As part of our ‘Pioneer spotlight’ series, we’re showcasing companies offering innovative solutions or products that support decarbonisation or help stop the climate crisis. We’re pleased to partner with Plan A, a carbon and ESG reporting pioneer on a mission to give businesses visibility on their carbon footprint.
In an attempt to better understand who they are and exactly what they are about, we sat down with and spoke with co-founder and CEO, Lubomila Jordanova! She answered several questions giving us some insight into the company. As always, Lubomila is extremely passionate about decarbonisation and her enthusiasm is key to the success of the business. We’d also highly recommend connecting with Lubomila on Linkedin if you are looking to follow people in the CleanTech space. Her posts are extremely insightful, and someone who I know a lot of people look up to in the sector.
What was the idea behind Plan A?
Early on, Lubomila and her co-founder Nathan Bonnisseau individually committed themselves to the battle against climate change and became involved in numerous activities. This was during a period when public debate on the subject was still in its infancy. When they first met in 2017, they had the ambition to combine their skills with Nathan, a communications specialist, and Lubomila, a finance expert.
Plan A was built on the concept that every business has the capacity to achieve a sustainable future. As a result, it believes that private firms are the most crucial instrument for driving reform decisively and sustainably. The company aims to help businesses along the way by providing an information-driven, science-based SaaS platform that can help it meet its CO2 reduction goals and enhance its ESG performance.
What’s the mission behind everything you do at Plan A?
Plan A’s goal is to decarbonise enterprises of all sizes all around the world. The firm plans to accomplish this through the application of science and technology. They have full-fledged scientific staff on product development since day one, which allows the team to not only adhere to internationally recognised techniques and standards but also to have a comprehensive understanding of what might decarbonise a specific industry or firm. With the help of these specialists, Plan A has designed a SaaS platform that can take any data from a company and transform it into environmental, social, and governance insights relating to emissions accounting, carbon reduction, sustainability analysis, and life cycle analysis.
The firm believes that making a company’s present carbon impact visible is insufficient. Instead, through over 1,000 decarbonisation remedies and operations, as well as a wide range of service providers and sustainability professionals, its platform actively assists enterprises in setting Paris Agreement-compliant net-zero goals and achieving them.
What Was the initial Product Offered?
Plan A has collaborated with a variety of sustainability stakeholders since its creation to better understand the significance data and scientific knowledge could play in the transformation. Originally, it sought to fill a financing need for sustainability projects that was quite evident. As a result, Plan A created a data-driven framework to direct funding to the projects with the most urgency, as determined by a custom algorithm.
Based on the observations, Plan A concluded that private enterprises were the most adaptable organisations to lead the transition. This was the turning moment in its strategy for creating the end-to-end decarbonisation system available to us today.
What Are Plan A’s Primary Drivers?
It is Plan A’s rigorous scientific approach that distinguishes them from the competition. The SaaS platform’s services were developed with scientists and adhere to the most current scientific standards and procedures. This is consistent with its strict decarbonisation-first strategy, which prioritizes emissions reductions. The company only offers compensation in the form of carbon offsets and also carbon removal certificates for emissions that are unavoidable or totally unremovable from your business.
When Was Their First Round of Funding and What are the Plans for That Funding?
The firm finished the Series A investment round in November 2021, with HV Capital and Keen Venture Partners investing $10 million. This was after its $3 million pilot round from Demeter, Coparion, and Softbank in April 2021. Plan A uses the majority of the investment to improve its SaaS platform’s calculation algorithm and machine learning abilities, as well as increase decarbonisation tooling and Scope 3 equations for diverse industries further expanding their reach into new sectors.
Moreover, it launched a new interconnected module to enable companies to evaluate, analyse, and report their ESG performance in accordance with current and future regulations. In addition to this, Plan A has improved existing software functionalities for detailed corporate carbon footprint auditing and AI-driven decarbonisation planning.
Plan A Awards and B Corp Certification
Plan A’s TÜV Rheinland accreditation, which is one of the industry’s best verification service providers, is the first thing to highlight here. It demonstrates that the company’s carbon footprint assessments and decarbonization plans are scientifically sound and adhere to the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard.
Furthermore, the company recently received B Corp certification, indicating that it meets some of the highest social and environmental criteria. With a score of 114.5 out of 200, it places well among its peers. Plan A is a responsible, value-driven, and sustainable technology firm, and B Corp accreditation is only the first step on its path to sustainability.
The firm has also won several honours, including Generali’s SME EnterPRIZE Award in 2021, The Europas Award in 2021, the Digital Top 50 Award in 2020, and the Boston Consulting Group’s Digital Ventures Social Impact Award also in 2020.
What Does the Future Hold for Plan A?
One of its key goals is to continue developing its software platform, expanding its capabilities, and bringing it to new sectors. To do so, Plan A needs to hire more people to increase its teams and develop worldwide, which requires the establishment of facilities in international hubs. As you can tell, Plan A is an ambitious company with large goals to achieve. They are currently working on achieving their customers to decarbonise their business at an incredible rate of 15 – 30%, which, is quite a big job for the type of client Plan A works with but it’s something they truly believe is possible with the product they have created.
We wanted to thank Lubomila and her team for the time taken to share some more insights into the organisation. We’re excited to see what the future holds for them and it’s interesting to see how technology & science can work hand in hand to achieve our decarbonisation goals. Thinking about taking action, and reducing your carbon emissions? Get in touch with Plan A directly!
