Ep. 274: Mike Wallace - Carbon Accounting and Sustainability for Modern Businesses
Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson. And today, I'm excited to reconnect with Mike Wallace, who joined us 4 years ago to discuss ESG metrics for accounting and finance professionals. Now in 2024, Mike has taken in an innovative role as the chief decarbonation officer at Percefony dotai. In this episode, we'll explore the rising importance of carbon accounting for accountants and the groundbreaking tools being developed to streamline this process.
Adam Larson:Mike will also share insights on the evolving regulatory landscape, real world examples like the UK's National Health Service, and practical steps for businesses, big and small, to stay ahead of their sustainability efforts. Packed with actionable advice and cutting edge strategies, this conversation is one you won't wanna miss. So let's dive right in with Mike Wallace. Well, Mike, I'm really excited to have you back on Count Me In as a guest. Last time you were here about 4 years ago, we focused on ESG related metrics for accounting and finance professionals.
Adam Larson:But now here in 2024, you have a new title, which is chief decarbonation officer for, Persephone AI. So maybe we can start off because this is not a title we hear very much. You know, it's a new very new title. So maybe we can start talking about what is a CDO, and what does that mean for an organization?
Mike Wallace:Yeah. Thanks, Adam, for having us again on the program. Really appreciate it, and always look forward to working with you on things like this, especially education materials for the accounting profession. It's becoming very prevalent that, the accountings are picking picking up on carbon accounting quite aggressively now. Mhmm.
Mike Wallace:Chief decarbonization officer is a brand new title in our field. When my my CEO came to me and said, hey. What do you think about this title as a part of a promotion? I'm like, this is pretty interesting. You know?
Mike Wallace:It's, not seen it before. So as you do, I looked it up on Google, and there are about 5 other people out there with that title self identified. Right?
Adam Larson:Yeah.
Mike Wallace:And so in LinkedIn, I look them up, connect with them, and have calls with them, find out what they're all doing. We're all doing different things. Some are in investment shops, some are in corporations, some are in government agencies, Some are as consultants. Right? And just about 3, 4 years ago, the word decarbonization officer or decarbonization starts to take off because once you understand your carbon footprint, then what are you gonna do about it?
Mike Wallace:How do you decarbonize? So some of the work that we do in that area is really helping people get the first understanding of their carbon footprint, and then always the next step is now what do I do? And so my role here as chief decarbonization officer is to help democratize carbon accounting. It's a key focus of Persephone. And so what does that mean?
Mike Wallace:I am out there as much as I can trying to find strategic partnerships like IMA and AICPA and other associations where the professionals need to understand these issues. And so in these cases, when we're partnering with associations, we can help scale those professionals really quickly, and we can scale in the thousands of people or numbers, because your associations have very large numbers. The other thing about the the multiplication aspect of this is that most of the professional associations also have accreditations that they provide to their members when they take a certain number of hours. Well, now we're doing that kind of training. We can go into some more of that detail a little bit.
Adam Larson:Yeah. Definitely. It's it's amazing how how easy it is to overlook something as important as carbon accounting, and, maybe we can take just a a step back and talk about what why is carbon accounting so important for today's accountant? You know, it's something that's been coming up more and more. And, like, last time we talked, we were focused on some of the metrics and stuff like that.
Adam Larson:But now carbon accounting is the name that that's kinda taken on. So maybe we can discuss that a little bit more.
Mike Wallace:Yeah. You know, well, it was about well, just before I joined Persephone, it was the spring of 2021. That's always the common time as a I was a I was a partner at a large consultancy. And the springtime is the time when people are doing their annual sustainability reports. They're also getting ready to file their CDP reports.
Mike Wallace:We're coming out of COVID, and some time lag time lags were going on. A lot of lot of catch up was happening around that time. And I remember very distinctly that that summer, I had 4 CSOs, chief assistant officers, call me in a panic because their CEOs had made commitments on stages publicly about going net 0. And while it's great, many of the cases that they don't fully understand their scope 3 footprint. That's the biggest gap in everyone's analysis right now.
