Carbon Accounting at a Major University

Challenge

A prestigious midwestern private university faced significant challenges with its spreadsheet-based carbon accounting processes. The decentralized system required each department to maintain separate spreadsheets, leading to inconsistencies, errors, and inefficiencies in tracking, analyzing, and reporting carbon emissions data. Without a centralized system, university leaders struggled to gain clear insights into their environmental impact, hindering their ability to set meaningful sustainability targets and communicate progress effectively.

The university urgently needed a streamlined, accurate, and scalable solution to consolidate department-level data, automate analysis, and enhance overall sustainability reporting.

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Solution

Mahusai Global Partners (MGP) partnered with the university to build an advanced cloud-based carbon accounting workflow, transforming fragmented spreadsheets into an integrated, actionable sustainability data platform.

‍Key Solution Elements:

• Centralized Data Warehouse: Utilizing AWS Redshift, MGP created a robust, scalable data warehouse capable of ingesting, normalizing, and storing vast amounts of raw data from individual departmental spreadsheets.
• Automated ETL Workflow: Implemented automated ingestion pipelines to systematically extract, transform, and load data, ensuring accuracy and consistency across multiple data sources.
• Dynamic Reporting Dashboards: Developed interactive dashboards using AWS QuickSight to provide real-time visualization and detailed analytics of carbon emissions across all university operations.

Platform Features:

• Department-Level Data Integration: Seamlessly aggregates data from hundreds of departmental spreadsheets into a centralized repository.
• Real-Time Visualization: Dashboards provide immediate visibility into emissions metrics, highlighting trends, outliers, and improvement opportunities.
• Automated Reporting: Enables automated generation of sustainability reports, significantly reducing manual effort and potential for human error.
• Customizable Analytics: Offers drill-down capabilities, allowing users to analyze emissions data at various granularities, from university-wide overviews to individual departments.

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Technology

• Cloud Infrastructure: AWS
• Data Warehouse: AWS Redshift
• Data Integration: AWS Glue
• Visualization and Reporting: AWS QuickSight
• Workflow Automation: AWS Lambda

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Results

Launched in 2022, the new carbon accounting system delivered immediate improvements:

• Efficiency Gains: Reduced reporting and data processing time by over 70%, freeing up resources for strategic sustainability initiatives.
• Enhanced Accuracy: Eliminated manual errors through automation, providing trusted data that stakeholders can confidently rely upon.
• Actionable Insights: Empowered university leaders to quickly identify and address high-impact sustainability opportunities, significantly accelerating their journey toward carbon neutrality.