How Nova Sea cut carbon accounting from months to minutes
Salmon farmer Nova Sea replaced months of manual, spreadsheet-based carbon accounting with automated calculations in Morescope, part of Position Green. The time saved now goes into cutting emissions with suppliers and sharing comparable data across Norway’s aquaculture industry.
Northern Norway’s Nova Sea has long seen sustainable business as smart business. It published its first environmental report in 2011. “We wanted to follow best practice and not wait until requirements were forced on us,” says Silje Fiskum Rinø, Head of Sustainability at Nova Sea. Climate change was already affecting the oceans the company relies on.
The challenge: months of manual work every year
For years, Rinø’s team built the carbon accounts by hand, chasing data on everything from fish feed to fuel use. Much of it lived in spreadsheets, and key supplier figures were often missing or estimated. Each annual greenhouse gas inventory took months, leaving little time to act on the findings.
“Attempting to do this work ourselves manually would have been borderline impossible, even if we hired more people.”
Silje Fiskum Rinø, Head of Sustainability, Nova Sea
The solution: from spreadsheets to automated, hybrid data
By 2022, with new EU sustainability reporting rules ahead and tougher internal targets, the old method couldn’t scale. “We realized we had to professionalize what we had developed internally,” says Rinø. After a broad review of the market, the team chose Morescope because it converts financial data straight into carbon estimates and combines them with activity data.
“The spend methodology was fantastic, and automation removes sources of error that can easily accumulate when you plot manually,” she says. Nova Sea ran the platform alongside its spreadsheets to verify the results, and confidence grew as the automated data exceeded what the team could do by hand. “It used to take me half a day just to input and compare things that are now fully automated.”
The results: more time for reductions, and a common language for the industry
Nova Sea’s largest emissions sit outside its own operations, so the team uses its data to work with partners. It has set stricter carbon targets in its supply chain, pushed for hybrid-electric solutions and shared its own expertise. Standardised, transparent data makes it easier to compare, justify and ask for progress.
The company also benchmarks with peers in Norwegian aquaculture and advises newcomers. “When we have Morescope as a shared base, we can talk on the same terms, ranging from sharing a language to sharing a best practice,” says Rinø. Climate credentials are often among the top reasons customers choose Nova Sea’s salmon, and regulators and local communities see it as a responsible player.
“Climate change is happening either you act on it or not, so start today and don’t wait. There are many good tools available; Morescope is one of them. The path is more walked now, so it should be easier.”
Silje Fiskum Rinø, Head of Sustainability, Nova Sea
