Wollemi replaces spreadsheets with AI emissions reporting tool

Wollemi, a new entrant in the environmental technology sector, has launched its inaugural solution for the measurement and reporting of emissions from land and agricultural investments. This launch responds to the growing global mandate for emissions disclosure, offering a specialised tool aimed at navigating the complexities of environmental impact reporting in an evolving regulatory landscape.

Wollemi wants to make emission disclosures for big businesses accurate and easier

Wollemi, which is co-founded by Sam Sneddon, John Mottram, and Fang Chen, is coming onto the scene as countries and regions intensify efforts to legislate disclosures in this area.

The Wollemi system aims to replace traditional methods, like Excel spreadsheets and external consultants, with its SaaS platform. It provides real-time, verifiable, audit-grade analysis of investments or loans in land or agriculture.

It does this by combining private and public data, employing proprietary emissions factors to provide precise, actionable metrics.

“We service large portfolio owners of agricultural assets and that could be large corporations or financial services companies,” Sam Sneddon, co-founder and CEO of Wollemi, said in an interview with SmartCompany in Orange.

Wollemi was one of several cleantech startups that took part in SparkLabs Cultvi8’s most recent accelerator program, and was in Orange as part of its 2023 showcase.

“What we’re doing is we’re responding to this global and local regulatory push to report and disclose climate risk.”

Machine learning and AI are also utilised for filling data gaps and ensuring real-time updates as underlying data changes.

“The more farm data we have, the more accurate our models become. So we need to ensure that whoever provides that data is comfortable sharing their data and with the way that we’re using it. We’re very mindful of that,” Sneddon said.

“But if we have a model or a calculation, we can actually kick out where there are machine learning type elements and replace that with the actual data.”

Rising regulatory pressure

According to Sneddon, an estimated $2.4 billion is annually spent on measuring climate risks — including emissions — across Australia, the US and Brazil.

Sneddon highlighted the difficulty companies face in scaling their ability to accurately measure greenhouse gas emissions linked to financed activities at the asset level. She said this has become more pertinent than ever with regulatory requirements increasing.

The surge in regulatory pressure for accurate emissions reporting in the past two years has been growing, with new requirements emerging or set to be implemented in Australia, Brazil, Japan, Canada, the US, Europe, and Singapore. This affects a wide range of institutions, including sovereign wealth funds, governments, investment banks, insurers, and asset managers, who must accurately report on agricultural and land investments worth trillions globally.

Fortunately, the world’s driving force behind this has been the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). The organisation has developed climate-related financial disclosure recommendations designed to help companies offer improved information to support market transparency.

This is also the standard to which Wollemi reports. Its platform addresses both emissions reporting and the quantification of climate risks from events like storms, floods, and droughts.

This is particularly pertinent considering the reported lack of standardised measurement processes in place, which requires expertise that is not readily available in the market.

“The carbon accounting space is really noisy. But we haven’t seen anybody who’s been able to achieve what we’re doing specifically for land and agriculture. And that’s taking machine learning and science-based to establish highly granular emissions management,” Sneddon said.

“It’s not just about the reporting, it’s also about how land owners and portfolio owners can actually manage risk.”

According to Sneddon, she and her co-founders have diverse skills that have allowed them to achieve this. Sneddon is the sustainability steering committee co-chair of the IoT Alliance Australia.

Mottram is the former head of food and agriculture at Swiss Re and the former head of agricultural commodities at ANZ Bank. And Fang is the executive director of the UTS Data and Science Institute and is a member of the NSW Advisory Board on AI.

“Unless you’ve got the accurate measurements, you don’t know what you’re doing,” Sneddon said.

“So with the [current] pressure, not only from a disclosure perspective but actually from achieving decarbonisation effectively, you need to know what you’re working with. And you can’t just use high-level proxy information for that.”

A successful pilot with Suncorp Bank

Wollemi’s launch follows a successful risk management pilot with Suncorp Bank in the beef sector. And this seemed to be a good match because as Sneddon pointed out, a banker can’t loan out money in this sector if they can’t understand the risk attached.

“What we’re doing is not just about the disclosure and obeying the rules. It’s also about how you actually run a business and how effectively you price credit and risk,” Sneddon said.

According to Suncorp, its pilot with Wollemi significantly improved its Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) data quality score. This resulted in the reduction of Financed Emissions calculation at the farm level by 14-97%. The variance is reportedly down to the availability of data.

“That is really huge because as I mentioned, it’s not just about disclosure. It’s about managing, adaptation, mitigation, and importantly, even having a really helpful conversation with a farmer,” Sneddon said.

“When you go to them and say ‘this is what we have’ and it’s actually accurate, you can then have an insightful conversation about what the bank and farmer can do together.”

Heidi Aspinall, sustainability strategy manager at Suncorp Bank, noted that this improvement is crucial for the banking industry globally.

“Our experience with Wollemi has been exceptional,” Aspinall said.

“The banking industry – not just in Australia but around the world – has been searching for solutions to measure emissions from agriculture and land that enable the limitations of data availability to be navigated, and that can provide outputs that are transparent, verifiable and support effective risk management and decision making, as well as enable banks to comply with the rapidly evolving disclosure landscape.”

Next steps for Wollemi

Wollemi confirmed with SmartCompany that it recently closed its seed round for an undisclosed amount. It is also working towards a Series A in the next 12 months, with a view towards global expansion.

“The way that our system is built we can expand globally into other markets. And we’re starting to do that with beef production because it is a large contributor to greenhouse gases,” Sneddon said.

“When we look at the market size, there’s a natural flow from Australia to markets like Brazil and the US. So we’ve working quickly to expand into the US market and towards a Series A.”