CSR & ESG
Published  7 MIN READ

You Can’t Change What You Can’t Measure

The intricacies of accounting for carbon emissions are not well understood in the treasury world. Here, Warren Anadachee, Co-Head of SAP Global Treasury, Front Office and Regional Treasury, explains why treasurers need to be getting to grips with the topic, discusses the technology that does the heavy lifting, and examines the role that MMF providers can play in advancing transparent reporting.

Imagine booking a flight online. You choose your destination, select the most suitable time to fly, and then head to the checkout. There you will see the price of the flight itself as well as a breakdown of the additional charges: hold luggage, a specific seat, speedy boarding, pre-paid meal voucher, the list goes on. And with this hefty total in front you, you will stare at it trying to decide whether you really need to make this journey after all.

The financial impact is quantifiable and will be expensed with a monetary value. But what about the environmental impact of this particular purchase? How can that individual transaction’s impact on the planet be quantified and accounted for?

This is an issue to which Anadachee has given a lot of thought, and transactional carbon accounting is his answer to such questions. He explains that it is a new way to record, report, and act on carbon emissions using actual transaction data, rather than aggregated averages to account for carbon emission.