Q Insights #020

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This week’s read time: 5 minutes

Welcome to this edition of Q Insights — our bi-weekly newsletter for sustainability and ESG professionals looking to make smarter solution decisions.

Each edition brings you concise, relevant updates on the tools, trends, and technologies driving the sustainable transition. We filter the noise, highlight what matters, and help you navigate the sustainability solution landscape with clarity and confidence.

In this edition, we’ll cover: 

• Q Intelligence: What recent announcements reveal about AI deployment in sustainability solutions 📊

• Q Interview: The real ROI test for ESG reporting software (An interview with Wim Geukens, Co-founder & CEO of Terra Reporting) 💬

• Q Signals: Another four acquisitions: Zevero x Inhabit, SLR x SB&CO, Bureau Veritax x SPIN360, Cycle x ESG-X, and other news 🗞️

• KanataQ Corner: Newly Listed Providers on KanataQ ✅

• and other insights 💡

Q INTELLIGENCE

📑 Press releases are not proof of value, but they do reveal where vendors believe buyers will pay attention and allocate budget.

Looking across recent AI-related announcements and partnerships in sustainability solutions, clear patterns are emerging. Over just the past two months, more than a dozen public announcements point in the same direction. Examples include ERM integrating Auquan’s agentic AI into advisory workflows, Prewave partnering with refinq to combine AI-driven supply-chain risk intelligence with site-level climate and nature risk data, osapiens expanding AI-driven risk automation through its acquisition of Lucent AI, and Barclays testing ExpectAI’s platform to improve productivity, cost efficiency, and competitiveness among SMEs.

Taken together, these signals suggest that AI in sustainability is being deployed first where scrutiny is highest: due diligence, risk, auditability, orchestration, and implementation readiness. The common thread is not automation for its own sake, but reducing friction in complex, high-pressure workflows where regulatory, reputational, and financial consequences are real.

These announcements also point to a market where AI is no longer experimental, but expected. The fastest-moving players are not trying to build everything themselves. Instead, partnerships and acquisitions are emerging as a faster path to trust, validation, and scale than standalone internal development, particularly in workflows tied to risk, audit, and compliance.

At KanataQ, we’ll continue tracking how these signals translate into platform strategy, buyer expectations, and real adoption across the sustainability solutions landscape.

Q INTERVIEW

This week’s guest:

Wim Geukens

Co-founder & CEO of Terra Reporting

1) What is Terra Reporting, and how does it help companies?

Terra Reporting is a sustainability reporting company founded by technology and digital transformation experts who recognised early that ESG reporting is fundamentally a data challenge.

While many organisations approach sustainability reporting from a legal or taxonomy perspective, lasting impact comes from building a reliable, structured sustainability data foundation across the business.

By integrating Microsoft technologies with deep expertise in ESG reporting and implementation, Terra Reporting helps organisations turn fragmented operational data into structured, traceable, and audit-ready information.

The Terra ESG Platform is our ESG and sustainability reporting platform, built on Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability. It enables organisations to manage and report ESG data in line with regulatory and stakeholder requirements, such as CSRD and ESRS, with clear ownership, controls, and end-to-end traceability.

The result is ESG reporting that is reliable, repeatable, and genuinely useful, supporting compliance while enabling better decisions, risk management, and long-term performance.

2) What’s missing to make ESG reporting useful for the business?

The biggest shift is mindset: ESG reporting shouldn’t be treated as a compliance burden, but as a management tool.

Too often, reporting becomes a late-stage checkbox exercise, data is collected too late, ownership is unclear, and the output doesn’t drive any operational change.

What’s missing is the link between insight and decision-making. When ESG reporting is structured like a management process, with accountability, targets, and regular review, it becomes a steering mechanism. That’s when sustainability starts to guide investment, reduce risk, and improve performance, rather than just producing reports.

3) What did customers need to see before trusting Terra Reporting?

Trust came down to two things: auditability and execution.

Customers needed proof that Terra Reporting wasn’t just another ESG tool, but built for the reality of CSRD, with evidence, controls, clear responsibilities, and end-to-end traceability.

They also wanted confidence that we could execute quickly and stay hands-on. Sustainability teams are often resource-constrained, so progress matters. We earned trust by being precise, transparent, and practical, and by delivering working reporting structures
early, not months later.

