January 1, 2025 is marked on the European regulatory calendar as one more step to make the Union’s business fabric more sustainable and aligned with its environmental objectives. From that date, a large part of companies in the European Union (EU) will have to adapt to the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
This directly affects those companies that meet two of the following three criteria: they have more than 250 workers, they have more than 40 million euros in turnover or they have more than 20 million euros in assets. These must measure, reduce and certify their carbon footprint to align with the EU’s climate objectives. The regulatory change is not minor, since 75% of European economic activity will be affected.
This milestone in the fight against climate change is a change in the obligations of companies with respect to previous years. Until now, it was the large multinationals that were obliged to present decarbonization plans. For them, this already represents a complex and expensive process, but they have specialized people on their teams.
However, for companies that have not yet started working on it, the implementation of these plans is a difficult challenge to face due to not having the necessary resources or experience in sustainability issues.
Andrés Cester is co-founder and CEO of Manglai, the first SaaS platform powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) to simplify and streamline the processes of measuring, reducing and certifying carbon footprints in companies. He recognizes the enormous challenge that companies and, specifically, those responsible for developing these plans have before them: «We know that those in charge in medium-sized companies are facing this challenge for the first time and, in many cases, they are still not clear how to proceed. must act. For this reason, our AI-based proposal fits their needs, because we greatly simplify the entire process, we accompany them at all times from the beginning to the end and we help them reduce the costs derived from the decarbonization plans.
Technological solutions to facilitate the work of companies
In this sense, Manglai is a Software as a Service (SaaS) trained in business sustainability and that, thanks to Artificial Intelligence, allows obtaining a precise measurement of the carbon footprint through the reading and classification of mass data of each company. The tool, which includes real-time dashboards, constantly learns from each company’s activity to suggest personalized reduction strategies and plans.
“Our goal is to support companies on their path to sustainability, making this process simpler, less expensive and more effective for all of them,” he adds. Jaume Fontal, co-founder and CPTO of Manglai.
Therefore, what, under current channels, involves months of work and documentation analysis for a company, with Manglai’s proposal is transferred to a few weeks of work thanks to its platform:
Firstly, the company carries out a process of collecting all its invoices, documents and files that justify its economic activity and uploads them to the Manglai platform. Once the documentation dump is completed, generative AI is capable of interpreting all this economic information and transforms it into CO2 emissions in real time.
Once the measurement is made, the AI trained for months creates an individualized decarbonization plan for each company. Throughout this process, a team of Manglai climate experts accompanies the company’s workers throughout the process and guides them with any questions they may have. Climate experts also supervise the work of the AI.
Once the process is completed, Manglai issues the carbon footprint calculation, reduction and compensation certificate from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition (currently only 7,000 of the 3 million Spanish companies have this seal).
The new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive is an opportunity for companies to not only comply with regulations, but also improve their sustainability and reputation. Tools like Manglai become an ally for employees in charge of leading this effort, even without prior experience in sustainability.
