Sustainability & Finance Teams Can Be Friends
Matt Penfold
February 27, 2025
Shehzad Wadalawala
February 27, 2025
So, what can sustainability and energy teams do to win over their finance teams?
The power of data-driven expectations management
The fastest way to build support for a clean energy program is by actively managing expectations around financial performance.
Traditionally, energy and sustainability leads have struggled to identify and collect fragmented data spread across numerous spreadsheets and departments. Incredibly, we’ve found that some very large companies with distributed operations and manufacturing facilities have difficulty accurately predicting how much they’ll spend on energy next year. One Fortune 1000 company told us it manually inputs energy data in spreadsheets for its two largest manufacturing facilities and based on that information, estimates energy data for all its other sites. Naturally, this can be frustrating for both the energy/sustainability teams as well as the finance team.
Identifying the data owner, accessing the data, and standardizing it in the format you need is time-consuming, particularly for large enterprises with distributed operations. Furthermore, manual data entry and report-building is prone to errors and delays in reporting. That makes it hard for energy and sustainability managers to answer critical questions about budgets and forecasted spend.
Fortunately, new cost-effective tools from companies like Verse help you avoid these pain points, aligning finance and sustainability teams and building support for clean energy programs with data-driven insights.
1. Aggregate & standardize your data
Many Fortune 1000 companies are collecting energy use and spend data in spreadsheets, and in some cases, only collecting it for their largest, most energy-intensive facilities and sites – then extrapolating smaller facilities’ energy use based on that data. This manual process is error-prone, inexact, and time-consuming.
Tools like Verse’s Utility Bill Management (UBM) app allow you to view your electricity, natural gas, and water statements in an easy-to use interface. Standardized units of measurement and currency and a clean alignment with calendar months make reporting a snap. You can view energy cost and use at regional or site levels, and dive into specific sites to view detailed breakdowns of billing statements (e.g., taxes, delivery fees, etc.) and the impact of weather on your energy portfolio. Comprehensive, granular insights can help sustainability and energy managers understand demand planning at each facility and where to expect increased energy use and spend.
2. Understand – and FORECAST – your energy costs
Many large energy users have difficulty understanding key reasons for changes in their energy costs. This makes it difficult to explain cost changes to leadership, much less take steps to address the underlying causes. Companies also typically have limited insight into future energy costs, which hinders accurate budget forecasting. The more you can forecast costs, the more appreciative your finance team will be.
Tools like the UBM app benchmark your operating sites by comparing current energy cost and usage data to prior and average periods. This helps you understand fluctuations over time, identify potential drivers of change, and take steps to manage variations. The app also provides energy forecasts for sites based on historical usage data and future market prices. You can use this information on historical and future energy use and spend to set more accurate targets for next year’s budget.
3. Accurately report on emissions
A big part of sustainability and energy managers’ roles is emissions tracking and reporting. But with disaggregated data on energy use coming from different business units and locations, reporting can be a painful, time-consuming process.
The UBM app integrates your energy cost and use with emissions data from the EPA’s eGrid regions. eGrid regions, which align with the geographies used by organizations like the GHG Protocol and Carbon Disclosure Project, are more granular than U.S. wholesale power markets, allowing for higher-fidelity data. The UBM app applies the relevant eGrid emissions factor to your energy use, which supports not only emissions reporting, but also development of more accurate clean energy roadmaps to reach your decarbonization goals without over-investing in expensive renewable solutions. (The UBM app integrates seamlessly with Verse’s other applications to help you plan, procure, and de-risk clean energy programs.)
Increase buy-in for clean energy programs
With the right data management and reporting tools, you can accelerate your organization’s decarbonization goals while also ensuring your program delivers measurable, impactful results:
- Instant Access to Comprehensive Data: Get immediate insights into energy & water use and costs from sites of all sizes in a single, easy-to-use platform, enabling quicker and more informed decisions.
- Improved Budgeting: Get instant access to site forecasts for more accurate budgeting and benchmarks to understand changes in use and spend over time.
- Streamline Emissions Reporting: High-fidelity, real-time eGrid emissions forecasts automatically applied to energy usage support accurate decarbonization planning and procurement purchases.
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About the Author
Matt Penfold
Verse
Matt Penfold is co-founder and chief commercial officer of Verse. Prior to Verse, Matt held senior roles at Fluence and AMS, where he led the commercialization of the world’s leading A.I wholesale market bidding software for utility scale clean energy assets – taking the idea from a whiteboard sketch to 10GW of assets under management. He previously worked at Bain & Co, serving clients in the utility & renewable energy sectors. Matt holds a bachelor’s in mechanical and manufacturing engineering from the University of Melbourne and an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Shehzad Wadalawala
Verse
Shehzad Wadalawala is a wholesale energy market expert with 20+ years of experience developing and implementing strategies for buyers of electricity. Prior to Verse, Shehzad was an Energy Portfolio Manager at Google responsible for developing and implementing Google's Energy Risk Management Framework for its global energy portfolio of data centers and energy supply: He also supported global energy supply agreements and first-of-a-kind energy supply structures advancing 24/7 CFE (carbon free energy). Shehzad has led and executed energy portfolio management and hedging programs for a range of organizations, including large investor-owned utilities, educational institutions, and community choice aggregators. Shehzad holds a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of California, Berkeley.