We're heading into 2024 with strong momentum and renewed resolve to achieve our goal of reducing the world’s emissions by 1% annually through private sector climate action. But before 2023 winds down, we’re sharing some of the year’s highlights.
January
Watershed became the first partner of Frontier, the advance market commitment for permanent carbon removal. Our partnership gives Watershed customers the ability to buy into Frontier at a lower price range. Aledade, Boom Supersonic, Canva, SKIMS, Wise, and Zendesk are the first customers to participate.
February
We launched our first virtual power purchase agreement (VPPA), with customers including Samsara, Stripe, and TaskUs buying renewable energy credits that will fund the construction of a brand new solar plant in Laredo, Texas.
We continued expanding our presence in Europe with our London office, which will be a key base for Watershed as we continue to work with more European companies.
March
Watershed partnered with Google Cloud and became accredited by CDP—two important validators of our leading carbon measurement methodologies.
April
We acquired VitalMetrics, creator of CEDA, the world’s most comprehensive multi-regional greenhouse gas emissions database—giving our carbon measurements a deeper level of granularity. VitalMetrics founder Dr. Sangwon Suh joined Watershed as our new Head of Science.
“Watershed...has constructed a sophisticated platform, hooked the world’s largest businesses, and tied up an investor and advisory base of power players in less than four years.”
Mario Gabriele
May
Watershed’s founders were profiled by Mario Gabriele for The Generalist, who wrote: “Watershed is an example of a business with an extraordinarily high ceiling. It has built a sector-leading position selling an increasingly essential product in an exponentially expanding market. It has constructed a sophisticated platform, hooked the world’s largest businesses, and tied up an investor and advisory base of power players in less than four years. And it is run by a high-performance team used to build massive technological infrastructure at scale.”
We announced a partnership with advisory firm KPMG, with whom we’ll work on joint customers’ emissions reduction efforts.
And we introduced the Watershed Policy Advisory Board, made up of the key architects of the new wave of global climate policy—at the SEC, TCFD, CDP, and beyond—and chaired by Mark Carney, the UN Special Envoy for Climate Action.
June
As global companies turned their attention to incoming climate disclosure regulations, we launched Watershed Disclosures, our purpose-built product for companies seeking to satisfy the growing number of climate disclosure frameworks.
One of our Watershed team members grabbed a sweetgreen salad with Marketplace’s Dan Ackerman to talk about how we measure the emissions at every level of a company’s supply chain, from tofu to refrigerants.
July
Our customer Monzo—a digital bank based in the UK—was profiled for its climate work, including carbon removal projects purchased via the Watershed Marketplace.
August
Watershed customer Block purchased 1,500 tonnes of permanent carbon removal from Brilliant Planet through the Watershed Marketplace. It was the first large-scale sale for Brilliant Planet, which removes carbon by growing local strains of marine algae on land in coastal desert areas.
September
Watershed's first in-person Climate Week event brought together customers and advisors to share advice about climate action at their respective companies.
Our work with Everlane—resulting in a 22% product emissions reduction—was featured in Business Insider.
California’s SB 253—a wide-reaching climate disclosure bill—passed the California Assembly, leapfrogging the SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rules. We hosted a webinar with Senator Scott Wiener, the architect of the legislation.
We extended the Watershed Ecosystem, a network of partners and advisors helping drive exponential climate action for our customers. The Ecosystem encompasses everything from the Watershed Marketplace, where customers can purchase high-quality carbon removal and sustainable aviation fuel credits; to the Watershed Policy Advisory and Science Advisory Boards; to our partners in technology, data, and consulting. Our goal is that by working with Watershed, companies will have access to anything they might need to undertake impactful climate action.
October
The Watershed Community—which connects sustainability practitioners and strategists at our customer companies to share best practices and advance climate action—launched with 120 members.
Watershed Head of Policy Matt Fisher hosted a discussion about the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) with experts from Workiva, Covington & Burling LLP, and KPMG.
We joined the AI conversation with a webinar on AI-driven carbon measurement solutions featuring Juliet Rothenberg of Google.
November
Kainos, a digital transformation company, discussed their work with Watershed to tackle increased employee travel emissions following the lifting of COVID lockdowns.
We helped Bloomberg’s Akshat Rathi launch his new book, Climate Capitalism, with an event in London.
December
We announced a partnership with Powertrust to increase renewable energy supply in Asia, the most emissive region in the world. Watershed customers will be able to purchase distributed renewable energy (DRE) that directly funds new projects while contributing to their own climate goals.
Our guide to sustainability in fashion was published in the wake of new EU rules governing the apparel sector’s approach to sustainability.
Nina Khoury of SKIMS joined us for a webinar discussing how to measure product-level emissions.
We released our 2024 climate disclosure guide, breaking down everything companies need to know to prepare for global climate regulation in 2024.
