Our key learnings 4 months after public launch
A couple of years ago, Andrew and I shared our frustrations about how little collaboration was happening in our space. The conversation was something like this:
“How is it that we keep on advising our clients to collaborate on decarbonisation in their industry but we don’t walk the talk ourselves?”
“Isn’t it crazy that you still can’t compare one company footprint with another because the interpretations of the standards are so different every time?”
“Wouldn’t it be amazing if we had the space to align technically and have a common voice as a growing industry?”
Next day we invited a few people in our networks for an exploratory call. Little did we realise how much this would resonate…
Turns out, so many others had the same idea but never the time to act on it.
It’s been almost 4 months now since we publicly launched the CAA and what a ride it’s been!
From an initial founding membership of 37 organisations, in less than 4 months we have grown to over 310 company members (with over 550 individuals), headquartered in 37 countries from South Korea to South Africa, which in turn have collectively measured over 70,000 company footprints and over 1 billion in tCO2e. To put this in perspective, this is three times more than the c. 23,000 organisations who disclosed their emissions via CDP in 2024.
Some of our key learnings so far:
#1 We cannot compete on methodology
Solution providers should compete on price, software features, excel wizardry and advisory services but we cannot be building proprietary accounting methodologies. These need to be shared transparently and worked on collaboratively. This applies to in-house/internal carbon accountants too of course and it’s encouraging to see this mantra being adopted by our members at scale.
#2 We can all learn from each other
No matter how big or established you are as a practitioner there will always be areas in which the interpretation of the guidance is complicated or where guidance is simply missing. We can all learn from each other and it’s important that we do it together. Our members seem to agree!
#3 There is a need for convening and summarisation
No one has enough time or money to be on top of everything!
From evolving legislation to new guidance from standards bodies, or the multiple of industry or topic-specific groups, simplifying the most important topics and enabling shared learning is needed. We believe it is one of the most impactful things we can do as an alliance, all in a safe space under chatham house rule.
What have we achieved?
We’ve formed 8 working groups (find out more here) who have enabled valuable conversations, and some which have developed practical output and recommendations for our members - in particular on topics like FLAG emissions (Forest, Land Use and Agricultural Guidance) and carbon offsetting & carbon neutrality claims. To facilitate this most effectively we’ve created an online community space for members to self-organise.You’ll have to join the alliance for more detail.
Secondly, We’ve meaningfully engaged with external stakeholders from the U.K. or French government departments to standards bodies like the SBTi and industry groups such as the Scope 3 Peer Group, helping join the dots, influence policy and provide insight into some of the latest guidance in an informal setting.
Thirdly, we’ve also grown the membership to include internal sustainability managers working on GHG accounting due to popular request with individuals joining from some of the largest multinationals. Ultimately our ambition is to be the industry body for carbon accounting and this will mean including all relevant professionals to our space.
What’s next?
We’ve recently decided to refocus our objectives and will be striving to achieve three things:
1. Technical alignment: To develop practical guidance and consistent interpretation of the standards. The output will be a dynamic online wiki which includes relevant output from working groups.
2. Professionalisation of our sector: To develop and drive adoption of the first professional qualification for carbon accounting in collaboration with industry bodies. We are already in advanced conversations and we expect the first iterations of the qualification to come out this year.
3. Engage with policy & standards: To ensure policy & standards development is ambitious, fit for purpose and considers the industry's point of view. We’ve been engaging in a number of government consultations and are providing our view on emerging regulation in various markets already.
So far it’s just been Andrew and I doing this in our spare time, aided by a host of wonderful volunteers who lead our working groups and support us on other tasks. Over the next few months we will be looking to create a formal legal entity, seek funding and start to employ some part-time staff to help us professionalise the running of the alliance and ensure we have the resources to achieve our objectives.
This will allow us to accelerate the impact we think this alliance is capable of: Bringing carbon accountants together for collective impact. We believe the alliance has the potential to remove barriers to GHG accounting so that we can focus on what truly matters: to inform, inspire and incentivise climate action!
Every company in the world will need to measure and act on their carbon emissions. This means the industry will need to grow sustainably, with quality standards and alignment at a scale that has never been seen before. This is why the alliance couldn’t have come at a better time and we are delighted with the response received so far.
If you are interested in our mission and what to chat please do get in touch and watch this space for more to come soon!