You know the price of an iPhone. But its price tag does not show the emissions associated with its journey—from raw materials and component manufacturing to transportation, everyday use and eventual disposal. Behind a familiar price tag sits a much less visible carbon story.
In this episode of Watt’s the Vision, host Priyadarshi Singh speaks with Pavan Sharma, Founder & CEO of PlanetWise, and Amit Aneja, Strategic Growth Partner at PlanetWise, about carbon accounting, supply-chain emissions and industrial decarbonisation.
The conversation moves from everyday products to the practical realities facing manufacturers and their suppliers: who collects the carbon data, how AI can help, and what it takes to make that information trustworthy.
Watch the full episode on YouTube.
From everyday products to Scope 3
The episode spans Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions, with particular attention to the challenge of measuring emissions across a supply chain. For a business trying to understand its footprint, the relevant information does not all sit within its own operations.
Suppliers, materials, manufacturing activities and transport can each form part of the picture. Bringing that information together raises a question at the heart of the discussion: who is responsible for tracking it, and how can that responsibility work in practice?
Suppliers need incentives, not just questionnaires
The carbon-data burden on MSMEs and suppliers is a central theme. A request that looks straightforward to a buyer can create substantial work for the business expected to answer it. For smaller suppliers with limited time and specialist capacity, repeated reporting requests can be particularly demanding.
The discussion considers why suppliers need incentives, rather than simply more questionnaires. For businesses building a carbon-data programme, this raises a practical question: how can participation become useful to the supplier as well as the customer asking for information?
A credible approach to Scope 3 depends on the people and businesses providing the data, not only on the system collecting it.
The Kanpur leather cluster: establishing a baseline
The conversation includes a real-world case involving the Kanpur leather cluster, where carbon and energy audits were used to establish an emissions baseline and understand where interventions could make a difference.
This grounds the discussion of industrial decarbonisation in a concrete starting point: understanding current emissions and energy use. A baseline provides a reference for identifying areas that need attention and considering where to focus improvement efforts.
AI can automate accounting. Trust still needs scrutiny.
AI’s role in automating carbon accounting is another focus of the episode. Alongside that opportunity comes the question of whether the resulting emissions data can be trusted, verified and used with confidence.
For teams evaluating AI-assisted carbon workflows, useful questions include:
- Where did the data come from? Inputs should be traceable to their source.
- What has been measured and what has been estimated? Assumptions and data gaps need to remain visible.
- How can the result be reviewed? Automation should support scrutiny rather than make the calculation harder to explain.
The practical aim is more than a faster calculation: it is carbon information that people can examine and use to support decisions.
Carbon as a procurement parameter
The discussion also considers carbon as a new parameter in procurement. Alongside price, quality and delivery, buyers may increasingly ask about the emissions associated with the products and suppliers they choose.
That connects carbon accounting to a wider business question: how can a manufacturer demonstrate not just what it produces, but how cleanly it produces it? For suppliers, credible information could become part of the conversation about competitiveness rather than simply another reporting task.
Digital Product Passports and product-level footprints
The episode explores Digital Product Passports and product-level carbon footprints, extending the discussion from company-wide reporting to information about individual products.
This also gives context to the possibility of product carbon labels. A useful label would need more than a headline number: buyers would need to understand what the footprint covers, how it was calculated and whether comparisons are meaningful.
For background on the distinction between company-level value-chain accounting and individual product footprints, see the GHG Protocol’s Corporate Value Chain Standard and its guidance on product accounting.
Watch the conversation
Join Priyadarshi Singh, Pavan Sharma and Amit Aneja for a conversation connecting AI and carbon data with supplier participation, industrial decarbonisation and India’s manufacturing ambitions.
Watch on YouTube: AI Can Now Track Carbon Across Supply Chains But Can We Trust the Data?
Prefer audio? The episode is also available on Spotify. Search for Watt’s the Vision in the Spotify app.
To explore the practical next step for your organisation, discover the PlanetWise platform or book a demo.
