The shortest path to a defensible carbon inventory is to pick a baseline year, ingest energy and travel data for that year, validate against utility bills, then layer Scope 3.
- Install Net Zero Cloud and assign licenses
Net Zero Cloud is a paid product. Install the managed package from the org, then assign the Net Zero Cloud permission set to sustainability admins and the read-only set to executives who consume dashboards.
- Define operational boundaries
Create Operational Boundary records for each legal entity, region, or business unit. Tag every Stationary Asset to its boundary so emissions roll up cleanly to whatever level the disclosure requires.
- Ingest the baseline year's activity data
Use the data loader templates to import electricity consumption (kWh per asset per month), natural gas (therms or cubic meters), fleet fuel (gallons by vehicle), and air travel (miles or trips by class). Twelve months of monthly data is the minimum for a baseline.
- Validate calculated emissions against external benchmarks
Once activity data is loaded, the platform calculates tons of CO2 equivalent automatically. Cross-check against the previous year's utility bills and any published peer benchmark. A 5 to 10 percent variance is normal; 25 percent or more usually means a unit conversion error in the import.
- Configure the disclosure framework
Pick the framework the company files under (CDP, GRI, CSRD, TCFD) and map any custom fields to the framework's question pack. Generate a draft disclosure, route it to the audit committee, and export the final version for submission.
Highest accuracy. Use when you have kWh, gallons, or miles per asset. Default for Scope 1 and 2.
Use when activity data is unavailable. Apply EXIOBASE or comparable factors to spend categories. Higher uncertainty but acceptable for early Scope 3.
Activity-based for material categories (commuter travel, purchased goods top 80 percent by spend), spend-based for the long tail.
Highest fidelity for Scope 3. Pulls allocated emissions from suppliers' own CDP disclosures. Requires supplier engagement program.
- Emission factors update every year. Lock the factor version used for each historical disclosure with a custom field so restatements are intentional, not accidental.
- Net Zero Cloud's audit trail captures field-level history only if Field Audit Trail is enabled. Turn it on for emission-related fields before the first disclosure cycle.
- Scope 2 has two methods: location-based (grid average) and market-based (contractual instruments like RECs). Most disclosure frameworks require both. Calculate and store both columns; do not pick one.
- Refrigerant emissions are easy to miss and can be a Scope 1 surprise. Add them to the data collection plan from day one; HVAC leaks alone can be 5 to 15 percent of a corporate Scope 1 footprint.