Persefoni alternatives for financed emissions and PCAF data quality

Most financed emissions shortlists get built around the wrong question. The question is not which platform calculates best, because the arithmetic is set by the PCAF Standard and every serious vendor follows it. The question is what data you can put into it, and for private and unlisted holdings that is where the shortlists separate. DitchCarbon provides verified emissions data for over 2 million organisations, so procurement, sustainability and finance teams can measure and act on supply chain and portfolio emissions from one source.

The PCAF data quality score, usually shortened to DQ, runs from 1 to 5. One is the best. Almost every conversation about Persefoni alternatives is really a conversation about how much of a portfolio is stuck at DQ 4 and DQ 5, and what it would take to move it.

Do you have to choose between Persefoni and DitchCarbon?

No, and the two are not really competing. Persefoni is a calculation platform. It applies the PCAF methodology to your portfolio and produces the reporting, and its calculation has been checked by a named third party, which is rare in this market. DitchCarbon is the emissions data underneath it. Run alongside a financed emissions platform, DitchCarbon becomes the data layer feeding it, so the holdings that have disclosed carry their own figures rather than a sector average.

That split matters because the two things fail differently. A calculation platform with no data still produces a number, and the number is a sector average with a company name on it. Better data does not need a different calculation engine, it needs a different input.

Run on its own, DitchCarbon is the platform. Measure the organisations you buy from or invest in, engage them for better information, forecast and plan scenarios, then track performance at counterparty, group, account or portfolio level.

Why do teams look for a Persefoni alternative?

Rarely because the calculation is wrong. The triggers we hear most often on calls:

• The weighted DQ score is embarrassing and nobody can move it. The platform reports the score honestly, which is the point, and then the question becomes where better data comes from.
• The private book is the whole problem. Listed holdings sort themselves out. Private equity, private credit and business loans sit at DQ 4 and DQ 5 and stay there.
• Collection does not scale. Asking every portfolio company to measure works for a concentrated fund and stalls at a few hundred holdings.
• The data vendor was bought for coverage and delivered modelling. A figure exists for every holding, and on inspection it is revenue multiplied by a sector factor.
• Two teams, two numbers. The supply chain programme and the portfolio programme use different sources for the same counterparty.

What actually moves a holding from DQ 5 to DQ 2?

A change in the class of input, not a better model. The PCAF Standard sets this out in its data quality tables, and the ladder is worth knowing precisely because it tells you exactly what any vendor can and cannot do for you.

• DQ 5. You know the outstanding amount, and you apply a sector emission factor per unit of asset, or per unit of revenue with a sector asset turnover ratio. Nothing about the company itself is in the number.
• DQ 4. You add the company's own revenue and the attribution denominator. The emission factor is still a sector average, so revenue is the only company-specific input.
• DQ 3. Primary physical activity data on the company's production, with emission factors specific to that data. Sector averages no longer suffice.
• DQ 2. Either primary physical activity data on the company's energy consumption by source, with specific factors and process emissions added, or the company's own unverified calculated emissions.
• DQ 1. The company's verified emissions.

Read that ladder carefully and one line falls out of it. A vendor database can move a private holding from DQ 5 to DQ 4, because revenue and a denominator are things a data provider can supply. Moving to DQ 3, 2 or 1 requires production volumes, energy consumption by source, or the company's own reported figure, and those exist only where the company has produced them. No external model manufactures them.

Which is why the useful question about any vendor is not how many companies it covers. It is how many of your holdings it can lift above DQ 4, and by what route.

Does being private cost you a data quality point?

No, and this is widely misunderstood. The PCAF scale for business loans and unlisted equity is structurally identical to the one for listed equity and corporate bonds. The only difference is the attribution denominator: listed holdings use enterprise value including cash, unlisted holdings use total company equity plus debt. A private company with verified emissions scores DQ 1 exactly as a listed one does.

What drives private holdings to DQ 4 and DQ 5 is not the Standard. It is that private companies disclose far less often, so the inputs the higher scores require are usually missing. That is a data availability problem, and it is solvable in two directions: find the disclosures that already exist, and engage the holdings that have not made any.

Which Persefoni alternatives should be on your shortlist?

They divide by what they actually are. Some are calculation platforms, some are emissions datasets, and one or two are private-markets collection tools. Mixing the categories is how shortlists go wrong.

Table compiled August 2026 from each vendor's public documentation. Capabilities change, so check the current position with any vendor before a decision.

Which of these can give you a figure for a private holding?

Three answers, and the difference between them is the whole decision.

They sell you a number, modelled from sector and revenue

S&P Global and MSCI both publish large private company counts. The mechanism is economic: map the company to business activities, apportion revenue, apply a sector factor. You get a figure against every holding, and under the PCAF ladder that figure is DQ 4. It is not wrong and it is not useless. It is a sector average carrying a company name, and it should be reported as such.

