Guides
VP
Vanessa Pereira
· 7 min read
What retail leaders said about building the business case, what one fleet’s numbers really showed, and how to check your own.
🔑 The one thing to know: Sustainability investments get approved when the numbers add up. Getting the numbers right is the part most teams skip.
🎙 From the Room: Sustainability has to pencil
Kathleen McLaughlin of Walmart speaking at the 2026 Retail Sustainability Conference. (Oct 28, 2026). Photo: Retail Council of Canada
At the Retail Council of Canada’s Retail Sustainability Conference last week, sustainability wasn’t treated as a side project. The conversation was about cost, capital and resilience.
Kathleen McLaughlin of Walmart gave the clearest example. On sticker price, low-carbon refrigeration loses. But once Walmart added up the full cost over time (downtime, maintenance, reliability, compliance and training), the answer changed:
“When we put all of that together, suddenly low-carbon equipment pencils.”
Two ideas kept coming up:
Widen the business case. The value is usually there, but it’s spread across budgets nobody adds up.
Measure before you invest. Cascades made the case for calculating your footprint, then investing where it will make the biggest difference.
💡 We see the same pattern with the teams we work with. The data that builds the business case (energy, fuel, utility bills) usually already exists, but it’s scattered. And once it’s in one place, it doesn’t always say what you expect.
Here’s one Ontario fleet where the bill told one story and the data told another.
The Big Story: Fuel spend fell $137K. How much of that was the fleet?
🗓 Here’s what happened. In 2023, an Ontario public-sector organization with a large fleet of field staff gave its drivers a choice: switch to an EV and the organization will pay for a charger at home. Two years later, its fuel bill came down. Fleet fuel spend fell 8.8% in 2025, from $1,553,821 to $1,416,960, about $137,000 less.
💶 Why it matters. The headline number hides what actually happened. Fuel volume barely moved (down 0.2%). The price per litre fell from $1.377 to $1.259, which accounts for about $133,000 of the drop.
The fleet’s own performance only shows up once you normalize.
The fleet grew from 315 vehicles in service at the end of 2024 to 327 at the end of 2025. It was also a heavy replacement year, with 81 vehicles entering service and 96 sold. Per vehicle in service, fuel use fell about 4%, from roughly 298 to 287 litres a month. A bigger fleet ran on the same amount of fuel.
That’s a noteworthy result, but a much smaller one than the bill suggests. Without volume, price and fleet size tracked side by side, the full $137,000 would have been easy to credit to the program. Next year’s budget would then have been built on the wrong number.
👀 Who needs to pay attention: Anyone who runs vehicles or buildings and reports savings to a CFO or board, especially in a year when energy prices moved.
✅ What we’d recommend: Normalize before you celebrate.
Separate price from volume. A cheaper litre isn’t a more efficient fleet.
Measure per unit. Track fuel per vehicle in service or per kilometre, not just in total.
Count carefully in replacement years. Account for part-year vehicles, and include EV charging costs and emissions.
That way, the savings you report are savings you can repeat.
👉 Not sure what’s really driving your energy or fuel savings? Book a 15-minute chat here and we’ll walk through it with you!
📊 Data Point of the Month: 26.7%
That’s how much of its electricity a US commercial plumbing manufacturer covered with on-site solar in its first full year of verified data. The original target was 15%. The system has avoided an estimated $108,500 in electricity costs since 2020, and tracking that data is how the company found out it was beating the target.
🔍 Deep Dive: Two ways sustainability data pays for itself
Both of these stories point to the two places our customers find money most often: proving what an investment actually delivered, and planning the next one with real numbers instead of estimates.
⚙️ 1. Operational efficiency: show that the investment paid off
Spending on a new building, solar panels or EVs is a promise to save money later. Data shows whether it did.
🏢 A new building that delivered: One customer compared energy intensity at its old building with its new one, a project years in the making. Energy use and emissions both came down, and now they can prove it.
