The Greenly Handbook on Carbon Accounting

Please introduce yourself and your role 

My journey began with a dual degree from HEC Paris (2006) and Sciences Po (2007), followed by a start in strategy consulting at Strategy&. In 2013, I pivoted toward digital health by building the B2B division at Withings, creating remote monitoring solutions for healthcare professionals. When Nokia acquired the company in 2017, I moved to Boston to lead its US office. In 2018, I co-founded Embleema, a platform for generating real-world health data. Then in 2019, I returned to France to co-found Greenly, where I now serve as CEO. 

My experience at Withings was pivotal. It showed me how digital tools could measure the invisible and unlock new economic models by creating real-time incentives for better behaviors. I’m now deeply convinced that behavioral change is the most powerful lever against climate change — and that we need simple, seamless, everyday measurement to make good actions visible and valuable. That’s why we founded Greenly in 2019, with Arnaud Delubac and Matthieu Vegreville. Our mission: to make carbon accounting as simple and essential as financial accounting. 

Could you tell me about Greenly? 

Originally launched as a mobile app for individuals — using bank‐transaction data to estimate users’ day‐to‐day carbon footprint — the platform quickly evolved toward serving businesses, where the environmental impact is far greater. 

Today, Greenly offers a cloud‐based Climate Suite that automates Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions tracking. By connecting directly to a company’s ERP or accounting software (and, when needed, sending out supplier questionnaires), Greenly gathers all relevant financial and logistical data, applies verified carbon factors (sourced from ADEME, GHG Protocol, Ecoinvent, etc.) and produces real-time dashboards. These dashboards not only show where emissions are highest but also allow companies to model reduction scenarios — switching to more efficient transport modes, choosing lower-emission suppliers, or altering procurement strategies. 

Since pivoting to B2B in early 2021, Greenly has raised several funding rounds (pre-seed, seed, a US$23.96m Series A in April 2022 and Series B in April 2024) to expand its data capabilities, enhance reporting features (CSRD, CBAM, ISSB compliance) and grow internationally (with offices now in Paris, London, and New York). The platform serves 3,000 clients — from SMEs to larger corporations — across industries like retail, manufacturing, finance and agri-food. 

Beyond software, Greenly provides advisory services: helping clients interpret regulatory requirements, define science-based reduction targets (SBTi) and implement practical decarbonisation plans.

 What is Greenly’s mission and the vision behind it? 

Greenly’s vision is built on the belief that the climate emergency requires a global awakening and that companies—major contributors to worldwide emissions — have a pivotal role to play. More specifically: 

• Make carbon accounting a routine practice: By 2030, Greenly aims for every executive to treat carbon reporting with the same regularity and rigour as financial reporting. The goal is to shift carbon accounting from being a technical exercise reserved for CSR specialists to a daily management habit, integrated into every manager’s dashboards. 
• Democratise access to carbon neutrality: Achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 is a global objective often seen as the preserve of large corporations with dedicated sustainability departments. Greenly intends to make this transition realistic for SMEs, mid-market companies and even public organisations by offering an affordable, intuitive and scalable solution. In other words, every organisation — regardless of size — should have the means to set a net zero plan, track progress and report to stakeholders. 
• Create a virtuous ripple effect: By making carbon measurements transparent and tangible, Greenly seeks to spark momentum throughout supply chains. When a supplier publishes a clear emissions inventory and reduction targets, its customers (and their customers, in turn) can make informed decisions across the entire chain. The idea is to generate a virtuous cycle in which each actor’s performance improvements encourage partners to follow suit. 
• Contribute to an evolving regulatory framework: Greenly commits to remaining constantly vigilant about regulatory developments (CSRD, CBAM, the EU Taxonomy, ISSB standards, state-level reporting requirements in the US, etc.) so that clients stay fully compliant with new obligations. In the longer term, the platform aspires to join collaborative European — and even global — initiatives aimed at unifying carbon accounting methodologies, thereby ensuring data comparability and reliability worldwide. 

How is the global sustainability landscape changing for businesses? 

The pace is accelerating. Companies can no longer remain passive. Between CSRD in Europe, CBAM, forthcoming state climate reporting initiatives in the US and ISSB standards globally, extra-financial reporting is becoming non-negotiable. 

But it’s also a strategic opportunity: aligning the entire value chain with a credible decarbonisation path.

What challenges does this present? 

