Thea: Supply Chain Carbon Analysis Extension

面对气候变化和生物多样性丧失，越来越需要私营部门参与环境管理和监测。国家和国际努力支持了碳信用额市场的早期发展，使排放者能够通过投资于证明有能力固碳的项目来抵消排放。此外，投资者要求公司在董事会层面考虑环境、社会和治理（ESG）因素的压力越来越大。如果不可能减少排放或环境影响，组织可能会寻求自愿抵消，以减少其整体足迹。在英国，这通常包括改善自然资产，如泥炭地，或创造新的林地。然而，鉴于决策中固有的许多权衡以及目前的低水平监管，对于什么是合理的投资存在一些模糊不清的地方。例如，大面积种植非本土树种是固碳的好方法，但对生物多样性和本土生态系统来说可能是可怕的。EOLAS Insight正在开发工具，支持土地管理者做出决策，以最大限度地优化其自然资产的创收潜力。通过遵循自然资本方法，为自然赋予货币价值，我们可以更好地理解可持续增长并进行权衡。目前，人工智能、卫星图像和地面数据收集被用于测量和分类自然资产，并寻找恢复地点。通过扩展EOLAS目前的工具组合，该项目将为寻求减少排放和供应链决策影响的组织创造一个新的高度创新的服务。该工具将使用户能够根据新设施或资源开采等决定在地理空间上评估环境变化，并提供碳影响估计数。如果需要，用户将与现有项目联系起来，这些项目可以抵消决策的一些影响，例如泥炭地恢复或新的原生林地计划。通过为决策者提供更多的见解，该项目将允许在新项目的规划阶段充分考虑碳。这将允许环境规划与早期项目财务规划一起进行，并预先确定环境缓解方法。因此，该工具将支持供应链的脱碳，并促进基于健全，标准化和透明的环境原则的组织净零过渡。

In the face of climate change and biodiversity loss there is an ever increasing need for private sector participation in environmental management and monitoring. National and international efforts have supported the early developments of markets for carbon credits, allowing emitters to offset emissions by investment in projects which demonstrate the ability to sequester carbon. Additionally there is increasing pressure from investors for companies to consider the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors of decisions at board level.Where it is not possible to reduce emissions or environmental impacts organisations may look to voluntary offsetting to reduce their overall footprint. In the UK this generally includes improvement to natural assets such as peatlands, or creation of new woodland. There is however some ambiguity on what constitutes a sound investment, given the many trade-offs inherent in decision making, and current low levels of regulation. For example large plantations of non-indigenous tree species are a good way to sequester carbon, but can be terrible for biodiversity and indigenous ecological systems.EOLAS Insight are developing tools which support land managers in making decision to best optimise the revenue creating potential of their natural assets. By following Natural Capital approaches, which assign a monetary value to nature, we can better understand and make trade-offs around sustainable growth. Artificial Intelligence, satellite based imagery and ground based data collection are currently used to measure and classify natural assets, and to look for sites for restoration.By extending the current portfolio of tools at EOLAS this project will create a new and highly innovative service for organisations looking to reduce the emissions and impacts of their supply chain decisions. The tool will allow the user to geospatially assess changes to the environment based on decisions such as new facilities or resource extraction, and provide estimates on the carbon impacts. If required, the user will then be linked to existing projects which could offset some of the impacts of the decision such as peatland restoration, or new native woodland schemes.By providing more insight to decision makers the project will allow carbon to be considered fully during the planning phase of new projects. This will allow for environmental planning alongside early project financial planning, and environmental mitigation methods to be defined up front. As such the tool will support the decarbonisation of supply chains and facilitate organisational Net Zero transitions based on sound, standardised and transparent environmental principles.