Revolutionize Emissions Management and Reduction with Terrascope

According to the World Resource Institute (WRI), Scope 3 emissions – which are the indirect upstream and downstream emissions, that which take place beyond a company’s direct operations – typically account for 75% of a company’s GHG emissions, and can reach close to 100% for certain industries (e.g. financial services and capital goods). For industries utilising raw materials (e.g. real estate, construction, metals and mining, agriculture commodities), Scope 3 encompasses 90-95% of a company’s value chain. 

Over 80 percent of companies find measuring Scope 3 emissions challenging, and many exclude Scope 3 emissions in their calculations. The most common challenges include difficulty accessing relevant data (83%), challenges selecting or applying calculation methodologies (60%), and lack of internal expertise or resources for calculating Scope 3 emissions (29%). This omission of Scope 3 makes it hard for corporates to understand their emission hotspots, the underlying emission sources emissions come from, thus preventing them from effectively reducing emissions. 

To address the challenge of measuring and reducing Scope 3 emissions, Terrascope built a decarbonization SaaS platform. Powered by AWS, with machine learning at the core, the solution provides enterprises with the data, analytics, and reduction planning tools that they need to decarbonize their business operations and supply chains.

Terrascope increases confidence in emissions data and insights through AI-powered emissions factor (EF) matching, hotspot analytics, decarbonisation recommendations, and supplier engagement capabilities. It offers a structured platform for data collection, processing, accurate emission calculation, and analytics, streamlining the emission accounting cycle through automation and machine learning, allowing internal teams to focus on post-measurement reduction efforts. With this solution, enterprises can take actionable steps to reduce their Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions. For example, by pinpointing the activities, business units, or geographies that result in the highest carbon emissions (hotspots), companies can then focus their efforts on the most significant hotspots for reduction.

From an architecture standpoint, Terrascope is powered by a cloud-based carbon accounting system built using AWS Fargate, a serverless, pay-as-you-go compute engine. To automate its data pipelines and keep its operations running seamlessly, Terrascope uses Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow (Amazon MWAA), a secure and highly available managed workflow orchestration service.

To provide customers with rapid, secure access to the site tailored to their region, Terrascope relies on Amazon CloudFront, a content delivery network (CDN) service built for high performance, security, and developer convenience. As a result, customers can safely access the system from their preferred region.

Terrascope now helps firms across sectors – including agriculture, food and beverage, luxury, fashion, and technology –  to reduce their carbon footprint and pave the way toward net-zero emissions.

For example, one of Terrascope’s customers in the beverage industry has been able to measure their emissions five times faster than traditional measurement processes, allowing their sustainability teams more time to focus on reduction initiatives.

Another customer from the packaged foods industry used Terrascope to plug data gaps in the absence of upstream emission data. Terrascope estimated emissions of products based on their constituent ingredients and manufacturing processes, at 92% accuracy when compared to actual supplier data.

“At Terrascope, we believe that accurate measurement is essential for effective decarbonization. Our solution provides comprehensive and precise measurement of Scope 3 emissions so that enterprises can set meaningful decarbonization goals,” says Maya Hari, CEO of Terrascope. “We also help enterprises to identify the most impactful actions to reduce their carbon footprint across their entire value chain. By focusing on both measurement and reduction, we’re helping companies build credible pathways to net-zero and drive real impact in the fight against climate change.”

Earlier this year, Terrascope signed The Climate Pledge co-founded by Amazon with Global Optimism, cementing its commitment to reduce its carbon emissions to net-zero carbon by 2040.