The challenges begin with the rapidly evolving and fragmented regulatory landscape: businesses must navigate a growing array of overlapping requirements — CSRD, CBAM, the EU Taxonomy, ISSB standards and others — each with its own definitions, boundaries and reporting deadlines. Multinational companies, in particular, struggle to reconcile these divergent rules across regions (for example, CSRD in Europe, SECR in the UK and forthcoming state climate reporting initiatives in the US), making it difficult to establish a single, coherent reporting process. 

Compounding this is the fragmentation of data: emissions-related information is often scattered across disparate systems — ERPs, accounting software, procurement platforms — and consolidating it requires laborious, manual effort that is prone to errors. While many off-the-shelf tools handle Scope 1 and 2 reasonably well, they fall short on Scope 3, typically relying on crude spend-based estimates rather than granular, activity-based data. 

Yet Scope 3 is by far the largest component of most companies’ footprints (often 70% to 90% or more) and capturing it demands cooperation from suppliers and other value-chain partners who may lack the capacity or incentive to share accurate emissions figures. Without reliable upstream and downstream data, organisations default to averages and generalised factors, which obscures the most significant reduction opportunities and undermines the overall credibility of their carbon accounting efforts. 

How can Greenly help businesses to tackle these challenges? 

Greenly addresses these challenges through its Climate Suite, a comprehensive software platform that automates and simplifies every step of carbon accounting. 

First, Climate Suite ensures accurate measurement by automatically pulling data from financial systems, ERPs and procurement platforms and applying vetted emission factors, so businesses no longer need to cobble together fragmented information manually.

Next, it helps companies reduce their footprint by generating SBTi-aligned action plans: the platform’s AI-driven modules analyse emissions hotspots, — particularly within Scope 3 — model “what-if” scenarios (e.g., switching transport modes or changing suppliers) and propose concrete next steps that balance carbon reduction with cost and operational feasibility.

Finally, Climate Suite streamlines reporting, producing audit-ready deliverables that comply with CSRD, CBAM, ISSB and other evolving standards. More than just a dashboard, the platform leverages intelligent agents to function as an ESG copilot: it translates raw data into compliant reports, flags regulatory risks and continuously suggests updates as rules change, enabling companies to stay ahead of requirements rather than scrambling to catch up. 

Could you share some examples of how Greenly has supported businesses?

We’ve helped hundreds of companies structure their climate strategy. 

One example: a major retail player used our platform to map thousands of suppliers, identify key emission sources and launch a large-scale, coherent reduction strategy. It laid the foundation for a climate roadmap that’s actionable and aligned with CSRD requirements.

But our impact goes much further. 

Some examples:

- KFC France, for instance, wanted to compare the carbon footprint of its beef, chicken and veggie burgers. But how do you measure that across 370 franchised locations? With our support, KFC implemented structured carbon accounting, compared recipes and launched a national campaign called Veggie Day to raise public awareness. 

- Valamar, a leading hotel group with more than 100 sites across Croatia and Austria, wanted to align with SBTi and get a consolidated view of its emissions. 

We helped centralise data, train local teams and design a board-approved climate roadmap. Result: climate strategy fully embedded into its governance. 

- And SeaWorld in the US hadn’t published ESG data since 2016. Facing pressure from the SEC, it needed to calculate Scope 3 emissions for the first time. We automated data collection, applied a hybrid methodology and provided a clear view of indirect emissions. 

What challenges are businesses facing in managing Scope 3 emissions? 

Managing Scope 3 emissions presents a major challenge because these indirect emissions — ranging from upstream purchases to downstream product use — depend entirely on data from third parties across the value chain. In practice, this means many businesses struggle with inconsistent or missing information, as suppliers often lack the capacity, resources or standardised processes to calculate and share their own footprints. Without reliable data, companies resort to high-level spend-based estimates that obscure where the biggest reduction opportunities lie. 

To address this blind spot, Greenly’s Climate Suite incorporates a suite of supplier engagement tools: smart questionnaires that guide vendors through reporting their emissions, automated estimation routines that fill in gaps when precise figures are unavailable and a comprehensive climate onboarding journey that educates and supports suppliers through each step. 

How can supply chain sustainability challenges be overcome? 

Overcoming supply chain sustainability challenges first requires transforming the entire chain into a collaborative ecosystem rather than a series of isolated transactions. This means sharing data and insights openly so that each tier of suppliers and partners understands not only its own emissions but also how its performance affects the broader network. Equipping suppliers through training, clear guidelines and ongoing support ensures they have the skills and incentives to accurately measure and reduce their footprints. 