📦 Packaging that ships smarter: A sauce maker used product carbon footprints to get its own customers to approve new packaging. The new design uses less plastic and fits more product into each shipment, so fewer trucks go out.
☀️ Solar that beat its target: 26.7% against a 15% goal (see Data Point above).
🚚 A fleet that grew without using more fuel: Fuel per vehicle fell about 4% in 2025 (see Big Story).
📈 2. Financial planning and risk: put a number on your exposure
Once the baseline is in place, the same data answers forward-looking questions: what the next investment is worth, what a loan or an investor requires, and what a new cost will add up to.
Separating price from performance. The fleet in our Big Story found that most of its 2025 savings came from cheaper fuel. A budget built on the full drop would assume those savings repeat. Knowing the split lets finance plan for prices moving the other way.
Planning more solar. When the plumbing manufacturer added a large new facility, its total electricity use roughly doubled and solar’s share fell to about 10%. With the data in hand, it can model the financial and environmental return of adding more panels.
Keeping financing terms. Companies with sustainability-linked loans track emissions intensity every year, because staying below an agreed threshold maintains their terms.
Keeping investors interested. An exploration-stage mining company listed on several stock exchanges discloses its emissions to stay credible with investors before it has revenue.
Answering the parent company. Subsidiaries are fielding climate data requests from parent companies that roll them into group reporting and budgets.
Estimating CBAM costs before buyers ask. Steel and cement producers are calculating what their EU buyers will pay in CBAM certificates. The Q3 2026 price is €82.32/tCO2e, but only a small share is payable today, and that share rises every year until 2034. The producers modelling that curve now are the ones buyers will keep.
✅ One thing to do this month
All of this starts with a before-and-after you can trust.
Pick one sustainability investment from the last three years, like an LED retrofit, a new HVAC system, solar panels or a few EVs. Pull the monthly energy or fuel data for the 12 months before it went in and the 12 months after. Compare usage and cost, and separate price changes from volume.
If you can’t build that comparison in an afternoon, your data isn’t ready to support the next investment. Fix that before the next budget cycle.
👁 3 Things We’re Watching
Here’s where that kind of data is about to matter more, and in some cases, where it’s worth money.
01 | Canada puts $2B into retrofits
On October 8, Ottawa announced $2 billion to retrofit one million homes. The package includes a new National Heat Pump Rebate and retrofit financing for apartment buildings through CMHC and the Canada Infrastructure Bank, covering about 280,000 units over eight years. If you own, finance or supply multi-unit residential buildings, this is new capital for efficiency upgrades. Read more →
02 | EU building rules move from paper to practice
The deadline for EU countries to write the revised Energy Performance of Buildings Directive into national law passed on May 29, 2026. For non-residential buildings, the worst-performing 16% must meet minimum energy performance standards by 2030, and the worst 26% by 2033. Larger HVAC systems (above 290 kW) need building automation and controls. If you own or lease space in Portugal or elsewhere in the EU, energy data per building is about to matter a lot more. Read more →
03 | The US 179D window has closed for new projects, but not for claims
The Section 179D deduction for energy-efficient commercial buildings ended for projects that began construction after June 30, 2026. Buildings that started construction by then can still claim up to $5.81 per square foot once they’re placed in service. If you’ve recently built or retrofitted, the energy modelling and performance data behind the project is what supports the claim. Read more →
📡 Also on our radar: The CBAM certificate price rose to €82.32/tCO2e for Q3 2026. CSRD’s second wave reports on financial year 2027. Australia’s AASB S2 Group 2 reporting began July 1, 2026.
🚀 Coming later this month
Every story in this issue starts the same way: someone had to make the financial case before they could get funding. Later this month, we’re releasing a feature in Carbonhound that makes that case easier to build. You’ll be able to plan your initiatives in financial terms and get buy-in faster. Keep an eye on your inbox!
🤝 Let’s find your real numbers
Carbonhound turns your energy, fuel and emissions data into numbers your CFO cares about. If you’re planning your next investment, or need to prove the last one paid off, now’s the time to start.
📅 Book a meeting with us here!