Counting CO2 is Hard and Expensive, But Tech Firms Think They Have a Solution (reuters.com) 61
An anonymous reader shares a report: After spending nearly half a year, every year, gathering and calculating carbon emissions data on spread sheets, Salesforce.com's climate team was fed up. So in 2017 they built an app to crunch the numbers -- and now they sell it for $4,000 a month. As global companies prepare pledges to help stop climate change, one of the first problems they face is quantifying their emissions. The second is understanding if their solutions work. That need is fueling a boom in carbon accounting software by big companies like Salesforce and startups as well, along with some skepticism of parts of the process. Microsoft Corp is previewing a tool for calculating emissions called Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, aiming to make it available by mid-2022. On Thursday, Arizona-based carbon accounting startup Persefoni said it raised over $100 million, the biggest venture capital funding round so far in the field. That takes total fundraising this year to nearly $300 million, six times the total for 2020 and over 21 times the funds raised in 2019, according to a Reuters review of data from PitchBook and Climate Tech VC.
Carbon accounting is complex, especially when including emissions beyond a company's direct control, such as suppliers and use of products, which many companies are trying to do. How does, for example, an automaker account for the steel it buys and the miles driven by its customers? Some in the accounting business call these indirect emissions, often the bulk of a firm's emissions, the "Pandora's box" of carbon accounting. "You have a massive problem in our world of companies that are creating their own methodologies and then black-boxing them. Those are not auditable. In the worst cases, they're helping companies greenwash," said Kentaro Kawamori, CEO of Persefoni, which uses a system called the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to compute numbers that get added up into total emissions.
Carbon accounting is complex, especially when including emissions beyond a company's direct control, such as suppliers and use of products, which many companies are trying to do. How does, for example, an automaker account for the steel it buys and the miles driven by its customers? Some in the accounting business call these indirect emissions, often the bulk of a firm's emissions, the "Pandora's box" of carbon accounting. "You have a massive problem in our world of companies that are creating their own methodologies and then black-boxing them. Those are not auditable. In the worst cases, they're helping companies greenwash," said Kentaro Kawamori, CEO of Persefoni, which uses a system called the Greenhouse Gas Protocol to compute numbers that get added up into total emissions.
tech firms are a joke (Score:2)
They couldn't even make a track and trace covid app that people would actually use. Our entire industry is a complete joke. Don't even get me started on "crypto".
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What a relief, I thought it was just me!
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Koreans used them, didn't they?
Maybe the problem is Americans, not the tech.
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They could have forked the Korean codebase, but no, that would have been too easy. They needed to ~INNOVATE~. And innovate they did, by making it use the location tracking API and all the baggage that comes with it.
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I blame the Moon landing. All that work and sacrifice (NASA spending hit 4.4% of GDP) to show the world what our system allowed people to *accomplish*, and Americans took away the message that technological preeminence is a *birthright*. We became complacent, as if 5% of the world's population dominating 95% in innovation were the most natural thing in the world. Try to explain to Americans that other countries have better phone systems; better Internet; better health care; we just can't wrap our brains a
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They couldn't even make a track and trace covid app that people would actually use. Our entire industry is a complete joke. Don't even get me started on "crypto".
Oh I'm pretty sure they easily could produce such an app, but no one was willing to shell out the cash, or spend the time, to make it happen.
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Oh I'm pretty sure they easily could produce such an app
They spent way more than they needed to, and made an app that was unusable that nobody trusted. The fact you don't know they even made one is testimony to how pathetic it was. And I'm not talking about some rinky-dink startup here. This was apple and google.
Want to see an audit program killed? (Score:3)
Want to see an audit program killed? Write one that works correctly and accurately reports the actual numbers in a way that prevents cheating.
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It's a classic tech bro solution.
But yourself a smart watch to monitor your health and gather masses of data... With no plan to actually get fit.
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They couldn't even make a track and trace covid app that people would actually use.
