IBM announced the launch of IBM Envizi Emissions Calculations in Excel, a new solution designed for sustainability teams and organizations that rely on spreadsheets to calculate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
According to IBM, the new solution is designed to help provide flexibility and transparency for organizations earlier in their carbon accounting journey, with Excel often the first place sustainability teams calculate emissions, but offering challenges for users to standardize, scale and audit emissions calculation as requirements grow.
In a post announcing the new launch, Kendra DeKeyrel VP, Asset Lifecycle Management Product and Engineering at IBM, said:
“Spreadsheet-based approaches can be a practical way to get started with emissions calculations, offering flexibility and familiarity for teams. But as data volumes increase and more stakeholders rely on the outputs, these approaches can become harder to manage in practice. Teams often deal with inconsistent methodologies across files, manual emissions factor selection, and disconnected calculations that are difficult to reconcile. Consolidating results for reporting becomes time-consuming and limited auditability makes it challenging to validate or explain how figures were derived.”
The company said that the new solution aims to address the challenges of manually set up spreadsheets by offering pre-defined, standards-aligned calculation logic and embedded emission factors directly within Excel, with the solution enabling users to calculate carbon emissions using global and regional emission factors aligned with recognized standards without needing to manage factor libraries or calculation methodologies manually.
Key features of the new solution highlighted by IBM include an Excel add-in with prebuilt templates, ready-to-use formulas and predefined inputs, standardized emissions factors embedded into calculations, and AI-based data mapping to reduce manual effort.
IBM also said that the solution is designed to help users move toward a more structured, auditable approach to emissions accounting, offering a progression for companies to start emissions calculation in Excel, advance to implementing structured emissions data management into systems and applications, and to finally adopt full emissions accounting with governance, reporting, and audit capabilities.
DeKeyrel said:
“Excel can be a useful starting point for emissions calculations but it is not designed to support growing requirements for reporting, consistency, and auditability. As those requirements increase, organizations often need a more structured and centralized approach.
“IBM Envizi helps bridge that gap by bringing structure and standardization into spreadsheet workflows today, while enabling a transition to enterprise emissions accounting over time.”
The new solution forms part of IBM’s ESG data platform, the Envizi ESG Suite, and is powered by the platform’s emissions factors and calculation methodology. IBM acquired Envizi in 2022, as part of its efforts to enhance its AI-powered ESG solutions capabilities.