Mike Wallace:So that was what led me to looking around for solutions. We've been doing carbon accounting and spreadsheets for years. The greenhouse gas protocol that drives all this is 25 years old. And as a good consultant at at engineering firm like we wanted to be very detail oriented, and the tool that we had was an Excel spreadsheet. So I meet this fella, Kentaro Kawamori, at Persephone, and he gives me a demonstration of his tool, of the solution that he's built.
Mike Wallace:He comes from a software background. He's been in the software space since he was 16 or 15. He's a coder himself. Yeah. And when he came up with this idea, he was actually the chief information officer at Chesapeake Energy.
Mike Wallace:And he was experiencing the same thing that I was experiencing with clients almost around the same time at Chesapeake. They're getting letters from BlackRock and other investors. They're getting pointed to things like CDP and the greenhouse gas protocol. And he realized through his conversations with his executive team, they're spending a lot of time and money on something that's very manual that maybe could be automated. And that was the Persephone moment.
Mike Wallace:That's when he came up with this idea of creating almost the ERP system for carbon accounting or some people would say the TurboTax of carbon
Adam Larson:Accounting. Yeah. When you and I were chatting about this, in a few weeks ago, one of the things you mentioned to me that you were kind of reaching the limits of the carbon accounting mathematics. And so what does that mean as we're moving beyond the spreadsheets into the systems like what Persephone is doing? You know, what does that mean as we kind of move beyond what the the what we've already been doing so far?
Mike Wallace:So the greenhouse gas protocol is a multistakeholder nonprofit entity that was created by the World Business Council For Sustainable Development and the World Resources Institute. The protocol itself was originally started about 25 years ago, but it needs to go through upgrades and and expansions. So category so in scope 3, there are 15 categories, and in those categories are various areas where you really need to go deep. Category 1, purchased goods and services, category 15, financed emissions. And in those different areas, over the course of time, the greenhouse gas protocol and the steering committees that were involved just didn't have the time to get down in the weeds of each and every calculation you're gonna make.
Mike Wallace:So, for instance, there's an average estimation for the that you can apply to the dollars spent on airline flights. Right? Now we all know that we fly exact miles, and we can get that mileage right from our tickets now. So you don't need to use that estimation anymore. But but now I'm getting into work with clients like Merits and Aramark where we're literally on the edge of where the math needs to be.
Mike Wallace:The Merits is a large events producer. They do events all over the world. Events have massive footprints. And if your merits, you're trying to organize tens of thousands of people coming to a city, and you're thinking about the airline travel, the bus travel, the hotel rooms, And you can't possibly get 10,000, hotel rooms all calculated by square footage. You take a rough estimate.
Mike Wallace:But the world has not accept accepted a a common estimate yet on this on a typical hotel room. And so that's where groups industry groups and general specialists in this area will get together, and I'll talk about this. Well, the average hotel room in the world is like this. Right? And it's set up this way.
Mike Wallace:But think of the hotels you've stayed in. They're also very different. So to get an agreement on that is one thing, and then to start using that emissions factor is a whole another thing. Same thing with Aramark. They're getting into the weeds of food.
Mike Wallace:They are a food services company. Mhmm. So if you think about their latest impact report, they'll explain they're providing services to hospitals, universities, corporate campuses. And think about when you go into a cafeteria. You see all the packaged goods that are coming from Pepsi and Coke and Mars and others, those are pretty well documented and you can have a pretty good mathematics around it.
Mike Wallace:But then you go to over to the grill area where you're gonna use your protein and think about what's the average salmon's emissions factor. Right? Well, I caught it here. I moved it here. I then processed it like this, transported it here.
Mike Wallace:So that's in the weeds kind of detailed calculation. It's still not fully baked, and so that's some of these areas where we're really getting into the weeds. And it's an area where where accountants are gonna be needed. Mhmm. Well,
Adam Larson:it's a whole new level of, you know, looking at your supply chain. Because before, it's like, oh, I'm just taking this and sending it here and sending it there. There's my supply chain, but we're taking it all the way down and looking at all elements of that supply chain in a whole new fashion, which it adds a whole new a bunch a bunch of new numbers in. And like you said, not everything is standardized. So the one number can may come from this hotel chain, and this number may come from this place, this number we get from this place, and they they don't line up and you you're not having apples to apples in a sense.
