Beware of Shadow ESG Software

Neno Duplan
6 min readMay 19, 2023

Not this type of circular economy

Figure1: Circular Self-Serving ESG Promotion

For many software companies, climate change management, and carbon accounting present a new opportunity, a new domain to be conquered. The upside looks huge; next frontier, next bubble. But it is more complicated. Instead of a single domain, there is a family of similar domains, each with its not-that-simple science interwoven with many unsynchronized reporting standards and sometimes competing regulations. Currently, there are no clear regulations or other drivers to normalize the playing field.

As investor demand for climate and ESG information soars, and with regulations finally appearing on the horizon from the US SEC, we are close to the high point of ESG hype. 2023 and 2024 are shaping up as critical years. Companies that want to stay abreast of regulatory requirements and meet investor demands must fully embrace ESG and get credible with their reporting to drive the climate agenda forward. But how do they select the right software to help them fulfill their corporate duty in this chaos of software options?

Scrape it to Make it

A recent article about “Obituary pirates” appeared in Wired magazine. These web companies scrape websites and publish versions of death notices, reaping commissions on flowers and gifts. One funeral home director takes issue with these…

--

--

Neno Duplan

Organize your environmental information in the cloud.