Net-zero is next-level greenwashing without supply chain emissions

The case is crystal clear. Corporate action on carbon removal is an essential response to climate change. Without business buy-in, there’s fundamentally no chance of reaching the Paris Agreement objectives or the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

That’s why carbon removal has emerged as one of the fastest-growing markets fuelled by the world’s increasing recognition of our climate crisis. Across the planet, every legitimate corporation has already pledged or is in the process of making commitments to become net-zero. But unless companies uncover their supply chain emissions, achieving net-zero is nothing more than an empty promise. At worst, it’s next-level greenwashing.

Why? Well, simply put, if you don’t know what you’re buying, it’s impossible to optimize your external spend or say something credible about your CO2 emissions. The numbers don’t lie.

For the average company, external costs represent more than 50% of all expenses. This is directly linked to its scope 3 emissions, which can comprise more than 80% of its total carbon emissions. Both external costs and carbon emissions are typically controlled by companies’ Procurement Departments, and both remain a black box for most companies today. That’s where EIVEE comes in.

EIVEE is a Copenhagen, Denmark-based startup that aims to provide full transparency to help organizations with their external spend. For driving a strategic procurement agenda and generating insights into CO2, the EIVEE platform offers full transparency and digitized advisory within external costs and carbon emissions, thereby enabling companies to accelerate their green transition in a profitable way.

Commenting on the greenwashing issue, Peter Schack, Co-founder and CEO of EIVEE,  says, “In my previous roles as Head of Procurement in large Danish companies, I’ve personally felt the pain of having no transparency into what I was buying, let alone what I was emitting. A CPO with no clarity on external spend is a huge challenge in itself, but an even more pressing issue for today’s organizations is their inability to report on scope 3 emissions in a meaningful way. The push for reliable, transparent, and data-driven reporting is imperative for legitimacy. In fact, I believe it’ll be your license to operate short-term”

EIVEE’s pioneering tech platform combines high-quality spend transparency with a solution that not only automatically identifies improvement opportunities, but also provides full traceability of a company’s entire carbon footprint across its value chain.

“We believe that our integrated platform is an absolute necessity for companies to confidently meet their increasing user and stakeholder demands, as well as comply with the increasingly stricter regulatory requirements related to carbon emissions. All while maintaining a strong focus on the bottom-line agenda. That’s what EIVEE is all about,” Peter Schack continues.

The EIVEE platform offers two modular products: Strategic Procurement and Sustainable Procurement. Strategic Procurement enables companies to gain full control over their external costs through a complete and validated spend visibility, pinpointing actions for improvement, and enabling KPI tracking to ensure the realization of financial impact.

The Sustainable Procurement product establishes a fully comprehensive and validated baseline for companies’ scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, approved for external reporting, which enables progress tracking and pinpoints hotspots and concrete reduction opportunities towards net-zero.

SEED Capital has backed EIVEE’s journey with 4M EUR to accelerate the growth of their groundbreaking corporate solution for both carbon reporting and external cost reductions.

General Partner in SEED Capital, Niels Vejrup Carlsen adds, ”All companies will need to work with their emission footprint. The largest part of the footprint is typically found within the supply chain where existing solutions for carbon accounting provide little visibility and neither accurate nor useful information. We think the EIVEE way is the only way. They start with getting their customers’ data straight so they can both optimize the bottom line and work actively with their carbon footprint. So we love the product, the market, and most importantly the super strong team with many years of combined procurement and sustainability experience.”

EIVEE has already signified its unique position in the market by securing many leading Scandinavian clients. Through SEED Capital’s 4M EUR investment, EIVEE is set to rapidly fuel the growth of its customer base throughout Scandinavia. The overall objective is to become the leading platform provider for cost improvements and carbon removal reporting.

Until today, EIVEE has been financed by private business angels and Vækstfonden. SEED Capital joins the journey to help accelerate EIVEE to become the leading platform for procurement and sustainability analytics. The goal for the remaining part of 2022 is to rapidly scale customer acquisition and product development by targeting the broader Scandinavian market.

Founded in 2020, EIVEE is an integrated Procurement and Sustainability platform built for companies and organizations around the world. The company originates from Copenhagen, Denmark where most of the team still resides. The EIVEE platform offers full transparency and digitized advisory within external costs and carbon emissions, thereby enabling companies to accelerate their green transition in a profitable way.

SEED Capital is Denmark’s largest venture capital fund within the seed segment. SEED Capital specializes in taking Danish founders from seed to series A and follows portfolio companies like Vivino, Lunar, Templafy, and Dixa all the way to exit.