Adam Larson:And so, how do you, like, how are we gonna get around that? Is it gonna take the world coming together and saying this is what we do? Or, you know, or or is there, like, country by country? Or how's how are we gonna get over that hump?
Mike Wallace:It's a bit of both. And, you know, you and I have known each other for a long time. There's a a constant churn in the standards world Yeah. And the evolution of standards and consolidation of standards and sometimes the sunsetting of certain standards. We've seen a great, you know, collaboration and alignment come about because of the IFRS Foundation and the ISSB.
Mike Wallace:So I'd recommend any of the listeners out there definitely wanna turn in turn into the ISSB and understand the standards that they're developing because they're being adopted by countries around the world. And in there, they will refer to things like the greenhouse gas protocol too. So there is an alignment. People aren't just making up something new and then saying, go do it however you want. There is already right now the WRI or the greenhouse gas protocol itself has a call for technical experts out.
Mike Wallace:So, again, the accountants need to be there. And maybe it's a call to IMA to get involved directly as an institution, but also to bring some of your best brains to that that working group. They need the resources. They're a nonprofit, and, you know, they need more people at the table. And we want to be there figuring out this math with them.
Mike Wallace:We don't want someone who's never worked in a certain industry to be figuring this out for us. And so you'll see different industries have come together, like the cement industry came together and worked with WRI to figure out better mathematics on the cement industry's issues. Who better to do that than the industry itself? Right?
Adam Larson:Yeah.
Mike Wallace:And then you're working with this multi stakeholder global organization to to do this. You then have some credibility when you when you use that math. There's still gonna be a lot of areas where we're estimating, and it's acceptable to estimate on things like this. You just need to explain it, and that's where you get into the the the accounting profession again. You know?
Mike Wallace:Like, what was my methodology, my logic for doing this, and why did I do it this way? So what you'll often see in which accountants and consultants will often do is benchmark. And so you're working with any particular company or if you're a company doing this yourself, there is actually a lot of data out there. You should look at your peers, especially your European peers in your sector because they're generally 5 to 7 years ahead of us on their adoption and disclosure of this kind of information. So those are some resources that you might wanna think about as you do this.
Adam Larson:Definitely. For sure. I mean, it's it's really important to see what your peers are doing and and connect and join associations and get connected and get your, get out there and see what other people are doing to make sure that we're we're all connected. And I and as you were saying those things, I can't help but wonder what about the small to medium sized businesses who might not have the financial capitals? Those those examples that you gave, you know, who are able to track those things down to that smaller level?
Adam Larson:What can they do to kinda get started on this path? You know, when they they may not have the resources that the bigger companies have to to to calculate these things to that level, You know, are there some things they can do to get started and and and be ahead of the curve?
Mike Wallace:Yeah. So, one thing that works in the US is that most of our utility companies here can give you a carbon equivalent to your utility bill. It might very well be on your utility bill. And if it's not, you can call them up and say, I'm a customer. This is what I need.
Mike Wallace:That's gonna give you your scope 2 number, same with natural gas that you might be bringing in. So the utilities in America are are fairly adept at this now. So that's gonna help you there. The scope 1 are all the things that you turn on inside of your own operation that then combust. And that could mean the vehicles you own too.
Mike Wallace:So maybe you wanna electrify your feet your fleet. There might be money out there through tax incentives to start to do that. There might be other ways to electrify some of your equipment around the the company. Alright. So and there are tax incentives out there, especially for small, medium enterprises.
Mike Wallace:So there are resources like that. We, as part of Persephone's plan and when when I met Kantaro, he told me at the very beginning, he said, well, here's what we're going to do as a company. We're gonna build the tool, but we're also gonna develop in Persephone Academy because we wanna teach everyone how to do this. That academy will be evergreen because these regulations are always changing. And so the academy is there not only for our clients, our customers, but for the entire world.
Mike Wallace:And I was I was surprised by that. That's a really interesting model. Just give it away. But his vision is to democratize carbon accounting, and that's how we do part of it. The other thing he said is I'm gonna build a free version of this tool.