Turns out that tracking carbon dioxide is easier than contact tracing people with COVID-19, since it does not involve HIPAA privacy.
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Turns out that HIPAA compliance is trivial if your company doesn't try to suck up PII as a matter of course.
PII is the whole point [Re:tech firms are a joke] (Score:2)
Turns out that HIPAA compliance is trivial if your company doesn't try to suck up PII as a matter of course.
Do you actually know what the phrase "contract tracing" means? It means collecting information on everywhere a person has been and all the people that they have been in contact with, and it explicitly must include the personally identifiable information ("PII'), since if it's anonymous, it's useless. Yes, it would be "trivial" without PII, but it would also be useless without PII.
And, you really think you can ask people about their COVID-19 status (and associate that information with their name: again, co
Re: PII is the whole point [Re:tech firms are a jo (Score:2)
And yes, I regularly saw my phone's message that Google services was using my location info, which I otherwise always keep turned off unless using GPS navigation.
I don't know what's up on t
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contact tracing can not be anonymous
Why not? Why do we need to join this data to name, address, phone number, date of birth, etc. All you need is an anonymous guid, issued self service to anyone who asks for one. Hell, it doesn't even matter if one person has multiple of them or if a family shares one. There's no need to join this guid to any other data except for venue check-ins and test results, neither of which need to have accurate enough timestamps to make them identifiable.
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contact tracing can not be anonymous
Why not?
Because telling people "you were within 100 feet of a person who had COVID-19, but we can't tell you who it was" is nearly useless information.
If you don't know who, you can't tell whether you were actually in contact.
Also, your suggestion was for contact tracing to be pseudonymous, not anonymous. Anybody who had access to the pseudonymous location data could trivially connect guid number to a person.
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Because telling people "you were within 100 feet of a person who had COVID-19, but we can't tell you who it was" is nearly useless information.
No its not. All you need to know is if somebody else with covid entered the same venue as you. You don't need to know who it was or what the GPS coordinates were for you to quarantine or get tested.
Anybody who had access to the pseudonymous location data could trivially connect guid number to a person
If you use bloom filters the guids wouldn't even be in a database, and in fact, its probably the most efficient implementation anyway. I wouldn't call brute forcing 512 bit hashes "trivially easy", more like "literally impossible".
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Because telling people "you were within 100 feet of a person who had COVID-19, but we can't tell you who it was" is nearly useless information.
No its not.
Yes, I suppose you could propose "well, here's a half-assed contract tracing algorithm. It's not very good". But actual useful contact tracing needs better information than that.
Anybody who had access to the pseudonymous location data could trivially connect guid number to a person
If you use bloom filters the guids wouldn't even be in a database, and in fact, its probably the most efficient implementation anyway. I wouldn't call brute forcing 512 bit hashes "trivially easy", more like "literally impossible".
I have no idea what implementation you are proposing, but I will repeat: the software NECESSARILY ha
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NECESSARILY has tracking information on everybody
Think through the user stories. It doesn't.
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Look, it's pretty clear you have only the foggiest notion of what contact tracing it.
Let's drop it.
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Fine. I guess if you think its a requirement that a person or system needs to know exactly who gave somebody covid for software to be able to tell that person they are at risk, I really don't know what else to say, anyway.
Re: tech firms are a joke (Score:2)
You mean things like not being able to figure the carbon produced is exactly proportional to fuel purchased, and accounting of another company s fuel purchases without them sharing their accounting info with you is an asinine endeavor?
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and accounting of another company s fuel purchases without them sharing their accounting info with you is an asinine endeavor?
Yes. All they need to do is require suppliers to track their carbon and report it to you per item. Many industries already impose more onerous reporting requirements on their suppliers.
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Seems easy for an engineer to determine if during the lifetime of a process or a product greenhouse gases are either released into the atmosphere or taken up from the air. The rest is, "is it happening in something we control"? We're just not use to scrutinizing everything to that level of detail.
