How Boston Consulting Group helps corporates cut carbon with digital ventures
Published on February 2, 2023
With government mandates for corporations to achieve net zero carbon goals set to kick in around the world, multinational brands are investing in new in-house ventures to help them efficiently reduce and manage their greenhouse carbon emissions.
In fact, 85% of organizations remain concerned about cutting their greenhouse gas emissions, yet only 9% are able to quantify their total emissions comprehensively, according to a recent survey by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and BCG GAMM. Among those that do measure emissions, corporations reported a 30% to 40% error rate in their baseline assessments.
Olam Group’s Terrascope is one great example of a new venture that’s providing support to large corporations facing these kinds of emissions challenges, said Neels Steyn, Venture Architect Director at BCG Digital Ventures in Southeast Asia, during a recent podcast with Lauren Blasco, Head of ESG at AC Ventures.
In his role at BCG, Neels helps the world’s largest and most influential corporations invent, launch, and scale innovative new businesses, products, and platforms designed to steer the global economy toward a more environmentally sustainable and socially equitable future.
Neels told the audience that he works with small startups and big companies that are interested in scaling new ventures in impactful areas such as carbon emissions and sustainable farming.
Singapore-based Terrascope sprang from Olam’s own years of experience in food and agribusiness.
BCG and Terrascope help companies wrangle greenhouse gas emissions
The new Terrascope venture is an enterprise-grade software-as-a-service driven by machine learning and data analytics.
Since launching its commercial trials, Terrascope has measured more than 230 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions across 15 nations. The venture began on the agribusiness side, said Neels. But customers now come, too, from industry sectors with complex supply chains, such as consumer packaged goods.
“You can imagine going all the way back to the farm gate, essentially, across multiple different commodity types, and measuring carbon 1, 2, and 3 emissions in a way that’s not only fast but repeatable and increasingly accurate,” he told Lauren.
“Terrascope does all that, giving customers confidence in their actual scope of emissions. Over time, you’re able to add more specific and granular measurements to the calculations. Then you start reducing the carbon emissions by putting the necessary abatement programs in place for the areas you’ve identified as true hotspots within your supply chain. You create a credible pathway to net zero as you continuously monitor and report on your progress during the journey.”
Designed for collaboration with both internal and external partners, the platform can also generate advanced emissions analytics and visualizations, along with verifiable reports that comply with external disclosure frameworks.
From its inception in Singapore, Terrascope has since scaled operations into nations like Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, the UK, and France, to name a few.
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