Tool Showcase Synthesis
Published August 2023
The investment community is facing a crisis.
A rapidly-growing number of investors are launching climate or ESG funds with commitments to net-zero or carbon reduction thresholds. This forces the questions: How does one prove that an investment has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and who is equipped to execute this work?
Few investment teams, especially in the Venture Capital space, have the resources or access to the necessary expertise to build an in-house climate impact assessment team. This dilemma has highlighted the critical need for tools and resources to help investors make more informed, methodologically-driven, data-backed decisions at a more affordable cost.
Project Frame’s Data and Tools Working Group, co-convened by Prime Coalition and World Fund, followed the call to evaluate the market of available software tools that investors can use to support their need to assess forward-looking GHG impact.
About the Tool Showcase
Project Frame’s first Tool Showcase, led by impact professionals for impact professionals, is meant to provide a general landscape overview of the strengths and opportunities the current market provides.
This is in no way structured or intended to be a competition between the tools or the software developers. Rather, we aim to illuminate the differences between the tools so that potential users can find the resource that is most appropriate for their unique needs.
The six tools were reviewed are:
We want to acknowledge that Prime Coalition, the convener of Project Frame, is a partner in the development of the CRANE tool. To avoid bias, we ensured that all reviewers confirmed no conflicts of interest before participating in the showcase.
We also want to acknowledge that we did include some tool developers in the Data & Tools Working Group to provide input on the general review process, but ensured guardrails so that no proprietary information or data was shared between developers.
*Note that the GHG & Impact Estimator Tool was previously listed under its old name, Score4Impact.
Key Takeaways
Overall excitement and optimism from the investment community.
Need for consistent terminology, such as how scopes and/or methodological terms are defined.
All tools were well-received, however some tools sacrificed depth for simplicity, while others required higher consultative involvement for outputs.
Access to auditable data is critical for transparency and building trust.
Tools require additional expertise to be fully effective, which can be cost prohibitive.