They collect it from the company

Persefoni, Novata and Watershed take the other route: ask the portfolio company to measure. This is the only path to DQ 3, 2 or 1 for a genuinely private holding, because those scores need inputs only the company itself holds. It works, and it scales with the number of relationships you can actively manage.

They find the disclosure that already exists

A great many private and unlisted companies have already published emissions, in annual reports, regulatory filings, CDP responses and sustainability statements, without any investor asking. DitchCarbon's data starts there: standardised, matched to the legal entity by DUNS, LEI and ISIN, with every figure carrying its source and change history. Where a holding has disclosed, that is a reported figure rather than a modelled one, and it lands high on the ladder because of what it is rather than because of how it was estimated. Where nothing has been disclosed, the generic factor layer still closes the portfolio and the gap is shown rather than hidden.

Most institutions need all three. The order that saves the most work is to find what exists, model the remainder honestly, and spend engagement effort only on the holdings that are material and silent.

How much of a portfolio really sits at DQ 4 and DQ 5?

There is no credible market-wide figure, and anyone quoting one should be asked for the source. Two published studies are worth more than an invented percentage.

MSCI examined its own private capital data and reported that of more than 58,000 portfolio companies in private capital funds, 1,312 had Scope 1 and 2 emissions reporting, a disclosure rate of 2.2% as at the second quarter of 2023. That is a vendor publishing a number against its own commercial interest, which is what makes it worth citing.

The Oxford Sustainable Finance Group examined 28 institutions that had publicly disclosed PCAF-based financed emissions and found that none had been able to compile estimates entirely from directly reported company-level data, and that half used DQ 5. That study is dated January 2023, so treat it as a picture of the early disclosure cohort rather than of today.

Both point the same way. The constraint is disclosure, not calculation, and the work that improves a portfolio's score is data work.

Which of these publish independent verification of their calculation?

Two distinctions decide this question, and both get blurred in vendor material. Verification of a vendor's calculation is not an auditor assuring your inventory. And PCAF accreditation is not verification of anything: PCAF describes it as access to the PCAF database and support in applying the Standard, and neither PCAF nor its accredited partners describe any review of software or calculations.

Persefoni's is the strongest claim of any platform here and deserves saying plainly: SOCOTEC International verifies that its platform calculates emissions correctly against the PCAF Standard. Ask for the date and the certificate, because neither is published alongside the claim.

DitchCarbon is the only specialist Scope 3 tool with third-party assurance of its calculation methodology, and was the first company to earn UL Solutions' Sustainability Information Calculator Verification, in June 2025. The full working, including every vendor checked and the evidence for each, is in our benchmark, Who's really verified? A reality check on carbon software assurance. The underlying documents are downloadable from the DitchCarbon trust centre.

Ask any vendor on your shortlist for the declaration itself, not a page that says audit-ready. Audit-ready without a named verifier and a named standard is marketing.

Which version of the PCAF Standard should you be working to?

Part A, Financed Emissions, is now in its Third Edition, dated December 2025. A good deal of vendor material still describes the Second Edition of December 2023, so it is worth asking which one a platform implements.

Two changes matter for data quality. The attribution denominator for listed equity and corporate bonds is now enterprise value including cash or total debt and equity, where the Second Edition specified enterprise value alone. And PCAF now recommends an inflation adjustment applied specifically to the DQ 4 and DQ 5 emission factors, the ones used to estimate emissions where reported data is absent.

One caveat that PCAF states itself: the additions made in the Second Edition and everything new in the December 2025 edition have not been reviewed by the GHG Protocol, which has closed the review service that granted the original mark. That is not a criticism of the Standard. It is a reason to describe it accurately.

What if you are a portfolio company being asked for emissions data?

Many companies reading a page like this are on both sides of the request. You are measuring your own holdings or suppliers, and an investor or a customer is asking you for the same thing. If that is you, claiming your DitchCarbon profile lets you answer once and reuse it, including work you have already done for CDP or an EcoVadis assessment. It is free and self-serve, and a reported figure is what lifts your investor's data quality score. Claim your profile.

How do you test a vendor before you commit?

Send a sample of your actual holdings, weighted the way your portfolio is weighted, and include the private ones. Then ask each vendor the same four questions. How many of these do you hold a company-reported figure for, as opposed to a modelled one? What PCAF data quality score would each land at? Where did each figure come from, and can I see the source? And what happens to the holdings you have nothing for?

DitchCarbon will show you what it already holds on your list, with the source and change history behind every figure. Numbers you can defend within 2 weeks.

Last reviewed August 2026.