Michele Demers - Founder and CEO of Boundless Impact Research & Analytics

Carbon Accounting and Management Podcast

Michele is the Founder and CEO of Boundless Impact Research & Analytics, an industry research and impact analytics platform that provides quantitative and evidence-based research and data for investors, companies, and funds. Boundless offers Scope 1, 2 & 3 climate data and analysis and market intelligence across a growing number of emerging sectors that address significant environmental challenges.

From 2010-2013, she was Vice President at Foundation Source where she built a knowledge platform on best practices in philanthropy that was used by a network of 1200 family offices. From 2007-2008, Michele was Director of Communications for Humanity United, a philanthropic entity created by Pam Omidyar and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. She has been involved in the successful development of more than two-dozen startups and is regularly called upon for her innovative thinking about environmental impact measurement.

Michele advises and mentors several emerging clean tech companies and projects and has a proven track record in building new technologies, research methodologies, and companies. She has 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur, business executive, and impact measurement expert.

Michele is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and has a Master’s in International Relations and Communications from Boston University.

Michele Joins the Carbon Accounting and Management Podcast to Discuss:

• Life cycle assessments and best practices
• Setting up and defining boundaries
• Strategies for delivering information to clients
• Avoiding greenwashing
• Importance of using independent experts

Michele's Listener Takeaway: If there's only one thing that our guests take away from this conversation, what do you think it should be?

I would like everyone to understand that lifecycle assessment and like environmental impact measurement is not a 'nice to have.' It's an urgent 'need to have.' We're moving to a carbon price world where companies that are not doing honest reporting on their emissions and their environmental performance are going to now have negative balance sheets and stranded assets and a lot of problems. The companies that are thinking ahead, integrating renewable energy into their supply chains and value in their operations, purchasing and integrating sustainability strategies into products or ways of doing business into their work, they are the ones that are going to be the stocks to invest in. For investors, it would behoove them to not look at this lifecycle assessment and objective LCA data and things like that as something that's just nice to have, but something they absolutely must have in order to derisk an investment.

I would encourage people to be skeptical about the data that's being thrown out there. The data's either being greenwashed a lot way too often, or companies are saying, 'Hey, we've got really impressive emissions.' They're kind of bragging about a number of emissions that is really not very impressive. It's really when you're in the gigatons and megatons of emissions reduction that you're a game changing technology. If you are doing only tons or kilotons, it's not even worth mentioning, because you're not really making a difference. That's the one thing I've noticed, people are not aware of the kind of scale they need to achieve in order to be a game changer. There's an awful lot of folks out there that are doing a little bit, but they're not doing enough. The investors are really focused on the technologies that have gigaton and megaton emissions reduction potential, and I think that's great. Breakthrough Energy Ventures is one of them that actually has a target set. I think there's just a lot of education that investors need to do on how to measure and understand that and set targets for themselves.

Connect with Michele Demers on LinkedIn or at [e-mail], and learn more about the work being done at Boundless Impact at boundlessimpact.net or on LinkedIn.

Timestamps:

05:20 Passion for building new markets, impact measurement.

07:37 Transitioning to ESG carbon accounting.

10:36 Selecting KPIs.

14:25 LCAs measuring full product footprint for emissions.

18:44 ESG involving informed business decisions and integrity.

20:15 Independent expert reviews to ensure accurate environmental data.

27:02 Challenges to reduce GHG emissions.

35:56 Significance of lifecycle assessment to assess environmental impact.