The challenge

The Olympic Group, a major operator of fishing and offshore support vessels, is deeply committed to sustainability and sees carbon accounting as a key part of their journey.  

The company understood that tracking their carbon footprint was essential to meeting their long-term sustainability goals and contributing to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Kathrin Sunde, Head of Sustainability at Rimfrost and Olympic, leads the sustainability work for Olympic Group. She emphasized their commitment:

But Olympic Group’s existing approach to carbon accounting, managed through Excel, wasn’t meeting their needs. As they began to tackle scope 3 emissions for the first time, they struggled to estimate indirect emissions from key sources like purchased goods and services.  

Manually updating emissions factors was time-consuming and prone to errors, making it difficult for the team to gain the accuracy and insights they needed. This approach would also be difficult to maintain in the future.  

Without accurate data, setting reduction targets and tracking progress became difficult. “We cannot manage what we cannot measure,” Kathrin said. “To be able to address our scope 3 emissions, we first need insights into where they appear and at what scale.”  

Olympic Group also realized they needed a solution that would bring their emissions data — across scopes 1, 2, and 3 — into one system, to simplify the process and give them better control over their data to guide future sustainability efforts.  

“We wanted a solution that gave us a total overview of our emissions and simplified our reporting process, meaning that we would always have access to the latest emission factors from reliable sources, reducing the risk of errors,” Kathrin added.

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The solution

Ignite’s ability to handle scope 3 emissions was a big draw for Olympic Group. Using spend-based methods, they were able to roughly estimate emissions across various categories and get a much clearer picture of their overall impact.

A major benefit of Ignite is the ability to engage their supply chain directly. “We are also able to contact our suppliers with GHG-related questionnaires to collect activity-based data and improve our scope 3 emission estimates,” Kathrin said. This allows Olympic Group to gather more accurate data to improve their overall emissions reporting.

Ignite also provided Olympic Group with access to updated emissions factors, eliminating the need for manual updates. This not only reduced the risk of errors they had faced in Excel but also ensured their carbon accounting and reporting would be easier to maintain in the future.

The biggest win for Olympic Group came from the insights and analysis Ignite provided. With a detailed breakdown of emissions, they could easily identify which suppliers contributed the most emissions, allowing them to make more informed decisions about their reduction efforts.

With all their emissions data centralized in one platform, Olympic Group gained a comprehensive view, making it far easier to set meaningful targets and track progress.

Beyond the platform itself, the onboarding process was seamless.

The impact

Since adopting Ignite, Olympic Group has made significant progress in their carbon accounting journey.

For the first time, they successfully reported on Scopes 1, 2, and 3 emissions, creating a solid baseline for future sustainability initiatives. They’ve also made efforts to improve the accuracy of their emissions, leading to 86% of emissions being estimated using activity-based approaches.

Beyond the numbers, the biggest win for Olympic Group has been building a robust carbon accounting system. With Ignite, they now have the tools to set and pursue meaningful reduction targets and track their progress with confidence.

Their overall experience with Ignite has been positive. The team at Olympic Group has been especially impressed by how responsive Ignite is to customer feedback, continuously evolving the platform to meet the changing needs of the business community.

“We’re seeing how the software develops as the business community evolves in carbon accounting,” said Kathrin. “It’s great to see that Ignite is growing with us.”