Connect-the-dots. (Score:2)
Maybe accounting in the same way we "account" for people's individual movements. By collecting the individual sources together into a bigger picture and connecting-the-dots just like we do currently for linkages. It's only hidden if no one looks.
We already know how to calculate CO2 Emissions (Score:2)
As global companies prepare pledges to help stop climate change, one of the first problems they face is quantifying their emissions.
I think they're trying to find a way to monetize established non-techy solutions. We've already broken down the primary sources of CO2 in three categories for which large organizations are responsible:
1. Generated electricity
2. Purchased electricity
3. Transportation
Details on Scope 1 & 2 emissions calculations: https://www.epa.gov/climatelea... [epa.gov]
Transportation is a bit more complex, but the South Coast Air Quality Management District has what has become the industry standard for employers to figure out th
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Not all vehicles are equal (especially with the growth of EV) during their life, as well as how they're maintained. Emissions are going to change.
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You can choose to collect vehicle information in the survey or just go with the average MPG for the commuter fleet. Simple. And it's current practice.
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Aren't there a fair number of manufacturing industries that put out significant CO2 as a byproduct of their manufacturing process? For example, plywood producers that have sawdust that decays to release CO2 (or sometimes gets burned not for energy production). I thought that a lot of chemical companies (plating, etc) had major CO2 release as part of their mfg that was significant to the accounting. I could be wrong -- not my area of expertise, which is why I'm asking.
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And those all have pre-measured coefficients. You just have to measure it a few times and then multiply.
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Yeah, but it still has to be tracked. That's non-trivial and important if it is a significant contributor.
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Which is a complete irrelecancy to AGW. AGW is all about turning fossilized CO2 (oil, coal, natural gas, that sort of thing) into CO2 NOW. Plywood isn't made with fossilized CO2, it's made with trees growing now, not trees that were growing during the late Cretaceous, and so is irrelevant to AGW....
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It isn't irrelevant if it is another CO2 source... we might not be able to reduce the fossilized CO2 emissions, so it matters if there are other sources that we can reduce.
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It's all measurable and duplicable as coefficients. And the measurements have been done!
Cement: 0.5-0.6 ton of CO2 per ton of cement. "How many tons of cement did you produce? Multiply."
Cow: Each year, a single cow will belch about 220 pounds of methane. (https://www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/making-cattle-more-sustainable)
We don't need to measure actual emissions from every single source, we need to generalize and take action. Everything else is just procrastination or attempt to monetize very simple math.
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Other posters have mentioned carbon taxes at the source
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Which is why this [youtu.be] is a good idea, and not just for the Europe connection. Massive energy generation meets lots of natural resources in one of the poorest regions.
Make sure you account for all life on Earth... (Score:1)
Yeah, given that atmospheric carbon dioxide is our "primary carbon source" [wikipedia.org], and that carbon is "the primary component of all known life on Earth" [wikipedia.org], I can imagine it would be difficult to come up with a methodology to account for all the inputs and outputs that were solely attributable to humankind.
Of course, when one understands that humankind is as much a "part" of the Earth as anything else already here, and we aren't creating anything, we're just recycling what has already been laid down, it does seem lik
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I don't think people want the environment the likes of when the current carbon emissions were first sequestered.
sell it for $4,000 a month. (Score:2)
Simpler Solution (Score:2)
Unfortunately, that's not possible due to politics. So we are left with claptrap solutions like this.
Stupid solution (Re:Simpler Solution) (Score:3)
Carbon taxes are not just political suicide they are economic suicide. Why raise the cost of carbon fuels artificially when it is possible to lower the cost of alternatives naturally?
If you don't want people burning fossil fuels then give them a better alternative at lower costs. Oh, right, I'll get people that tell me that electric cars already have a TCO lower than a gasoline burner, and that solar + batteries is cheaper than coal, and heat pumps cost less to run than natural gas furnaces. Okay then, w
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Carbon taxes are a brilliant idea because they work as close to the source of the problem as practically possible. The problem is a failure in the market for air. It's an unpriced resource, and there is no practical way price it efficiently (what TFA is trying to do, basically). Air is basically communist in the sense that it's shared by all. Instead of pricing air directly, we should artificially increase the price on complim [wikipedia.org]
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It seems like you are advocating for subsidizing substitute goods.
