In brief: Summa trials impact weighted accounts

Private markets firm Summa Equity has trialled “impact weighted accounts” – an initative from Harvard Business School – in a bid to calculate the monetary cost of its portfolio’s externalities (aka impact). The numbers derived from this analysis “reflect a company’s positive and negative impacts on employees, customers, the environment and the broader society”.

For the trial, the firm measured “societal costs along the environmental pillar, using CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions as the input”, as detailed in its 2020 portfolio report (released today).

The Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon emissions of Summa’s portfolio generated costs of SKr1.3 billion ($150 million; €130 million) – around 10 percent of the portfolio’s annual revenue. And Summa’s decarbonisation efforts averted emissions valued at almost SKr2.1 billion – around 17 percent of the portfolio’s annual revenue.