It's all a matter of protocol

Stricter sustainability requirements set by policymakers are causing headaches for many investors. Also because good tools for data collection are lacking. Plan A from Berlin believes it has found a solution that beats all its competitors.

With the adoption of the new EU taxonomy for sustainable investment, a new era is dawning in the financial markets. From 1 January 2022, the regulation will govern the extent to which an economic activity is to be classified as sustainable and, indirectly, which investments, such as those made by asset managers or banks, are sustainable.

However, more than a few financial market players have complained in recent months that there is often a lack of data on which to reasonably assess a company's sustainability. There are dozens of offers that companies can use for so-called carbon accounting. But by no means all of them offer meaningful results.

For example, some methods of carbon accounting rely on average values instead of the concrete figures of the respective company. Many CO2 footprint meters that can be used for free on the Internet also rely on this approach. However, this is not particularly precise. Another problem is that there are many different protocols and standards for assessing sustainability. Not all of these take into account, for example, that CO2 emissions from electricity consumption vary from country to country, depending on the particular energy mix.

Nathan Bonnisseau has been working on the intricacies of the system for years. The startup Plan A, which he co-founded with Lubomila Jordanova in 2017, offers carbon accounting software itself. Bonnisseau says Plan A takes a very comprehensive approach. "We include emissions that a company controls itself, as well as those that occur indirectly, such as at suppliers."

Data collection is usually the first problem, he said. "In 99.9 percent of cases, all the necessary figures are already available, we just have to enter them into our system," he explains. This can be done manually or via a programming interface with other company software. Plan A receives subscription fees for its services, and the contracts usually run for one or more years.

The young company has already been able to win prominent customers with its offer, especially from the financial sector. Both the French major bank Société Générale and large venture capitalists are currently among them. But also the Bundesliga soccer team Werder Bremen uses the services of the start-up, as well as engineering companies and insurance companies. "The fields of application are large, also because we can customize the software for each client," Bonnisseau says.

With their carbon accounting software, Plan-A executives are in a competitive market. It's good to have a unique selling proposition. In the case of the Berliners, this is supposed to be the reduction strategy, which the software creates directly as soon as the CO2 footprint has been calculated. The program gives very concrete instructions for action. "That can be about concrete steps, such as switching electricity suppliers or saving on business travel," Bonnisseau says. If businesses want it, some of Plan A's now 26 employees will also help advise them on next steps.

The EU's current plans and other pilot projects being considered, such as the EU Reconstruction Fund, could give Plan A a decent boost. "The situation is currently working for us," Bonnisseau enthuses. Last month, the company successfully closed a three-million-euro funding round, and is currently already talking to further investors. Profitability could be achieved as early as this year.


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