Hey, this is an interesting and emerging market, what will maybe be called 'carbon analytics' or 'GHG analytics'. There are definitely lots of opportunities in this space.
Without letting perfect be the enemy of good here... I have some questions.
It seems nice to have a backstop for what GHGP calls "Corporate-level data" which is the lowest level and least specific for purchased goods and services in GHGP's Scope 3 calculation guidance.
Do you have any concerns that your users might shortcut the work to produce high quality estimates of their Scope 3 emissions when you have made it so easy to get lower quality estimates?
As a second angle on this, do you have any accuracy or uncertainty estimates for the CO2e values a user receives? Let's say my company goes to a supermarket one month and buys $1000 worth of beef, and the next month buys $1000 worth of lentils from the same store. The GHG impacts of these purchases are (in reality) entirely different, but your API would tell me the emissions are the same. I know this line-item accounting is a massive challenge, but it seems there is an equal risk of green-washing as brown-washing here. This might be acceptable at the aggregate level but potentially harmful and very inaccurate at the individual level. Is there sufficient information returned from the API for your users to communicate data quality in a way aligned with the GHGP reporting standard?
Second line of questioning - GHGP guidance says companies must re-account historic emissions when data becomes available that significantly change estimated emissions. Would your API be compatible with this requirement? The Docs are locked off and the example on the homepage doesn't show any time component (presumably Uber's data would be different for 2022 than 2020).
Some disclosure: I work at the World Resources Institute with many colleagues who co-authored the GHGP guidance, though I have very low association with that project. I am acting on my own here.
Without letting perfect be the enemy of good here... I have some questions.
It seems nice to have a backstop for what GHGP calls "Corporate-level data" which is the lowest level and least specific for purchased goods and services in GHGP's Scope 3 calculation guidance.
Do you have any concerns that your users might shortcut the work to produce high quality estimates of their Scope 3 emissions when you have made it so easy to get lower quality estimates?
As a second angle on this, do you have any accuracy or uncertainty estimates for the CO2e values a user receives? Let's say my company goes to a supermarket one month and buys $1000 worth of beef, and the next month buys $1000 worth of lentils from the same store. The GHG impacts of these purchases are (in reality) entirely different, but your API would tell me the emissions are the same. I know this line-item accounting is a massive challenge, but it seems there is an equal risk of green-washing as brown-washing here. This might be acceptable at the aggregate level but potentially harmful and very inaccurate at the individual level. Is there sufficient information returned from the API for your users to communicate data quality in a way aligned with the GHGP reporting standard?
Second line of questioning - GHGP guidance says companies must re-account historic emissions when data becomes available that significantly change estimated emissions. Would your API be compatible with this requirement? The Docs are locked off and the example on the homepage doesn't show any time component (presumably Uber's data would be different for 2022 than 2020).
Some disclosure: I work at the World Resources Institute with many colleagues who co-authored the GHGP guidance, though I have very low association with that project. I am acting on my own here.