Mike Wallace:So about 8 weeks ago, we released the free version. Anybody in the world can log in and start putting their data into the cloud, and it's data that you would have at your own desk if you're running a company. Right? You might have to talk to a few people and package it up and put it in manually into the initially, but you're gonna have now a cloud based system of record that allows you to keep track of it throughout the year. You know, think about us personally.
Mike Wallace:We would do our taxes. Do we do it every month? No. Do it at the very end of the year. That's typically the way humans behave, and that's understandable.
Mike Wallace:Yeah. But at least having it into a in a cloud and not in a spreadsheet that you have to go find and wonder out, like, did I do all the calculations right? Have they changed? Everything that's all the math, you're taking care of in the cloud. So I highly recommend, you know, any accountant out there listening, tap tap into it, test it out, see how it works because you're gonna have some customers that are gonna need this kinda help.
Adam Larson:Yeah. They definitely are. So, you know, I encourage everybody to check the the link in the show notes to check out Persephone and and see what they're doing and connect with Mike, for sure. And maybe we can talk a little bit, about some of this education that you're doing, you know, that, how are we how can we because it it seems like as an accountant and actually any profession, it seems like we keep having to add on all these new things we have to know. And especially for an accounting and finance team, you know, they're already seemingly overworked in many of the other tasks that they have.
Adam Larson:So as we're recognize the importance of carbon accounting, how do you how do you talk to your, you know, your business, your your, your team and say, this we need to add this and this is why. Like, what is the why that we're saying to that team, making sure that we're getting buying from our, constituents?
Mike Wallace:I I think what we see in the field generally over the course of the 20 years that ESG has been here and I've been working at it is that you deem a multistakeholder team, across different functions that comes together and works on these issues, the broader ESG landscape. You're gonna need HR for DE and I type of issues. You're gonna want facilities for energy related issues, health and safety for how you care for your people, etcetera. And in today's situation, fast forward to carbon accounting and Persephone, it was interesting because when I I've gotten to know these associations over the course of my career. But when I land here at Persephone, it's also the same time that the SEC's proposed rule is out, you know, and being drafted, and it's going to be announced.
Mike Wallace:But we also have developments in other parts of the world that are also on US companies' minds around carbon accounting and disclosure. There certainly was that year's worth of pressure from investors that pushed them to be thinking about it. So you come into a company in today's status, you might very well, for carbon accounting through a software solution, you're probably gonna want your chief information officer or your chief technology officer involved because we're gonna want to access and make automation happen with outside systems and internal systems so that we can just pull this data immediately into the platform.
Adam Larson:You're
Mike Wallace:gonna want finance. Chief financial officer is the one that buys most of the stuff for the company. That's where a lot of the initial estimates can come from. Where did you spend on these things? I can then equate into a c o two equivalent for you pretty quickly.
Mike Wallace:Also, the CFO is the person that pays for software, and they're familiar with different software programs. Now they would appreciate Persephone because we're aimed at that accountant financial professional. So as we go through all of this, we start to do webinars and in person programs with the likes of Financial Executives International, AICPA, National Association of Corporate Directors, financial or the Society For Corporate Governance Professionals, and a couple of others. And these are all c suite risk finance types of people, right, including the legal teams who are working on whether or not to disclose under these certain regulatory schemes that are out there. And what happens is we start doing more and more of these programs because the demand is pretty great, and we're getting hundreds of attendees to these sessions, and we start to then formalize that into packages.
Mike Wallace:Now we've got probably 50 different programs we've put on, with these associations, probably train close to 10,000 people. And in most of those cases, almost every course, the association itself is giving that professional 1 hour continuing education credit. So that's how the field has evolved. Just the last 3 years that I've been here at Persephone, that's just now happening. Just like my title is new, there's a new title called ESG controller.
Mike Wallace:Right? That wasn't around a few years ago. And now there's actually several different variations of that title, and you can look on LinkedIn at some of the posts we're making. We've done studies on this with FEI and digging into what does the profession need, what do professionals want to know. And if you're in the different seat around the c suite, like board level, you don't need to know how to calculate a footprint, but you need to understand that there are standards and regulations out there.
Mike Wallace:And then in 2024, your company should at least be at par with your industry. Right? You don't wanna be lagging too much. You might not wanna be too far out in advance. C suite, CFO, CEO, chief risk officer, chief information officer, chief general counsel, all of these professionals need to understand their role when it comes to carbon accounting and disclosure.
