How discoverIE scaled reliable group-wide carbon reporting

Executive summary

discoverIE Group is a global designer and manufacturer of customised electronic components, operating in more than twenty countries through an acquisition-led and decentralised model. With many legal entities spread across different geographies and the continual onboarding of newly acquired businesses, maintaining a consistent and reliable carbon inventory had become increasingly difficult.

In 2022, discoverIE publicly committed to securing SBTi validation for its emissions reduction targets by 2024. Achieving this ambition required a carbon accounting system capable of supporting decentralised data collection, integrating new businesses and producing a robust, audit-ready emissions inventory.

Partnering with Normative has enabled discoverIE to build a consistent group-wide view of emissions, secure SBTi validation and strengthen both data quality and engagement across its decentralised operations.

Key outcomes

The challenge: managing emissions across a decentralised, acquisitive group

discoverIE’s sustainability ambition is to act as a responsible business while reducing its environmental impact. Although the company has long operated in sustainability-aligned markets such as electrification and automation, it increasingly recognised the need to address the footprint of its own operations.

The 2022 commitment to pursue SBTi validation sharpened this focus. Yet the decentralised nature of the group presented major challenges. Newly acquired businesses were often reporting emissions for the first time. The company’s distributed IT infrastructure and varying levels of experience and familiarity with the GHG Protocol amongst the local teams created inconsistencies in data quality, format and completeness.

To build an accurate emissions baseline across a diverse set of entities, discoverIE needed a solution intuitive enough for local teams and powerful enough to consolidate and validate data at group level.

Achieving SBTi validation with a stronger data foundation

After evaluating several options, discoverIE selected Normative for its ease of use and strong consolidation capabilities. The platform’s guided workflow helped local teams submit data in a consistent format, while enabling central review before calculations ran. This structure proved essential during SBTi’s rigorous validation process.

The approved targets confirmed that discoverIE’s reduction pathway aligns with the Paris Agreement and meets investor expectations for credible, externally verified climate action.

Embedding Normative into reporting processes and building engagement across the business

Normative is now a core part of discoverIE’s annual sustainability reporting cycle and is used for all statutory and voluntary GHG disclosures, including SECR. One of the most significant shifts has been the rise in engagement across decentralised business units. With visibility into their own results, teams are initiating their own sustainability actions and asking more informed questions about potential reductions.

“Having the data has sparked its own momentum. Teams are more proactive because they can see the carbon implications of their decisions,” explained Sadler.

This improved visibility has supported increased reduction efforts, such as switching to renewable electricity at sites in Asia and electrical heating system installations at high-usage sites in Europe. It has also simplified central oversight, replacing fragmented spreadsheets with a structured and auditable reporting workflow.

As discoverIE continues to integrate acquisitions, refine its Scope 3 processes and act on its validated targets, Normative provides the clarity and structure needed to scale climate action across a complex organisation.

“Normative is a proper reporting system, not a collection of spreadsheets. The centrality and flexibility it gives us have been invaluable,” added Sadler.