Sustainability and ESG management and reporting platform FuturePlus is working with AI-driven Climate Action Platform Expect AI, to solve the complexities of carbon accounting and data accuracy across all industries, and in businesses of all sizes. Expect's mission is to reduce carbon by 500mt¹ (megatonnes) this decade - the equivalent of 22 years' worth of annual emissions from a company like Apple Inc².
The partnership comes at a time when the government has introduced tighter regulations and disclosure requirements to further reduce emissions from 2024, forcing companies to thoroughly evaluate current decarbonisation processes in order to meet reporting requirements on the road to Net Zero. Also in July, the FTSE Russell analysis has shown that more than half of companies that have set emissions targets are likely to miss them. And with the new EU CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) rule coming into effect on October 1 to monitor and control carbon leakage when companies move their products across borders, calculating carbon emissions accurately has never been more imperative.
In response, both FuturePlus and Expect are committed to accelerating the decarbonisation efforts of companies anxious to simplify the process of structuring, calculating, measuring, managing and reporting their carbon scopes 1, 2 and 3 and meeting CBAM requirements in a transparent and accurate manner.
With Expect's AI-first approach to strong data-led insights and interrogations, and FuturePlus' accessibility to sustainability managed under these five themes: Climate, Economic, Diversity & Inclusion, Social and Environment, the partnership will offer much-needed support to carbon-heavy organisations, giving them the chance to explore ways to inset their emissions, and not simply offset or pay hefty carbon taxes. Poor and low-quality offsetting schemes have rightly attracted growing criticism and haven't provided the incentive to focus on reduction. Through insetting, companies can revitalise the environments in which they operate via tactics such as agroforestry, converting to EVs, switching to renewable energies, minimising plastic use, and socially mobilising local economies with green initiatives. Both companies are committed to collaborating as they believe that working together enables the customers to accelerate their transition to Net Zero.
Alexandra Smith, Co-Founder and Partner at FuturePlus, comments: "If businesses of all sizes want to be empowered on their sustainability journeys, they need to work with collaborative platforms like ours that will holistically and continuously set, track and achieve their ESG ambitions. We are experts on how impact can be managed and reported across the five themes which are integral to the 17 UN SDGs and meeting tighter regulation. But it's through our partnership with innovative tech companies like Expect that we can actively help companies to measure their carbon maturity in their mission to decarbonise. We expertly navigate them on how to do this via insetting in order to meet their targets, and our collaboration makes it easier to calculate scopes 1, 2, and particularly 3 so that the entire business value chain - including suppliers - is thoroughly interrogated. This then allows leaders to meet their ambitions to build better and more profitable organisations."
Anand Verma, Founder and CEO at Expect, adds: "The road to decarbonisation is becoming ever more treacherous as companies scramble to make sense of how to dance to climate action, regulations and reporting requirements. Accurate carbon insights and reporting is particularly challenging as the data is often disparate and unstructured, but we remove that friction through AI and knowing what to look for and calculate. We also make carbon analysis and reporting so simple by seamlessly integrating with FuturePlus to offer a holistic view of a company's carbon maturity. Through the power of AI-powered data organisation and carbon activity pipeline, we help businesses to understand their carbon data, navigate their decarbonisation roadmap and, with FuturePlus, accelerate their sustainability ambitions by taking actions that are profitable."
Expect's mission is to not only reduce carbon by 500 mgt, but to bring insights and action to decarbonisation through insetting, which removes the necessity to offset as the first port of call.
Janet Coyle CBE, Managing Director of Grow London at London & Partners, concludes: "It's wonderful to see two exceptional London companies, FuturePlus and Expect AI collaborate to tackle the most pressing issues facing businesses today. Partnerships of this kind are a real testament to London's strength as a world-leader in sustainable innovation, its exceptional business ecosystem, and demonstrates a real commitment to supporting the Mayor of London's goal to achieve Net Zero by 2030."
FuturePlus and Expect members will immediately benefit from this partnership.
Further information can be found here.
