Carbon Accounting 101 – with Alyssa Zucker, Senior Industry Principal in Carbon at Workiva
Release Date: 09/30/2025
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Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
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Carbon Accounting 101 – with Alyssa Zucker, Senior Industry Principal in Carbon at Workiva
Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
“Essentially what carbon accounting is doing is it's using a mathematical equation to come up with a standardized unit of measure that we call a carbon dioxide equivalent of how you can, um, measure and track all of the different greenhouse gases that your business emits through various activities. There's actually seven distinct greenhouse gases that are included…So what carbon accounting is doing is it's using it's using math to take those different greenhouse gases and normalize them into a standard unit of measure, which is carbon dioxide equivalent… (to measure) its warming ability...
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Electric Ladies Podcast - Women Leaders Discuss Careers, Trends, Technologies and Innovation in Energy, Climate, and Corporate Responsibility
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info_outline“Essentially what carbon accounting is doing is it's using a mathematical equation to come up with a standardized unit of measure that we call a carbon dioxide equivalent of how you can, um, measure and track all of the different greenhouse gases that your business emits through various activities. There's actually seven distinct greenhouse gases that are included…So what carbon accounting is doing is it's using it's using math to take those different greenhouse gases and normalize them into a standard unit of measure, which is carbon dioxide equivalent… (to measure) its warming ability of the planet. Alyssa Zucker on Electric Ladies Podcast
One of the main things nearly every company measures and tracks today is carbon emissions. It's tangible. and every company emits some CO2. But how do you measure and track it?
Listen to Alyssa Zucker, Senior Industry Principal in Carbon at Workiva – aka The Carbon Lady – in this fascinating conversation with Electric Ladies Podcast host Joan Michelson.
You’ll hear about:
● What carbon accounting actually is measuring and tracking, how and why it matters.
● What the Greenhouse Gas Protocol is, the “scopes” you hear people talk about and how they work.
● How renewable energy, the grid and other nuances of electricity delivery are measured for carbon.
● Plus, career advice, such as:
“I would say at that point in your career, you've probably honed your niche, right? You've become the technical expert, you've done the work kind of going narrow and deep. I think at that point in your career, it's actually a really good opportunity to broaden and focus on going a little wider….So thinking about leveraging your domain expertise and applying it cross team, cross corporation to have a broader impact is really effective, and will also obviously give you more transferrable skills and how you communicate and work with other domains and teams and learn a little bit more about their world.”
Alyssa Zucker on Electric Ladies Podcast
Read Joan’s Forbes articles here.
You’ll also like:
· Carbon Credits 101: with Lucy Hargreaves at Patch (now at Build Canada)
· How to Get To Carbon Zero, with Melissa Lott, Ph.D. at Columbia University Center for Global Energy Policy featured in the “Chasing Carbon Zero” documentary.
· A Biography of Carbon: with documentary filmmaker, writer and producer, Danielle Ortega of the Australian Film Commission on her extraordinary film “Carbon: An Unauthorized Biography
· Using Captured Carbon To Make Energy: with Bjork Kristjansdottir, of Carbon Recycling International
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