So the way that Bend works, we take a transaction, and then match it with the best available 'emissions factor'. So, for example, if you purchase something at Starbucks, we match that transaction to the Starbucks specific emissions factor: https://bend.green/starbucks
Over 65% of total market cap is now covered by this sustainability data, and we aggregate that data, and use it to estimate the emissions for each transaction.
Of course there is a very long tail. So if you buy a coffee at a small coffee shop, we likely don't have that merchant-specific data. In those cases, we fall back to "Merchant Category Code" (MCC) emissions factors.
And finally, in some cases we have SKU-level data. E.g. we have an Amazon Business integration where we get the actual specific item data.
Long story short is we have surprisingly high merchant coverage — well north of 60%. We have pretty limited SKU-level coverage today, but expanding. And then we always have an MCC fallback. The larger the merchant, the more likely we are to have good data for them (we're trying to grow coverage for mid market and smaller businesses with Bend).
This means that you can get a pretty detailed, totally automated sense of your emissions hotspots.
haha indeed — but actually, this is kind of the point — purchasing carbon removal credits is just like any other business purchase, but with a negative emissions factor. When you purchase carbon removal credits on Bend, it shows up as just another transaction, but with negative CO2e.
We treat payroll as zero emissions. The responsibility boundary of a company doesn't include the personal consumption decisions of employees. The spend-based approach makes this pretty straightforward — if the company is buying, those are company emissions. If an individual is buying, those are individual emissions.
Not trying to put you in a 'gotcha' situation, but GHGP Scope 3 Category 7 (Employee Commuting) is entirely related to employee actions outside the bounds of the company. Commutes and also home-office energy choices (heating, cooling, use of renewable energy credits, ...) are typically chosen (and paid for) by individuals outside of work but are components of an organization's value chain.
ya, that's right, good point. For complete GHGP inventory reporting, customers need to estimate employee commuting separately (and we're happy to help with that; it's usually a pretty straightforward calculation, though gathering the employee info takes some doing).
Setting the GHGP aside, my own personal opinion about how we interpret GHGP data is that it's important to make a clear distinction between upstream emissions and downstream emissions. For example, 'use of sold products' (Category 11) is also not something you can determine from spend data. But I'd argue that 'use of sold products' is a very different thing than upstream emissions (even though they're all lumped under Scope 3).
Commuting is a less clear-cut case, but I think of commuting (that is paid for by employees) as more of a downstream emissions category.
Hi! Ya we only use full GHGP inventory data. Honestly, the hardest data to gather is clean transaction data! The Brex API returns relatively clean data. Other banks and financial institutions, via Plaid, often have pretty messy merchant and category info. If I had a magic wand, it's actually the spend data I'd focus on — super clean, itemized transaction data would be amazing.
We picked a price that opens up the addressable market beyond late stage and public companies.
As startups, you have an unfair advantage — it’s much easier to build good carbon habits early, vs. retooling your business after having already invested large amounts of capital in carbon-intensive practices and depreciating assets.
We do offer enterprise pricing for API access for larger customers.
Yes, $100/month is our Startup pricing. Enterprise customers have very different needs and multiple bank connections to manage, so we approach those case-by-case.
