Normative’s Climate Strategy Advisors guide businesses to net zero
CSA’s go beyond technical support, providing expert guidance for emissions calculation, reporting, and reduction.
Normative enables businesses to calculate their full greenhouse gas footprint, comply with carbon reporting legislation, and identify emission reduction opportunities.
To achieve this, we pair our best-in-class software solution with hands-on support across three pillars: customer success management, technical support, and climate strategy.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at the climate strategy pillar, and explore how our expert Climate Strategy Advisors help businesses turn their carbon data into valuable business outcomes.
Normative’s Climate Strategy Advisors
Normative Climate Strategy Advisors act as a complement to the software at every stage of the carbon calculation process. However, their capabilities go beyond technical customer support.
Each Climate Strategy Advisor (CSA) brings knowledge and working experience within sustainability.
CSAs are certified by the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard, ensuring they have a thorough command of the industry’s most widely-used standard.
The CSA team also has extensive experience in supporting businesses with climate disclosures for legislative requirements, investor demands, and sustainability reports.
When a business partners with Normative, a Climate Strategy Advisor is assigned to the account. Because CSAs specialize in various sectors, the advisor assigned to a business will have deep knowledge of its industry, experience working with similar businesses, and knowledge of best practices.
The CSA will then become the business’s dedicated expert, meeting the business wherever it is on its sustainability journey and guiding it along the path to net zero.
“It’s inspiring to work with companies that are truly committed to reducing their emissions – and to get to use my knowledge of carbon accounting to help them do so.”
Luzia Buchmann
Senior Climate Strategy Advisor supporting businesses within the retail, manufacturing, and service sectors.
How Climate Strategy Advisors support businesses
Normative’s CSAs guide businesses from the initial data collection phase, to determining a baseline, setting climate targets, and planning reduction initiatives, and through the value chain engagement required to reach net zero.
Data collection
The CSA helps businesses source the business data needed for carbon calculations, which is then processed by Normative’s industry-leading calculation engine.
The calculation engine is automated, and can generate emissions data continuously – so businesses always have the most up-to-date calculations based on their most recent data.
When it comes to carbon calculations, the final calculation will only be as comprehensive as the data used to generate it. CSAs help businesses ensure comprehensive coverage when calculating their carbon emissions.
Determining a carbon baseline
After the data collection is done and Normative’s carbon accounting engine has performed its calculations, the CSA walks businesses through the completed carbon calculations, which are presented in data visualization dashboards.
The CSA will then use the data to help the business analyze its carbon footprint. These insights are essential for effective carbon management, laying the ground work for reduction, reporting, and target-setting. In addition, this data is invaluable for driving sustainable changes within the business itself, and can be used as compelling motivation to align stakeholders behind climate initiatives and commitments
CSAs will also share industry best pratices and help businesses refine their data over time to achieve higher levels of accuracy.
Target setting
Setting climate targets can be a tricky process, and one that is different for every business. Each business will have to tackle different kinds of emissions, and different operational challenges associated with them.
Normative’s Climate Strategy Advisors work from experience, best practices, and target-setting frameworks to help businesses establish a tailored timeline and ambition level.
Based on carbon data and business insights, the Climate Strategy Advisor proposes realistic targets and ideas for implementation.
Once targets are aligned, the Climate Strategy Advisor helps set up a custom reduction overview dashboard that can be viewed within Normative.
CSAs can also help submit and gain approval for science-based targets through the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi).
Flying Tiger Copenhagen set SBTi-approved targets with Normative’s support
Learn how the global retailer used Normative’s carbon accounting and CSA support to set Paris-aligned climate targets.
Reduction
With climate targets in place, it’s time to build reduction initiatives to help reach that target.
Working from the carbon baseline, the Climate Strategy Advisor leads businesses through a workshop to brainstorm and define concrete reduction actions in each scope and category.
Together, they prioritize initiatives based on carbon impact and ease of implementation. At the same time, they co-develop a year-on-year reduction roadmap with prioritized activities to be implemented.
An annual assessment of the reduction roadmap is done to understand where reduction initiatives are having an impact – and where new reduction opportunities can be explored.
Value chain engagement
Scope 3 – containing value chain emissions – is where a significant amount of emissions can be found for most companies. To reduce those emissions, businesses must engage their suppliers.
When a business engages its suppliers in carbon accounting, it gains insight into its suppliers’ calculations and reduction targets, and allows for the integration of higher-quality emissions data into the business’s own calculations.
Climate Strategy Advisors (CSAs) assist in determining the supplier engagement strategy, the level of engagement, the key stakeholders that need to be involved, and the success metrics for the next steps. They share best practices on collecting data from suppliers.
In addition, CSAs can engage with suppliers directly. They can gather top emitting suppliers to have an informational session on carbon accounting, and to explain why they are being engaged and what carbon reporting requirements they may be asked to meet.
Executive summary
- Normative pairs industry-leading emissions calculation software with hands-on support across three pillars: customer success account management, technical support, and climate strategy.
- Normative’s Climate Strategy Advisors (CSAs) are certified by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and provide expert support in carbon calculation, reduction, and disclosure – guiding businesses along the entire path to net-zero.
- CSAs play a crucial role in value chain engagement, helping businesses to engage suppliers and integrate higher quality emissions data into their own calculations.
Learn how Normative’s Climate Strategy Advisors can guide your business to net zero
FAQs
A Climate Strategy Advisor at Normative is a GHG Protocol-certified expert who guides businesses through the entire journey to net zero, from data collection through value chain engagement.
Unlike typical customer support, Normative’s Climate Strategy Advisors bring industry-specific expertise and hands-on assistance throughout the carbon calculation process. They provide tailored guidance on setting realistic reduction targets and building reduction initiatives.
Climate Strategy Advisors help businesses engage their suppliers, providing more insight into their calculations and reduction targets. They assist in determining the supplier engagement strategy, the level of engagement, the key stakeholders that need to be involved, and the success metrics for the next steps. They can also engage with suppliers directly to provide informational sessions on carbon accounting.
Normative’s Climate Strategy Advisors work from experience, best practices, and target-setting frameworks to help businesses establish a tailored timeline and ambition level. They can also assist in submitting and gaining approval for science-based targets through SBTi. Based on carbon data and business insights, they propose realistic targets and ideas for implementation.
