The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) is currently underway in Glasgow, Scotland. COP26 convenes heads of state, business leaders, and members of civil society to collaborate on solutions to limit global warming. In the spirit of developing solutions to these global climate issues, and Columbia Climate School’s growing presence at the conference, Columbia News recently highlighted how eight Columbia startups use green technology to benefit the planet.
One of these efforts is CoClear's Carbon Catalogue, a public, global database that visualizes company carbon footprints and provides recommendations for where companies can lower emissions. The tool tracks 866 products made by 145 companies around the world. Carbon Catalogue was developed by Christoph Meinrenken, Ph.D., Interim Program Director of Columbia’s M.S. in Information and Knowledge Strategy and Chief Data Scientist at CoClear, alongside CEO Sally Paridis and Chief Product Officer Erika Whillas.
A recent World Economic Forum report, “Net-Zero Challenge: The Supply Chain Opportunity,” utilized the tool to analyze opportunities for corporate supply chains to lower their emissions and align with the issues currently being discussed at COP26. “COP26 is naturally about the big, important solutions, from reforestation to renewables or carbon capture,” said Dr. Meinrenken. “What I liked about the WEF supply-chain report is that it complemented these big solutions by opening the door to what each individual consumer can do for the climate–namely in the purchasing choices we all make every day.”
Learn more about the M.S. in Information and Knowledge Strategy.