Introduction

In 2022, when Tellus launched our first product Tellus PPA, we were included in a market survey of solutions to facilitate clean energy purchases and sales. Between 2022 and the present, we’ve launched Tellus Carbon and Tellus Sustain, completing Tellus Climate Suite, a solution specifically designed to meet the needs of sustainability teams. 

During the same time period, enterprise sustainability teams have grown into a significant corporate function, with the scope of their activities expanding every day. 

Now that sustainability managers have front line responsibility for reaching enterprise sustainability goals, we thought it was appropriate to conduct a market survey to evaluate solutions from their perspective.

The Needs of Sustainability Teams

Most sustainability managers are new to their job. In the US alone, there are 235,000 sustainability managers that have been in their current roles for less than 3 years [Statista, Number of employed sustainability roles in the United States in 2024 by Occupation]. While some are the product of emerging educational programs that are equally new, many have no formal sustainability training. Rather, they are enterprise employees that were repurposed from other areas that are learning on the job. Not surprisingly, they are often unclear about how to execute their responsibilities.

On top of these challenges sit a variety of pressures. There are regulatory mandates that require collection of emissions data and reporting on it. There are internal or organizational pressures, plus external pressures from investors and stakeholders, to meet enterprise decarbonization goals. Plus increasingly prominent economic drivers are making climate action an enterprise imperative. All of these have magnified and accelerated the expectations of sustainability teams.

For example, in October 2023 California passed three (3) new laws, which for the first time made climate disclosures mandatory for many US companies within the next few years. There are now 800,000 sustainability professionals employed by companies that have not previously disclosed complete emissions publicly as of 2024 that are scrambling to comply. [Statista, Number of employed sustainability roles in the United States in 2024 by Occupation]

Why now?

This urgency is intensified by the escalating climate crisis and mounting demands from investors, regulators, and consumers. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that without immediate and significant emission reductions, global temperatures are projected to exceed 1.5°C of warming within the next two decades—a threshold that could lead to severe environmental and economic consequences. This alarming projection places immense pressure on enterprises to accelerate their decarbonization efforts and contributes to the heightened expectations placed on sustainability teams.

Simultaneously, the regulatory landscape is shifting rapidly. 

The number of climate-related laws and policies worldwide has surged from just 60 in 1997 to over 1,800 today. Amidst a tightening web of compliance requirements, investors are increasingly prioritizing sustainability, with sustainable investments now accounting for over one-third of all professionally managed assets globally. 

Moreover, 57% of consumers— according to a Deloitte survey—are willing to change their purchasing habits to reduce environmental impact. Companies that delay action risk regulatory penalties, as well as market share and reputational damage. 

Climate risk is business risk, and the window for meaningful action is narrowing.

The Road Ahead for Sustainability Teams

To respond to these pressures, sustainability teams are now expected to move promptly from knowledge, to planning, to action. Let's discuss each of these functions briefly:

• Knowledge is the initial phase, where an organization begins to understand its greenhouse gas emissions. They focus on data collection and normalization, and progress to analysis. This understanding is crucial for their subsequent activities. The same data also drives the quantitative portion of regulatory reporting.
• Planning is the second phase, where an organization compiles any previously set goals into a unified set of goals and targets. Sustainability teams then evaluate their existing emissions footprint in light of their targets, typically running multiple scenarios about the impact of various activities on their emissions and goal achievement. After identifying and evaluating alternatives, decisions are made about decarbonization strategy and tactical implementation.
• Action is the final and crucial phase, where teams implement their decarbonization strategy.While this may include operational changes to the business that are expected to reduce emissions, more often this involves buying clean power, RECs or carbon credits. Unfortunately, these markets and the processes to access them are difficult and expensive.

Sustainability teams today find themselves at a pivotal moment, armed with mountains of emissions data but lacking the roadmap to turn that knowledge into action. The gap between planning and action has never been wider.

