In this two-part series, Thibault Boiron , Director, Supply Chain Decarbonization at RESET Carbon, examines the role of carbon management software metrics in driving meaningful climate impact. Why is a commonly-used metric falling short, and what should organizations start measuring instead? Drawing on his extensive consulting experience in supply chain decarbonization, he shares his personal perspective on the topic.
In my work advising companies on supply chain decarbonization, I review a lot of carbon management software. And almost every vendor leads with the same number: how many megatonnes or gigatons of CO₂e they “manage.” I’ve started to think of it as the metric that sounds like impact but measures something else entirely.
Some leading platforms now display figures in the gigaton range on their homepages. It’s impressive. It’s also, I’d argue, almost meaningless as a measure of climate progress.
Here’s why.
What the number actually counts
“Emissions under management” (EUM) is the total greenhouse gas footprint tracked across a vendor’s customer base, typically spanning Scope 1, 2, and 3. It combines high-quality activity-based data with spend-based estimates, sector averages, and modeled proxies, then sums it all into a single headline figure.
The number grows whenever a new customer signs up. It grows faster when that customer is a large emitter. It says nothing about whether anyone reduced anything.
Why the industry converged on it anyway
I don’t think vendors are being cynical. EUM is genuinely easy to calculate, easy to communicate, and easy to compare. For fundraising and sales, it’s close to perfect. The problem is that optimizing for it creates the wrong incentives:
- Prioritize signing the largest emitters (the fastest way to grow the number)
- Prioritize reporting features over abatement tools (scope coverage is visible; reduction rates are not)
- Deprioritize the slow, hard work of supplier engagement and implemented measures that actually move emissions
Two platforms can manage identical emissions volumes and deliver radically different outcomes. One transforms how a company operates. The other produces quarterly inventory reports. EUM cannot tell them apart.
The comparison that makes the problem concrete
Consider a vendor that signs a single large industrial enterprise and adds 200 megatonnes to its EUM overnight. Now consider a competitor that spent two years helping fifty mid-market manufacturers each cut emissions by 15%. The first vendor wins on the metric. The second did more for the climate.
That gap, between what we measure and what we care about, is the core problem with how carbon management software is evaluated today.
Conclusion
Tracking emissions is necessary. It is the foundation of everything else. But I’ve seen enough client engagements to know that a well-designed inventory and a genuine decarbonization program are very different things. The software market’s headline metric doesn’t distinguish between them. In part two of the series, I outline what I think we should measure instead, and why getting this right matters not just for buyers evaluating vendors, but for the credibility of the whole carbon management industry.
For organizations looking to explore carbon management software solutions, our Technology Advisory Service is here to support your ambition.