Case Study

How a SaaS company calculated its full carbon footprint in under 2 hours

86%
Cost savings vs consultant
<2 hrs
Time to first report
24
Monthly data points
2
Emission regions tracked

The Challenge

A small technology company operating in California needed to understand its carbon footprint for the first time. With office space in the WECC California grid region and cloud infrastructure running on AWS in the Pacific Northwest, the company had two primary sources of Scope 2 emissions but no way to calculate them.

A Big 4 consulting firm quoted $35,000 for a Scope 1 & 2 assessment. For a company of this size, that was the entire sustainability budget for the year.

The Solution

Using OffGridFlow, the sustainability lead uploaded 12 months of utility data (24 data points across 2 meters) via CSV in under 5 minutes. No data transformation, no manual factor lookups, no spreadsheets.

OffGridFlow automatically applied the correct EPA eGRID emission factors for each region:

  • Office (WECC California / CAMX): 0.225 kg CO2e/kWh — relatively clean grid due to California's renewable mandates
  • Cloud / AWS (WECC Northwest / NWPP): 0.252 kg CO2e/kWh — hydropower-heavy Pacific Northwest grid

The Results

SourceAnnual kWhRegion FactortCO2e
HQ Office36,5560.2258.22
Cloud (AWS)52,1550.25213.14
Total Scope 288,71121.36

Total annual Scope 2 emissions: 21.36 tonnes CO2e, with cloud infrastructure accounting for 61% of the footprint. The PDF compliance report was generated in one click, ready for stakeholder review.

The Impact

Cost
$6,500/year with OffGridFlow vs $35,000 quote from Big 4. 86% savings.
Time
Under 2 hours from account creation to final report. Consultant engagement would have taken 4–6 weeks.
Accuracy
EPA eGRID subregion-level factors applied automatically. No manual factor lookups or formula errors.
Insight
Discovered cloud infrastructure is the primary emission source (61%). Informed decision to evaluate carbon-efficient cloud regions.

Want the same results for your company?

Upload your utility data and get your first report in under 2 hours. If you need the drill-down, review the redacted packet behind this case study first.