Solutions Landscape

Not surprisingly, the needs of sustainability teams are beginning to drive new solutions. A PwC survey of corporate executives in 2024 found that budgeted new spend for emissions management tools will exceed $15B annually.This is a new but substantial market, expected to grow rapidly.

The bulk of existing solutions fall into one of three (3) categories. 

• Consulting firms, both generalist and specialty. These range from the Big 4 (PwC, EY, KPMG and Deloitte), which have moved substantially into the climate space, to specialty firms that often have evolved from environmental consulting roots (Environmental Resources Management (ERM), WSP Global, and Antea Group).
• Carbon accounting software, which typically provides tools to help teams navigate the knowledge and maybe planning phases of their climate journey. (e.g. Watershed, Persefoni)
• Brokers and other market intermediaries in the clean power and carbon credit markets. These are few in number, but can add significant cost to the underlying transactions.

The current solutions have significant problems.

First, these solutions lack a clear roadmap for teams to move from knowledge to planning to action. The uncertainty about regulations, and how to decarbonize, creates risk for organizations.

Second, sustainability teams typically use multiple tech tools that are not connected. Besides the cost, this approach creates siloed data, process inefficiencies and expense. Sustainability leaders often suffer from decision fatigue, unsure which path will lead to effective decarbonization. 

Third, there is often a lack of action. Climate action is most easily accomplished through purchases of clean power and carbon credits, but those markets are opaque and expensive. This often prevents organizations from taking any action, resulting in missed goals and targets.

The problems with the current solutions landscape present numerous opportunities for improvement. An optimal solution would have an embedded playbook, essentially a decarbonization roadmap that could be built into the solution to help sustainability teams navigate company objectives and regulatory requirements. Sustainability managers also need a comprehensive solution with integrated workflows spanning data collection, analysis, reporting, planning and action.

Most importantly, they need direct access to markets for clean power, carbon credits and RECs. Market access is the unsung hero, the true enabler for real climate action.

Review of Solutions Market

Of the three (3) categories of solutions noted above, a review of consulting firms and brokers/intermediaries is outside the scope of this article. Instead, our review will focus on solutions that are technology based, in whole or part.

The pure technology solutions fall into several categories:

• At the top end of the size range, major companies like IBM and GE offer solutions in this space.Unsurprisingly, these are heavy on analytics and visualizations, enabling the knowledge and planning phases. However, they do not enable concrete climate action.
• At the opposite end of the size spectrum, the smaller technology solutions like Sinai, Pulsora and Optera also enable knowledge and planning to a degree, but also do not enable concrete climate action.
• In the middle lies purpose-built software from Watershed, Persefoni and Salesforce that also supports knowledge and planning, but may facilitate limited access to carbon credits, typically through partner brokers.

Standing apart from these, Tellus Markets has created a comprehensive solution that provides all the necessary functionality for sustainability teams to go from knowledge, to planning and then to action. 
Tellus is a fully digital solution with unified and intuitive workflows that provides an embedded playbook for sustainability teams. Tellus is also a comprehensive solution covering emissions inventory, reporting and analytics and planning. Crucially, this solution includes digital marketplaces for clean power, carbon credits and RECs, that enable transactions within clicks.

Tellus envisions a future where sustainability managers no longer have to navigate the complexity of fragmented tools and opaque markets. Instead, decarbonization becomes as simple as a few clicks—effortless, transparent, and aligned with the company's broader climate goals. 

As sustainability teams use Tellus, they act on today's goals while building a data-driven foundation for tomorrow’s success, creating a self-reinforcing cycle of continuous improvement.  Each step in the journey from knowledge to action feeds into the next, making future decarbonization efforts faster and more effective.

Conclusion

Sustainability managers are a new and growing class of enterprise employees, and the primary driver of organizational climate activities – from emissions inventory and reporting, through analysis and planning, to climate action and emissions reduction.  Companies like Tellus Markets are developing the necessary tools to help them fulfill their crucial enterprise functions.

Chip Horton, CEO, Tellus Markets Corp.