I am not advocating for subsidies. We don't need subsidies, and we don't need taxes. They will only slow things down.
I'm advocating for people to stop trying to legislate technology into existence. This is not a problem the government can fix, but it is a problem that the government can slow down creating solutions. If the problem is solar power costs too much then the solution is not taxing fossil fuels until there is price parity. Taxing fossil fuels will only raise the costs of solar panels because.
Why not just count at the source? (Score:2)
Counting carbon emissions seems overly complex, when done where it is finally burnt.
Why not count and tax at the time fossil carbon is extracted from the earth? There are relatively few coal mines and oil wells, so regulating and taxing them should be far easier compared to billions of people burning fossil carbon in their vehicles or homes.
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Why not count and tax at the time fossil carbon is extracted from the earth?
Because putting that effort into building nuclear power plants is time and money better spent.
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Citation needed.
You keep talking about how nuclear power is a bad idea. Keep doing so without citing any sources. People will do their own searches for information and find out that nuclear power is safer than solar or wind power. That it produces less CO2 per energy output. They will find articles like this which cite their sources to prove just how great nuclear power is for us: https://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/... [blogspot.com]
I have more sources than that, and that is a source that cites other sources. Go ahead, k
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You're spot on.
I'd even say, no need for taxation, just reduce the drilling / digging / extraction rights every year. This has to be done anyway, so why not just impose it?
Related topic: Carbon Takeback Obligations --- https://www.biobasedpress.eu/2... [biobasedpress.eu]
I think there's no way around them.
Carbon accounting at this detail is bogus (Score:1)
That's why a better solution is gradually ramping carbon-at-source taxation (via a revenue neutral carbon fee & dividend) until satellite measurements of atmospheric CO2 and methane actually start showing significant reductions.
Indirect estimations of CO2 emissions are bound to be way off, given that the whole supply-chain network is not known and is not measuring with any uniformity, completeness, or standards.
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I think the plan is to establish new taxes based on an estimate of how much CO2 is emitted by companies. Hitting them at the wallet is a strong incentive for change.
But in order to push a tax, a standard way of evaluating CO2 emissions has to be set up at the company level. And this standard way has to be certified by some authority, so you can't just fire up Excel and start calculating CO2 emissions by yourself: even if your calculation were factually correct, it would take too much expertise for the tax o
Solutions? There is only one solution. (Score:2)
Why spend so much time tracking CO2emissions when we know how to reduce them? Governments all over the world paid many intelligent and educated people on what needs to be done to lower CO2 emissions. While the specifics may have varied there's two big items that all these solutions share, nuclear fission power and carbon sequestration. Of course they mention solar power, windmills, hydroelectric dams, and geothermal power depending on where they are in the world but the scientists and engineers of the wo
Account at the source (Score:2)
It is actually quite simple, but the political will to do it isn't (yet) there. Maybe because it might turn out that emissions are still rising despite all the creative accounting going on at the consumption side.
Just look at the production numbers for oil, gas and coal. Pretty much everything is burned eventually, so this will reflect the emissions quite accurately.
Related: We'll need Carbon Takeback Obligations: https://www.biobasedpress.eu/2... [biobasedpress.eu]
silly (Score:2)
Trusted supply chain accounting is another thing (Score:2)
I once built a system (on Salesforce!) that tracked a municipal garbage to recycled plastic product factory end to end, with the intent of providing a solid number on the percentage recycled. The problem is that when money depends on that number, there is a desire to fudge it. I decided to leave the project when requested to allow the accounting to be fudged since it appeared to be an unethical feature. Maybe if you use a blockchain-style ledger and trusted third party custodians like Lloyds this could be d