Workiva Carbon (formerly known as Sustain.Life)

"Calculate your carbon footprint, set science-based targets, and simplify climate disclosures with the most comprehensive sustainability management software on the market."

Source: sustain.life

Acquisition and Rebranding

In June 2024, Workiva, a global leader in financial and ESG reporting, acquired Sustain.Life, a fast-growing carbon management software platform, for approximately $100 million in June 2024. Sustain.Life was originally founded by Mike Hanrahan and a group of former Walmart executives. Following the acquisition, Workiva launched Workiva Carbon, integrating Sustain.Life's technology and expertise into their existing software platform. The platform quickly gained traction for its ability to help organizations measure and reduce their carbon emissions, offering tools for carbon accounting, sustainability management, and compliance with emerging environmental regulations.

The integration of Sustain.Life’s advanced carbon management tools into Workiva’s broader ESG and GRC platform marked a significant expansion of Workiva’s sustainability capabilities. The rebranded Workiva Carbon enables companies to calculate emissions, manage supplier data, set decarbonization targets, and streamline ESG reporting.

Sources: sustain.life, siliconrepublic.com

Key Features

Emissions Tracking
Workiva Carbon enables businesses to calculate and monitor their carbon emissions across Scope 1, 2, and 3. This covers direct emissions from owned or controlled sources, indirect emissions from the consumption of purchased electricity, and all other indirect emissions that occur in a company’s value chain. The platform uses real-time data from multiple sources, such as ERP systems and utility providers, and leverages externally validated emissions factors covering over 240 countries.

Target Setting and Net-Zero Management
The platform facilitates science-based target setting, allowing companies to align their decarbonization efforts with global climate objectives. Organizations can track their progress toward net-zero goals and assess the impact of various reduction pathways. This helps businesses create structured and accountable plans for emissions reduction.

Supply Chain Management
A unique feature of Workiva Carbon is its focus on the supply chain, where it offers tools for supplier engagement. Companies can create surveys for suppliers to gather crucial environmental data and integrate that into their emissions reporting. This enhances the visibility of emissions across the supply chain, enabling companies to assess risk and take actions to decarbonize their upstream and downstream operations​

Reporting and Compliance
Workiva Carbon simplifies compliance with global climate regulations such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), the SEC's climate disclosure rules, and California’s Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act (SB 253). It automates the process of aligning emissions data with these frameworks, ensuring that companies can produce audit-ready and consistent reports for investors, regulators, and other stakeholders.

Data Integration
Workiva Carbon allows seamless integration of emissions data with other business functions, including finance, accounting, audit, legal, and risk management. By connecting all these functions, the platform reduces errors associated with manual processes and enables cross-functional teams to collaborate using a unified data source, ensuring transparency and consistency across the entire organization.

Now that we've explored Workiva Carbon’s key features, it’s time to see how it all comes together in action. This quick introduction video will give you a closer look at how the platform streamlines carbon reporting and keeps everything organized, compliant, and easy to manage.

Validated Emissions Factor Library

A key feature of Workiva Carbon, inherited from Sustain.Life, is its Emissions Factor Library, which is now fully validated. This library provides businesses with reliable data to calculate their carbon emissions accurately across multiple sectors and geographies. Emissions factors are essential in determining the amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emitted per unit of activity, such as energy consumption, transportation, or manufacturing processes.

The Sustain.Life Emissions Factor Library ensures that companies can pull from thousands of externally validated emissions factors to cover a broad range of operations. The validation process ensures that all emissions factors are up-to-date and align with internationally recognized standards, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines and other respected environmental agencies.

Use Cases Across Industries

Manufacturing

Supply Chain Emissions Tracking: Create supplier engagement surveys to capture critical data from across the supply chain, enabling comprehensive Scope 3 emissions calculations.

Global Emissions Monitoring: Track greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions across facilities and locations using thousands of externally validated emissions factors covering 240+ countries and territories.

Decarbonization Planning: Set science-based targets, assess ESG risks across the supply chain, and evaluate decarbonization efforts.

Finance

ESG-Aligned Reporting: Automatically align emissions data to voluntary and mandated frameworks, creating audit-ready reports that meet regulatory requirements like the EU's CSRD and the SEC's climate rule.

Risk Assessment: Integrate carbon data with other business functions, including accounting and risk management, to assess climate-related financial risks.

Investment Portfolio Alignment: Use the platform's data integration capabilities to analyze and report on the carbon footprint of investment portfolios, aligning them with ESG criteria.

Retail

Scope 3 Emissions Management: Calculate and track emissions across the entire value chain, including those from products, transportation, and consumer use.

Supplier Engagement: Utilize supplier engagement surveys to gather data on sustainability practices and emissions from vendors.

Transparent Reporting: Create consistent disclosures for regulators, investors, and other stakeholders, enhancing transparency in sustainability efforts.

Energy

Emissions Inventory: Automatically calculate emissions inventories across Scopes 1, 2, and 3, crucial for an industry with significant direct and indirect emissions.

Regulatory Compliance: Meet the demands of evolving climate regulations specific to the energy sector, such as California's SB 253 and SB 261.

Net Zero Planning: Set and manage science-based targets for emissions reduction, visualize mitigation pathways, and track progress towards net zero goals

Sources: investor.workiva.com, esgtoday.com, workiva.com, esgdive.com

Expert Insights

"We’re delighted to work with Sustain.Life to offer carbon emissions measurement capabilities to our investors so they can actualize their commitment to taking meaningful climate action."

Edward Soffer, ESG Manager at Interactive Brokers

"There are ample opportunities across the sexual wellness value chain to improve environmental sustainability, and Sustain.Life helps us better identify, understand and mitigate our environmental impact."

Alexandra Fine, CEO at Dame

"Lots of brands don’t have a role dedicated to corporate sustainability, although it is increasingly more necessary each year. These companies need some sort of solution, whether that’s setting a foundation or corporate messaging or figuring out first steps and Sustain.Life can definitely help."

Alix Armour, Co-Founder and Head of Sustainability at Super73

"I found the Policy Builder extremely useful at our stage because having a template of a well-conceived policy helps in the standardization of new practices and ensure that written guidelines are best-in-class."

Jennifer Kaplan, Sustainability Manager at Miyoko's Creamery

Source: sustain.life

Pricing

If you’re interested in Workiva Carbon, the best way to learn more is by requesting a demo. During the demo, you’ll see how the platform works and how it can help with carbon accounting, emissions tracking, and reporting. Pricing is tailored to your company’s needs, so you can get more details by filling out the demo request form on the Workiva Carbon Demo Request Page.

Closing Insights

Workiva Carbon brings together advanced carbon management tools and seamless ESG reporting into a single, user-friendly platform. From tracking emissions across Scopes 1, 2, and 3 to managing supply chain data and ensuring compliance with complex regulations - all in one solution.

What stands out most is how Workiva Carbon doesn’t just focus on numbers—it simplifies the entire process, making sustainability reporting more accessible and collaborative for companies of all sizes. Whether you’re setting ambitious net-zero targets or just starting to get a handle on your emissions, Workiva Carbon seems like a great option to explore.