Just as finance has been revolutionised through digital platforms, ESG interactions must also be digitalised: automated data exchange, real-time dashboards and integrated communication channels enable all stakeholders to stay aligned on targets and progress. Greenly’s Climate Suite is designed to facilitate exactly this kind of collaboration — it connects every participant, streamlines data collection through standardised questionnaires and API integrations and fosters a shared vision by presenting unified dashboards that highlight collective goals and opportunities for improvement.

What trends do you anticipate in ESG technology? 

An AI‐based ESG agent acts as a continuously learning copilot that digests vast amounts of environmental, social and governance data — from supplier disclosures to energy consumption logs to evolving regulatory texts — and translates it into actionable insights in real time. At its core, the agent uses natural language processing to ingest unstructured documents (eg. sustainability reports, regulatory bulletins, supplier emails) and automatically extract key metrics — carbon intensities, labour‐practice ratings, governance flags—then aligns them with relevant frameworks (CSRD, ISSB, GRI, etc.).

Beyond simple data aggregation, the AI agent leverages machine learning models to detect patterns and anomalies that might otherwise go unnoticed: for instance, flagging a sudden uptick in emissions from a particular supplier, predicting potential compliance gaps months ahead of a new regulation’s enforcement, or identifying which procurement categories contribute most heavily to Scope 3 risk. Because it continuously ingests fresh information — such as new shipment records, real‐time energy readings or updated supplier questionnaires — the agent can generate rolling forecasts of key ESG metrics (eg. forecasted emissions vs. SBTi targets) and automatically suggest corrective actions. 

On the reporting side, the agent can draft audit‐ready disclosures by mapping internal metrics to required reporting fields, generating graphs and narrative summaries that align with each jurisdiction’s guidelines. It can even answer “what‐if” queries in plain English — eg. “What will happen to our overall GHG inventory if we switch 40% of our fleet to electric vehicles by next quarter?” — and produce scenario analyses comparing carbon savings, cost impacts and compliance readiness. 

Finally, because the agent is continuously trained on the latest regulatory updates, peer benchmarks and climate science research, it proactively alerts stakeholders to emerging risks — such as a new carbon tax draft or rising water‐stress indicators in a key sourcing region — and recommends next steps (contract renegotiations, circular‐economy pilots, board‐level ESG presentations). In this way, the AI‐powered ESG agent transforms

sustainability from a periodic reporting exercise into a dynamic, predictive and collaborative process that keeps every decision maker, from procurement to the C-suite, aligned on compliance and long-term value creation. 

Greenly’s next chapter is driven by ambitious, measurable goals: reaching 10,000 clients, managing one billion tonnes of CO₂ and establishing ourselves as the “SAP of climate” – the global gold standard for carbon accounting. To achieve this, we’re doubling down on innovation within the Climate Suite, embedding advanced AI modules that not only automate data ingestion and emissions forecasting but also deliver prescriptive insights — guiding clients on the most effective reduction pathways in real time. 

We’re also expanding our API ecosystem so that any ERP, procurement tool, or sustainability‐focused app can plug directly into Climate Suite, creating an open climate‐tech network where data and best practices flow freely. Behind the scenes, we’re bolstering our Climate Advisory team to support a rapidly growing client base with tailored, sector‐specific consulting. By combining AI‐driven automation, a truly global presence and an extensible ecosystem of integrations and services, Greenly is positioning itself not just to meet but to exceed these milestones, ultimately becoming the de facto platform that organisations worldwide rely on to navigate an ever-evolving climate landscape. 

What are your main messages to business leaders and policymakers? 

For business leaders, the imperative is clear: climate transparency can no longer be treated as a peripheral ESG checkbox — it must become a strategic cornerstone of every decision you make. 

The best time to begin is today; waiting for perfect data or ideal solutions only delays progress. Instead, focus on establishing transparent measurement processes, setting incremental targets and iterating as you learn. By embracing continuous improvement — rather than holding out for flawless accuracy — you unlock immediate benefits in risk management, operational efficiency and stakeholder trust.

For policymakers, the most impactful step is to create a stable, unambiguous framework that both encourages and rewards corporate decarbonisation efforts. Clear regulations, consistent reporting requirements and targeted incentives will give businesses the confidence to invest in long‐term sustainability initiatives. Crucially, SMEs need tailored support — whether through subsidised advisory services, streamlined compliance pathways or direct financial incentives — to ensure they are not left behind. After all, broad‐based decarbonisation hinges on empowering every link in the value chain, not just the largest enterprises.

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