According to the World Economic Forum, as much as 90% of a company’s carbon footprint comes from Scope-3 emissions, carbon pollution that arises from a company’s supply chain. If we are to have any hope of reversing the effects of climate change, we must get serious about monitoring and reducing carbon emissions in the supply chain.
While an increasing number of companies are disclosing their Scope 3 emissions, supplier specific emission factors only represent 6% of those calculations. Without supplier specific data, businesses will fail to decarbonize. You cannot manage what you do not measure.
The world is at a turning point. In January, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive went into force in the European Union, requiring 11,600 companies to report on Scope 3 emissions for the first time. This number will grow to 49,000 in 2025, and all companies in EU regulated markets by 2026. Success in Europe will catalyze a global change.
Today, reducing Scope 3 emissions is a massive undertaking. Companies rely on an army of consultants and manual processes to gather information from thousands of suppliers at a high cost. Because the data is stored in silos, the work is often duplicated within industries. To meet this moment of growing demand, a new approach is required.
We are excited to announce our investment in The Climate Choice (TCC), the climate intelligence platform for decarbonizing industrial supply chains.
The TCC platform automates supplier outreach and monitoring, making it easy for large enterprises to collect and analyze thousands of suppliers emissions based on primary and third party risk and emissions data. We are already seeing powerful network effects emerge with early customers like o2 Telefónica and HiPP. As large enterprises invite their suppliers, who in turn invite their suppliers, the global cost of Scope 3 emissions reporting drops dramatically. The growing TCC data network provides corporate procurement and sustainability leaders with the information they need to make informed decisions and reduce their carbon footprint.
We were introduced to Yasha Tarani, Co-Founder and CEO of TCC, by Raphael Fellmer, Founder of Sirplus and climate activist. Yasha cut his teeth as the Founder and CEO of Resmio, a leading restaurant reservation platform in Germany. Selling software to German restaurants in 2011 prepared him well for the challenge of gathering supplier emissions data. Yasha has partnered with Dr. Rey Farhan, an accomplished data scientist (PwC, SoundCloud, Originate) to architect the platform, and climate entrepreneur Lara Obst, who previously built up the DACH Corporate Accelerator Program for ClimateKIC — the EUs main climate innovation initiative.
As New York based investors, we do not typically seek out European investments. However, the caliber of the team and the fierce urgency of the problem they are solving jumped off the page. We are deep believers in the importance of supply chain emissions reporting to solving climate change, and are hopeful the CSRD will spur a global transformation. In March of 2022, the SEC proposed a similar rule change. Winston Churchill said “you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.” We are running out of time.
At Gutter Capital we back mission-driven founders who are rolling up their sleeves to tackle the greatest problems facing the United States and the world today. Yasha, Lara, and Rey are doing just that and we are proud to partner with them on this journey.
