2050 calculates the emissions of their investment portfolio

Background

2050 is a Paris-based fund that invests in companies that address social, financial, and environmental issues. Launched in 2020, they just published their first annual carbon report for 2021 and are part of Climate Act, a community of 300+ companies measuring, reducing, and reporting their emissions publicly.

“Investing is not predicting the future, but crafting the future. 2050’s mission is to craft a fertile future by investing in ecosystems and bringing resilient solutions to today’s biggests challenges, in particular climate change,” says Marie Ekeland, Founder of 2050.

Problem

For financial organizations like venture capital or private equity funds, the bulk of their carbon footprint comes from their investments category 15 of the GHG Protocol). In most cases, this represents over 90% of their emissions. Decarbonizing their operations means coordinating the measurement and reduction of emissions in all the companies they’ve invested in.

Many investment organizations have resisted tackling their scope 3 emissions because of how difficult it is to get complete and consistent data from all their investees. Part of the challenge is getting the right tooling, the other comes down to convincing portfolio companies to do the carbon management work regularly.

But with new regulations on carbon reporting and the low-carbon transition on the horizon, this is a bridge that needs to be crossed.

“At 2050, we believe that companies aligning their business interests with those of society and the planet will be the champions of tomorrow’s economy. Sweep is a solution-oriented company that’ll greatly help companies accelerate the sustainable transformation of the economy,” says Marie Ekeland, Founder of 2050.

Sweep’s financed emission dashboard (example).

Solution

For a coordination exercise this big, data collection and exchange processes need to be optimized with the help of carbon management software. 2050 picked Sweep to:

• Get an accurate and granular picture of the emissions coming from each portfolio company – and move away from rough estimates based on the level of share ownership.

• Save time and resources by using automation features to collect data across teams, suppliers, and investees.

• Give all portfolio companies a free opportunity to measure, track and report their scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions and get educated about carbon management.

“Sweep offers a simple yet powerful tool to measure any company’s scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and create reduction trajectories based on their operations and business model. It’s the tool everybody’s been missing to compute and disclose Principal Adverse Impact indicators, like greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and GHG intensity, and comply with the SFDR (Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulations),” says Lorraine Artur de La Villarmois, Head of Legal & ESG at 2050.