Adam Larson:Yeah. Because they're they're the ones who are gonna be held accountable when the, when the public comes and asks, hey. Why aren't you doing this when your customer comes and says, hey. What's your what's your what's the number? What what's the information?
Adam Larson:And if you're not ready for that, you might end up losing customers and there's so many other risks involved if you're not keeping up or at least getting close to where it's at. And I can I can understand what with what you're saying and how important that is for these c suite level people to be to be on top of that?
Mike Wallace:Yep. I mean, I got a case in point where we had, you know, the SEC proposed rules in its public comment, period. We're doing what we do at Persephone and doing a lot of this education and outreach. We have a general counsel that wants to talk about the rule, So we talk about the rule and where it might go. We actually have Christina Wyatt and Emily Pierce on the team, both from the SEC, so two amazing experts.
Mike Wallace:Christina actually held the pen and wrote that rule, right, the original form of it. And Emily was the international affairs liaison for the SEC, so she's out in the world talking to all the other regulators, feeding back to Christina and figuring out, like, what's the best way to align this so that we don't put too much burden on on companies. Mhmm. But, also, the SEC is looking out for the investors' interest. So we we need comparable, assurable, reliable, timely data.
Mike Wallace:Right? Now, interestingly, this general counsel comes to us and says, you know, this is what we do. We're a medical company. We supply to all the big hospitals and others and not so sure that we really need to do this right now. And given our size, maybe it's necessary, maybe it's not.
Mike Wallace:Talk to them about the SEC rule, not knowing when it's gonna actually come out. And they're they just go, you know, well, we're just gonna wait and see. We'll see what happens. Right? In the meantime, they're international, so there are are business things happening, and we explained to them the CSRD in in Europe and developments in Asia where you also have market share.
Mike Wallace:Well, about 3 months later, the UK is National Health Service because the UK has got its own rules. Right? And they're telling all of their own departments in the UK government, you will go out and procure in a responsible way and towards climate goals that the country has set. An RFP comes out from the UK's National Health Service to we don't know how many medical equipment companies, but that company we talked to got that RFP. And right in the center of the RFP is this nice little box that just says, fill in your scope 1, 2, and 3, and explain how you got the numbers.
Mike Wallace:Mhmm. Now you're at a competitive situation. You're holding that RFP. You might have 4 or 5 or 10 people that are competing with you. Right?
Mike Wallace:And when I know when I've ever responded to an RFP, I wanna dot every I and cross every t and put my best foot forward. So I'm gonna give you the best price, best delivery time, highest quality product, my best team, and now I gotta give you my carbon information. So that company came racing back to us. They actually sent us that RFP, and then we found it online. It's a public document because it comes from the National Health Service.
Adam Larson:Wow.
Mike Wallace:I don't know how many others received it. I don't know how they all responded. And I'm also curious about the NHS's, you know, receipt of those RFPs, what they're doing with it. But that's that's the future. I've never seen that in the 30 years I've been at this.
Adam Larson:Wow.
Mike Wallace:I've never seen that type of RFP out there and go public. It's just a good fortune that we could see it because it was a public agency out of out of the United Kingdom.
Adam Larson:That is amazing. And if you're not preparing now, when those RFPs come, it's not like something you can just throw together in, like, a a week or so. Because usually RFPs don't have a long shelf that you need to get them out sooner than later. And so if you're not ready, it doesn't it's not something you can just turn around in, like, a day
Mike Wallace:or 2. Right. Now imagine there's gonna be someone that responds to that and says, here's my scope 1, 2, and 3. Here's my entire climate report and strategy. And, by the way, I had it assured.
Mike Wallace:Right?
Adam Larson:Oh, wow.
Mike Wallace:Now you're receiving that RFP, and you're like, I got 10 competitors to deal with here. I'm gonna look at all of them and see which you know, stack them up, and then I'm gonna figure out which one I'm gonna pick. It's amazing where this is going. Right? Mhmm.
Mike Wallace:Now we received these RFPs too. We're a carbon accounting company, but some of those are big clients. You see them on our website. They've made commitments. And in their own RFP process to us, we have to answer those questions, but we're set up to do that.