4) What’s hardest about getting executive buy-in for sustainability software today?

The hardest challenge is proving ROI beyond compliance.

Many executives believe they can start in Excel and delay software investment until deadlines approach. In the early phases, that can work until the first audit cycle exposes the reality: large, fragmented datasets, limited traceability, error-prone, difficult-to-audit manual processes, and almost impossible to translate into meaningful action plans.

Buy-in comes when sustainability leaders connect software to clear business outcomes: reduced manual effort, lower audit risk, faster execution, and stronger readiness for customers and investors. The most compelling message isn’t “another sustainability platform,” but finance-grade ESG governance.

Q SIGNALS

Latest developments, insights, and trends

📊 New tools, features, acquisitions, and funding rounds from solution providers

refinq (KanataQ listed) raised €2.2 million in seed funding to scale its asset-level climate and nature risk intelligence platform. The round will support further development of refinq’s software that combines high-resolution geodata with asset-specific vulnerability analysis to help industrial and infrastructure operators identify, quantify, and proactively manage physical climate risks across sites and value chains. (link)

Carbon accounting startup Zevero (KanataQ listed) acquired UK-based sustainability consultancy Inhabit to expand its advisory capabilities and scale sustainability delivery. Founded in 2019, Inhabit provides carbon measurement, reporting, and decarbonization planning, with customers transitioning to Zevero through phased onboarding. The deal gives Inhabit clients access to Zevero’s AI-powered carbon accounting platform, enhancing automation, reporting, and data visualization. (link)

SLR acquired UK-based sustainability advisory SB&CO to strengthen its integrated sustainability offering, expanding capabilities across strategy, ESG, net-zero roadmaps, Scope 1–3 emissions, decarbonization, and sustainability communications. Founded in 2020, SB&CO brings expertise spanning sustainability strategy through execution and storytelling, enabling SLR to better support global clients navigating complex sustainability and low-carbon transitions. (link)

Bureau Veritas acquired Italian sustainability consultancy SPIN360, strengthening its capabilities in the fashion and luxury sectors with data-driven advisory services spanning LCA, carbon footprinting, supply chain monitoring and ESG reporting. Founded in 2009, SPIN360 supports companies in advancing environmental and social responsibility, and the deal aligns with Bureau Veritas’ LEAP | 28 strategy to combine advisory, certification and auditing services into integrated sustainability solutions for premium brands. (link)

Dcycle acquired Germany-based ESG-X to expand its ESG and sustainability data management capabilities across the DACH region. The deal adds ESG-X’s AI-driven materiality assessment and ESG mapping tools to Dcycle’s carbon accounting and ESG platform, strengthening CSRD-aligned reporting, double materiality analysis, and localized data infrastructure as the European ESG software market consolidates. (link)

BMI launched an expanded ESG Country and Physical Climate Risk service to help investors and companies quantify ESG and climate risks using alternative and geospatial data. The service covers over 140 markets, tracks granular ESG metrics from pollution and human rights to conflict risk, and models physical climate impacts across major hazards, asset types, and climate pathways through 2050. (link)

Puro.earth launched Puro Issuance Plus, a new service designed to help scaled carbon removal suppliers bring verified CO₂ Removal Certificates to market faster and more frequently. The service enables batch-based issuance to shorten the time between carbon removal and credit availability, supporting quicker revenue generation for eligible industrial-scale suppliers that meet Puro.earth’s verification, quality, and data requirements. (link)

KANATAQ CORNER

What’s new on KanataQ?

📈 KanataQ Growing Family

Here is the list of providers that joined KanataQ since our last edition: Act Justly (Climate Action), Bono (Climate Action), ESG Heart (Sustainable Operations), Global Changer (Climate Action), Living Business (Strategic Advisory Services), Resonate AI (Reporting & Disclosure), Seedling (Climate Action), and Valinor Strategies (Strategic Advisory Services).

Come join us

Are you a sustainability solution provider? Join KanataQ, the platform where sustainability solution providers connect with high-intent buyers. Generate quality leads, gain market insights, and maximize ROI with our commission-free model. List with us today or contact us at [email protected] for inquiries.

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