Automated Carbon Tracking Designed for Growing Businesses

Carbon accounting is the measurement of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions your business produces across operations, energy use, and supply chain. The result is your carbon footprint: a quantified, structured picture of where your emissions come from and how significant each source is. For any business serious about sustainability, it is the starting point for everything else – targets, reductions, reporting, and credible conversations with customers and investors.

The challenge for most growing businesses is working out how to calculate their carbon footprint without dedicating significant internal resources to data collection, calculation, and reporting. Novata Carbon Navigator is built to solve exactly that problem – automating the parts of carbon accounting that eat time and introducing structure where most businesses currently have none.

What Scope 1, 2, and 3 actually mean

Carbon emissions are organised into three scopes, each covering a different part of a business's footprint. Understanding the distinction matters because they require different data, have different levels of complexity, and carry different weight depending on your sector and your stakeholders.

Scope 1: direct emissions

Emissions from sources your business owns or controls directly – fuel combustion in your vehicles, gas heating in your facilities, on-site production processes.

Scope 2: purchased energy

Emissions from the electricity and heat your business buys and uses. Indirect, but directly tied to your energy consumption and the carbon intensity of your energy supplier.

Scope 3: value chain emissions

All other indirect emissions – from your supply chain, business travel, employee commuting, waste, and the use and disposal of your products. Often the largest portion of a business's footprint.

For businesses in food, agri, and hospitality, Scope 3 emissions – particularly those from agricultural supply chains, packaging, and food waste – typically represent the majority of the total footprint and can be difficult to get measurements on. Starting with your Scope 1 and 2 emissions can save time and effort in reporting, and we can help our clients to identify the elements of their Scope 3 emissions that are mature enough to include, as well as create a plan for some of the more complex elements.

Where growing businesses get stuck

A growing business faces a specific version of the carbon accounting challenge. The data exists – energy bills, supplier invoices, travel records, waste logs – but it sits across multiple systems, in multiple formats, owned by multiple people. Pulling it together manually for a carbon calculation is time-consuming, inconsistent, and difficult to repeat year on year without significant effort.

The result is that many businesses either start a free trial with a provider who increases prices in the second year, once all data is in (creating a degree of lock-in), pay for a product that is disproportionate to their needs, or never start and feel competitors have an advantage. None of these outcomes serve the business well as there has either been a waste of time, a waste of money or a mixture of the two. 

The data your business needs for carbon accounting already exists. The challenge is collecting it consistently, calculating it correctly, and producing a result that holds up to scrutiny.

What Novata Carbon Navigator automates

Novata Carbon Navigator is an end-to-end carbon accounting platform. It handles the four stages of carbon accounting – collect, calculate, report, and act – in a single system, with automation built in at the data collection stage to reduce the manual burden on your team.

Energy and facility tracking

Track energy consumption across your facilities directly in the platform – structured, consistent, and ready for calculation.

Spend data and supplier mapping

Import spend data and use AI-assisted categorisation to automatically map purchases to supplier categories and emissions factors.

API and bulk import

Connect directly to your internal systems via API, or import data in bulk – reducing manual data entry and the errors that come with it.

Travel, waste, and commuting

Track business travel, employee commuting, and waste alongside energy and spend – covering the full picture of your Scope 1, 2, and 3 footprint.

From data to calculation to audit-ready output

Once data is collected, Novata Carbon Navigator converts it into GHG calculations instantly. You can see emissions broken down by location or activity type, review your results, and download your data in a format ready for reporting. Every step is backed by an investor-grade audit trail – traceable from input to output – so your carbon data holds up to scrutiny whether you are responding to a customer questionnaire, a lender request, or a formal reporting requirement.

The four stages of carbon accounting on Novata

1. Collect

Gather emissions data from your facilities, suppliers, travel, waste, and commuting – using AI tools, APIs, and bulk import to automate as much of the collection as possible.

2. Calculate

Novata converts your data into Scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG calculations instantly – applying recognised emissions factors and giving you a clear, structured view of your footprint by source and location.

3. Report

Generate disclosure-ready outputs backed by a full audit trail. Your carbon data is reusable across multiple reports – so you are not rebuilding from scratch every time a reporting requirement lands.

4. Act

Use your data to set emissions targets, track progress, and identify reduction opportunities. Targets can be aligned to science-based pathways, including SBTi and net-zero goals.

Where ESG Made Easy comes in

Novata Carbon Navigator handles the data collection and calculation. ESG Made Easy works alongside your business to make sure you understand what you need to report, why each element of your footprint matters, and what actions to prioritise based on your results. The platform gives you the numbers – we help you know what to do with them.

For a growing business, this combination means carbon accounting becomes something your team can manage and maintain – not a project that requires a specialist every time it needs to be updated. The platform scales with your business, and the insight you build year on year becomes increasingly valuable as reporting expectations rise.

Start tracking your carbon footprint with the right tools and the right support

We work with businesses in food, agri, hospitality, and manufacturing to set up and get the most from Novata Carbon Navigator – from data collection through to a clear picture of their carbon footprint and a plan for what to do next.