Winter ‘24 Release: Net Zero Cloud
The details of Salesforce’s upcoming Winter '24 release have been revealed and it’s a particularly packed update for Net Zero Cloud.
With regulatory guidelines set for change in both the USA (SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules) and Europe (The EU’s European Sustainability Reporting Standards) it is crucial that your carbon accounting system can keep up with the pace of change, while offering constant innovation and scope for efficiency and accuracy.
Below we summarise the key changes, and how they can help your sustainability team.
Carbon Accounting
Document Data with Intelligent Document Reader
The Intelligent Document Reader, powered by Amazon Textract, will save users time and manual effort by helping pull in data from uploaded documents like utility bills.
The Intelligent Document Reader will make uploading documents in Net Zero Cloud more efficient, more accurate and ensure an auditable log of energy usage is recorded.
Emission Factors from Net Zero Marketplace
This is for the US only at this point, but providers will now be able to publish emissions factors across geographies, emissions types, and other needs that an organization might have using Net Zero Markeplace.
This means organisations in the US will be able to access and manage a wider range of Emission Factors suited to their reporting needs, with a simple CSV upload. If you can’t get your Emission Factor via the Marketplace, fear not it is still possible to use custom Emission Factors in Net Zero Cloud.
Enhance Carbon Accounting with Custom Fuel Types
Whilst Net Zero Cloud already accommodates for most fuel types, it doesn’t account for all and so with this release there will now be the ability to add custom fuel types in case your company uses an unusual fuel type.
You will be able to add a conversion factor for the custom fuel type, its source, and destination unit of measure.
Decarbonization Strategy
Allocate Energy Attribute Credits to Manage Renewable Energy
This new feature will allow you to associate Energy Attribute Certificate (EAC) credits to your stationary assets. EAC’s are the official documentation to prove renewable energy consumption. Each EAC represents proof that 1 MWh of renewable energy has been produced and added to the grid). Increasing your renewable energy use to power stationary assets will reduce your Scope 2 emissions.
Manage Your Decarbonization Strategy using Programs and Outcome Management
This comes as part of a wider update to Programs and Outcome Management within Salesforce, but offers Net Zero specific functionality. Plan and track both internal carbon reduction and wider ESG improvement projects, while accessing measurable and actionable insight.
Reporting and Assessments
Data in Social and Governance Reports
You can already report on Employee Demographic Information and Economic Performance, but with the latest release you will be able to capture Employment Compensation Information, Care Program Performance and Monetary Loss for Incidents in your Organisation. It’s evidence of the continued extension of ESG reporting capability in Net Zero Cloud.
Copy Disclosure Responses from Previous Years
Using the Disclosure and Compliance Hub you can now use previous years disclosure responses as a template for the new year. This will enable accuracy and quick, efficient creation of disclosure reporting for businesses where answers would replicate year-to-year, super helpful especially as Net Zero Cloud now provides out of the box templates for GRI, CDP, and SASB report creation.
Conduct Materiality Assessments
Net Zero Cloud now offers businesses the opportunity to implement stakeholder views on the product or service being produced and provided by the company through conducting double materiality assessments.
The ability to manage double materiality assessments is crucial given the upcoming SEC and ESRS requirements.
This will help to identify areas of risk to businesses and opportunities for making a positive impact on the environment and society. Being able to set up surveys to gather stakeholder feedback on environment, social, and governance (ESG) topics is the first step in defining corporate social responsibility (CSR) and ESG strategies which is a crucial step to getting a business nearer to their Net Zero goal.
CRM Analytics for Net Zero Cloud
Guided Set-up for CRM Analytics
The new and easy guided set up for CRM Analytics app for Net Zero Analytics ensures configuration that can track your Net Zero activities and create an app with dashboards which can be personalised. Businesses can get access to valuable insights on their emissions data through the prebuilt dashboards in the app. Visualising your data is powerful and can fasten your journey to Net Zero.”
Plan for more impactful DEI initiatives using Pay Gap and Workforce representation insights
The DEI Insights dashboard will be updated to include analytics visualization to identify your organisation's pay gap and workforce representation across various parameters already offered, like gender, ethnicity, and disability. “This will enable our clients to use their data to assess diversity in their organisation and help them build a more inclusive work environment.”
Actionable insight with Impact Analysis of Forecasted Emissions
A new dashboard is being added to Net Zero Analytics called the Emissions Forecast and What-If Analysis dashboard. It will give the capability to show businesses actual and forecasted carbon emissions based on specific years and locations.
The What If Analysis feature will help to predict efficiencies by using planned sustainability metrics and visualise potential outcomes to analyze their impact on total carbon emissions. Using this new dashboard will help clients compare the current KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for emissions with KPIs for previous periods to track the progress of their sustainability business practices and how to move forward.
