Methodology
Why we built on EPA WARM v16 instead of a proprietary waste model
It would have been faster to ship a simplified, in-house set of emission factors for waste. We didn't, because a proprietary model is a black box: clients can't cite it in a disclosure, and auditors can't verify it against anything public. EPA WARM v16 is published, peer-reviewed, and already trusted by the people who'll be reading the numbers ECOT produces. Building against it took longer, but it means every waste calculation in ECOT can be traced back to a methodology someone outside our company can independently check.
Methodology
Location-based vs. market-based Scope 2: why we don't pick one for you
The GHG Protocol allows two ways to account for purchased electricity: location-based, using the average emissions of the regional grid, and market-based, using the emissions of the specific energy contracts a company holds, including renewable energy certificates. They can produce very different numbers for the same organisation. Most tools quietly default to whichever is easier to calculate. ECOT calculates both and reports them separately, because collapsing them into a single number hides a decision that should be visible to whoever reads the report.
Product
What "audit-ready" means in practice, not just as a label
We treat audit-readiness as a data property, not a feature you turn on later. Every record in ECOT logs who created it, what changed, and when it was recalculated, from the first row of data entered. Combined with role-based access across seven permission levels, that means an organisation can hand a regulator or third-party verifier a clean activity trail without having to reconstruct one after the fact.