Mike Wallace:I mean, we're gonna walk the talk. We're a carbon accounting company.
Adam Larson:Yeah.
Mike Wallace:But the other interesting thing for, like, a health care system like that is you might put that RFP out, and you might say to 100 suppliers, we are committed to net 0. Therefore, you need to be because everyone's someone scope 3. So whatever you're doing is gonna affect my footprint. Right? Please go measure your footprint.
Mike Wallace:Those 100 suppliers, how do you know how they're doing it? There are free tools from UK's Defra, which is the equivalent of EPA. There's a free tool from the EPA. All the calculations are are close, but they're not the exact same. They might be one supplier might use a consultant.
Mike Wallace:1 supplier might use an intern from a university. One supplier might just be doing the math on their own in the back of a napkin. You wouldn't know unless you actually instructed them to use the same approach.
Adam Larson:Mhmm.
Mike Wallace:And instructed them to then also get it verified. That's where we're going. I've I've witnessed it 3 or 4 times in my career around different environment health and safety and quality and ESG issues. We're definitely going at this point of, like, fill in the 3 simple boxes. I want numbers.
Mike Wallace:I don't want lengthy qualitative statements. Numbers, it's 2024, and the greenhouse gas protocol's been around for 25 years. You at least have to know scope 1 and 2. Yeah. You don't know scope 1 and 2 by now.
Mike Wallace:You don't have an accounting issue. We might have a governance issue. We need to talk to management.
Adam Larson:Yeah. And what if you're, what if you're a listener in this podcast, you're an accounting finance professional, and you're like and and you look at your organization and you're like, we don't have a scope 1 and 2 defined. What are we doing? How would you approach your CEO, your CFO, and all those folks and saying, hey, guys, We need to get on the ball. Like, what what would that message be to them?
Mike Wallace:There's 2 stages of benchmarking that I've always done for clients over the years. It's 1 stage 1 is look at your peer set, your sector. Right? I think that RFP is gonna come out because national that National Health Service needed some new things, and they're shopping for things in a certain sector, so the industry. Right?
Mike Wallace:So when you look at your own industry, don't just look at American peers. Look at European peers and look at Asian peers. You're gonna see a lot of differences. Right? The next thing you do is you look at your biggest customers.
Mike Wallace:If NHS is my customer, I would be monitoring all the public statements they're making about the future and where they wanna go. If they're gonna go carbon neutral, it's gonna affect me because I'm their one of their biggest suppliers. I better get my ducks in a row. And so if you're really focused on customer service and if the customer is always right, look at your top 10 customers and benchmark them. See which sort of commitments they've made.
Mike Wallace:And if you have the time to, maybe expand it to the top 20. Right? And and then if you have more time, look at what the industry associations are doing that you're selling into to see what the associations are telling their members because, you know, this is a ripple effect. This is this stuff rolls downhill. You know?
Adam Larson:It really does. And I I think it's just more and more important now to just be on top of that and connect with organizations like yours and and making sure that your organization is is ahead of the game to as the world is rapidly changing, and we need to make sure that we're on top of it so that we can be best for our our industries, be best for our customers, and best for the planet as well. It's it's super important now.
Mike Wallace:Yeah. We're we're the the game has changed tremendously. And even though we've got this, you know, political situation going on here with the election on the horizon and the SEC rule in limbo right now, US Chamber's suing California for their rule rules, and suing the chamber. But that doesn't really matter. If you're doing international business, which there really isn't anyone that's not doing international business Yeah.
Mike Wallace:There will inevitably be an important customer that comes to you and says, I know my footprint, but I need to know your footprint. Please tell me you can figure this out. I like our partnership. I like our relationship. You've been a great supplier, but, you know, it's been 5 years, and it's time for me to go out for an RFP and get bids.
Mike Wallace:And I wanna see if you're capable. That's happening.
Adam Larson:It is. Well, Mike, I really appreciate you coming back on the count, man. It's always wonderful to talk with you, and we love having you on and hearing your insights in this area. And just, thank you so much again for coming on the podcast.
Mike Wallace:Always a pleasure, Adam. Thank you, and thank you to IMA for letting us be with you today.
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