Boundless was featured in an article written for Bloomberg New Energy Finance, covering the latest software tools to illuminate where the best impact investments are.

New York-based Boundless Impact provides research and data on climate risks in a company’s supply chain to investors, companies and funds. “Our methodology is based in lifecycle analysis that takes into account all aspects of a company’s supply chain, production process and end-of-life products,” Founder and Chief Executive Michele Demers told BNEF. “It is a snapshot of a company’s current footprint that can be used to create 100-year and 20-year global warming potential scenarios.”

Companies are scored against industry benchmarks on how well they perform on values such as energy intensity, chemicals use and waste footprint, and the final report can be used by a company for marketing or investment purposes. It takes the Boundless Impact team six to eight weeks to run the lifecycle analysis and the data is updated semi-annually in a subscription model. The aim is “for investors to be more aware of emerging technologies and have the required data to invest and see where improvement is needed,” Demers said.

Boundless evaluated the climate impact of ZincFive, maker of nickel-zinc batteries, in September 2020, awarding it a score of 9.4/10. The impact profile adds value to ZincFive’s commercial proposition, for clients such as data center owners and investors concerned with ESG, said Tim Hysell, chief executive. Its strong environmental lifecycle performance positions the technology well against other battery competitors, he told BNEF. He would consider running the study on an annual basis as the company scales up and makes technology improvements, which could feed through to a higher climate impact score.

Demers said that private equity funds generally recommend Boundless Impact to companies in their portfolios because they know the “analysis is objective, scientifically rigorous and useful”. It is critical that software tools are used in concert with human judgement to ensure that the final results are credible, because there is a danger of exaggeration or bias if a company uses a software tool with no external validation to speak of, she said. In this respect, Boundless Impact uses industry experts to gauge if company data are realistic, and asks companies to substantiate their data if necessary.

“We offer projections for very early-stage businesses but it is much harder to do with scientific accuracy, so we usually only do it if the company has a product,” Demers said. There is otherwise “too much guesswork involved”, she said.

— Bloomberg New Energy Finance