, and how, how is it calculated? Yeah, so when you look at a company's climate engagement, the really two things you can look at, uh, one is how much is it actually emitting? You know, whether it's direct emissions from operations, indirect emissions, and then there's how transparent are they about this?

Um, um, and so one is like, how many kilograms of CO2 do I emit for basically every dollar or every product, you know, that I, that I sell? Uh, so that's, uh, one thing you can measure. Uh, but very often, uh, you have to go a one level deeper.

So the, the, and that's what the transparency score is about. Uh, so essentially they are like three components to it, is one is are you actually disclosing your emissions? Uh, are you disclosing the full extent of your emissions?

Um, so, uh, what this means is, are you only saying, oh, here are the emissions for my operations, my buildings, you know, my cars, what I'm doing directly, or am I also disclosing my indirect emissions, you know, um, from my supply chain, basically. Uh, so there's a score on that. It's about a third of, uh, the grade.

Then there's a score about not just being transparent about where you are, but where you want to be. So am I, um, just gonna keep growing my emissions, you know, um, um, or am I actually aligned with the Paris Agreement, which sets this pathway towards net zero, right? By 2050 to avoid global warming?

Um, and there are standards for this, okay, I'm gonna reduce my emissions by 5% a year, this kind of thing. So it's a, it's kind of a public commitment. Uh, the typical framework is something called science-based target initiative.

You sign up, right? So this is information you can find, um, publicly. And then the third component of the score is, am I actually reducing?

You know, am I, did I actually take steps to maybe, uh, shift my, uh, energy usage to renewables, uh, to electrify my vehicles, to reduce the consumption of my buildings, to choose suppliers that are less submissive? Do I have to buy my metal from this guy who works with coal energy? Or am I buying it from somebody who's working with renewables or nuclear energy?

So three components. Uh, am I disclosing, do I have a target? Am I actually doing something?

Am I training my employees on this kind of stuff? Um, and so that's essentially, uh, what the score is about. How can procurement and software purchasing departments leverage this API in their decision making process?

Exactly. So, uh, typically, uh, procurements now have a new responsibility. You know, it was all about just getting the best deal previously, and now it's also very much about, um, how am I helping my organizations align with, you know, uh, its net zero objectives, right?

So, um, they need to have information about suppliers. So in the US very often you need like informations about diversity in suppliers. So you, you go and purchase data from people who are specialized in this, uh, and now you need to do the same thing about net Zero if your organization has committed.

So, uh, these guys can come to us and we help them score their suppliers by basically integrating, uh, directly with their ERPs, their, you know, uh, purchasing softwares. Uh, they can use us to score their existing suppliers, but also, uh, use us to evaluate suppliers when they're doing RFPs, cuz then, you know, suppliers have to answer. Uh, but of course, we're one company and we want to have a much bigger reach.

So one thing we're doing is also partnering with existing, um, uh, procurement softwares. You know, there, there are people like arvo, like spend hq, uh, like evalua who are customers actually, uh, uh, who are doing their carbon accounting with us, but who are also partners who can add our scoring into, uh, their own software. So that when you choose a supplier, will you say, okay, well, you know, maybe I only want to work with the A or B players.

I don't wanna work with the D or E players because they're not doing anything, they're not helping me align with the, uh, net zero, my net zero objectives. Um, and so this is where an api, basically information that feeds into other softwares just makes it super practical to select who you wanna work with. How does, um, green lead's open carbon a API contribute to the broader goal of reducing carbon footprints in the business world?

Well, um, because we promote this radical transparency, um, it is gonna start hurting businesses, uh, you know, who are not setting objectives. Um, and, and yes, somehow, uh, this is a bit of an aggressive stance, but we need to be aggressive about tackling our emissions, about addressing climate change. So, uh, I think we're, we're essentially making it free for anyone who wants to use it so that, uh, bus, so that businesses really know who they should be working with.

And essentially, uh, this is, you know, supposed to nudge companies into disclosing their emissions. And that's really the first step to actually figuring out how to improve them. And, and here, here you, you begin to essentially, um, kickstart your climate journey, Um, with all the data.

Um, you know, a lot of our viewers, uh, and Techstrong TV are working with massive amounts of data every day. So they may be wondering, how does Greenlee ensure the accuracy and reliability of the data that's provided through the Open Carbon api? Yeah, of course.

So, well, uh, of course it's our, you know, tech that's, um, um, has been used to essentially massify the scoring of these companies. So we, we have, um, um, essentially uploads, uh, and documents that justify the score. But very often what happens is you have, uh, suppliers who will get a really bad mark because you couldn't find anything, uh, disclosed from them.

You know, they, they have no strategy. They, they didn't do their, uh, carbon disclosure assessments and so on and so forth. But, uh, we may have missed some people, and so we may have been giving a bad score to people who've actually really started doing something.

So, of course, anybody can disagree with us, and they can basically, um, uh, contact, uh, our, I mean, they can just sign up on our website and correct any information that we got wrong. So whatever, um, mistake we may have done, it's kind of like Wikipedia, you know, people can correct it, and over time it just gets more and more accurate. And, um, for our last question, looking to the future, how do you see data driven tools like the Carbon Open Carbon API evolving within the sustainability landscape?

Well, you know, I really think that on climate, we need radical transparency. The, the problem is not to have high emissions. We all have high emissions.

We live, you know, in a world where emissions are too high, uh, when it comes to, uh, trying to mitigate, um, climate change. So there's no shame in having high emissions, but it is really a problem, uh, a business problem, even not to have a climate strategy, uh, not to start disclosing. So to me, uh, carbon accounting is essentially gonna become as universal as financial accounting.

If you're a company, you're gonna publish your books, right? Uh, so if you're also gonna publish your, um, carbon books, basically. So that's how it's evolving, of course.

Um, it's essentially what, uh, regulators are saying too. Um, in the us the, uh, security Exchange Commission is saying that you need to disclose your emissions as of next year, because if you're not saying this, uh, you may be actually misleading your shareholders. Uh, so they're looking at it from a market, uh, angle.

Um, and, and you have the same regulations all over the world in Europe, uh, et cetera. So the future is all about carbon transparency, but more so, you know, reduction. And that comes with innovation, that comes with companies that are at the forefront of this gaining market share, essentially against those that are lagging in terms of, uh, you know, uh, decarbonization efforts.

That makes sense. Well, Alexi Norman, the co-founder and c e o of Greenlee, thank you so much for joining us on Techstrong tv, And thank you so much for having me. Uh, my pleasure.

And we look forward to having you on again. Uh, well, we're gonna have a lot more coming up on Techstrong tv, talking more about sustainability and tech, so stay with us.