The Challenge: Adapting to Evolving Regulations

The global push for sustainability has ushered in a wave of new regulations aimed at improving transparency and accountability in material sourcing and environmental impact. While these regulations are critical for driving change, they present significant challenges for companies navigating complex supply chains.

Certscape, an Australian leader in regulatory intelligence and certification automation, and Minviro, a UK company renowned for life cycle assessment (LCA) in the raw materials and decarbonisation tech sectors, are helping industries stay ahead of these changes. "Understanding and aligning with sustainability regulations is no longer just a compliance issue—it’s a strategic imperative that leads to real commercial and social outcomes," says Robert Pell, CEO of Minviro.

The Pain Point: Regulatory Complexity

For businesses operating in global markets, keeping pace with rapidly evolving regulations can be overwhelming. Non-compliance risks include financial penalties, reputational damage, and lost opportunities for market leadership. The new EU battery regulations, for example, set to take effect in 2025, mandates detailed carbon footprint disclosures for every stage of the battery life cycle—a requirement many companies are preparing to meet.

In addition to the EU regulation, forthcoming policies in North America aim to impose stricter guidelines on material provenance, particularly for critical minerals like lithium and nickel. These regulations reflect a growing global emphasis on transparency and sustainability.

Certification schemes around the world look to verify the sustainability credentials of these non-renewable materials and other commodities such as gases and fuels. Leveraging the schemes can result in tax incentives, grants, and access to markets with stringent product emissions importation requirements. However, the sheer amount of data required to generate these certificates means that manual processes and spreadsheeting tools are no longer workable at scale.

New Insights: Combining Regulatory Expertise with Lifecycle Data

Certscape’s platform tracks and interprets global regulations, enabling customers to automate the generation, transfer, and surrender of Guarantee of Origin certificates across multiple projects and certification schemes throughout their supply chain. When integrated with Minviro’s product life cycle data, this approach offers a powerful end-to-end solution for registration, operation and audit of production facilities engaging in certification. "Our goal is to make compliance seamless by partnering throughout the climate technology landscape for a comprehensive full-spectrum solution," says Chris Lyndon, CEO of Certscape.

As part of the collaborative UK-Australian “HyPACT” grant project, Minviro and Certscape are combining their service offerings to commercialise the project partners’ novel hydrogen production technology, positioning the pilot process as a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.

This comes at a crucial time as Australians head to the polls, deciding not just their preferred party but also the future of energy decarbonisation in Australia. The government is supporting the transition through Production Tax Incentives, including the Hydrogen Production Tax Incentive, offering $2 per kg of hydrogen produced, and a recently announced $2 billion investment into a Green Aluminium Production Credit.

These financial supports are contingent on verification through Australia’s Guarantee of Origin scheme, ensuring producers meet the decarbonisation criteria set by these green policies. As a result, producers seeking to access these commercial incentives are now actively preparing for certification under the scheme. Minviro, experts in upstream raw material environmental impacts, are poised to support the transition to regulated, low-impact supply chains and partner with Certscape to give companies confidence in their sustainability journey.

The Role of Technology: Empowering Regulatory Alignment And Unlocking Certification At Scale

LCA software plays a crucial role in helping companies adapt to the evolving regulatory landscape. XYCLE, recently launched by Minviro, gives users access to high-quality LCA functionality in a more accessible format than ever before. The platform, in combination with the company’s proprietary raw material unit process knowledge, enables:

• Accurate carbon footprint assessments for compliance, alongside all other environmental impacts captured by the Environmental Footprint 3.1 LCA approach.
• Scenario modeling to identify the most sustainable and compliant supply chain pathways for prospective project set-ups.
• Transparent approaches to environmental measurements to meet regulatory and stakeholder expectations, including upcoming carbon footprint and ecodesign legislation.

"With XYCLE, we’ve been able to streamline our compliance efforts while uncovering new opportunities to enhance sustainability," says a recent XYCLE user in the battery industry.

Certscape helps renewable gas, fuel and material projects achieve financial close and operate more efficiently once production has begun. Certscape has partnered with Minviro to streamline the entire certification journey for companies looking to achieve their sustainability goals.

Through Certscape operators can seamlessly manage the certification scheme requirements while, behind the scenes, XYCLE is able to assess the environmental performance of the product, helping inform the decisions made to align with the certification standards. From there, the Certscape automation takes over—handling the generation of certificates in a fully hands-free process, with powerful automation and effortless audit management.

Together, they empower companies to navigate complex regulatory landscapes with confidence—unlocking certification at scale. XYCLE sets the foundation. Certscape drives the certification.

Case Study: Green Aluminium Model in XYCLE

As an example of how the two companies work together, a simple exercise was conducted in XYCLE, addressing business needs in the aluminium industry in the face of new Green Aluminium Production Credit requirements. For this, Minviro used publicly available inventories for the production of 1 kg refined wrought aluminium ingots, and created low-impact supply chain set-ups using XYCLE’s unique Scenario Analysis feature. The project can be optimised in seconds by exploring various different options- for instance, in this scenario we selected renewable energy as the power source during the Hall-Héroult process and included circular flows within the system’s end-of-life.

By mapping our potential decarbonisation pathways during development stages, companies can explore their routes to acquiring green incentives, align with regulatory compliance or reducing carbon footprints. They can effectively observe which supply chain adjustments would produce the largest environmental benefit in their system, plan for the economics surrounding these changes, and form a concrete business model from this information. Once mapped, life cycle impact data can be integrated with facility profile information on the Certscape platform. Project developers can then assess their eligibility across various certification schemes, forecast product emissions, and determine whether they meet all requirements and determine what changes they can implement to secure production credits.

Looking Ahead: Turning Compliance into a Competitive Advantage

As regulations continue to evolve, businesses that embrace data-driven solutions will be best positioned to lead. "By combining regulatory intelligence with lifecycle insights, we are enabling companies to move beyond compliance and drive meaningful impact and commercial outcomes," concludes Mr. Lyndon. "In partnership, we can create a more sustainable and accountable future for sustainable commodities."

Through the HyPACT project, Minviro and Certscape will combine their expertise for a particular case study - hydrogen production in the UK and Australia. By aligning Minviro’s LCA database and XYCLE software with the policy engine driving the Certscape platform, the companies hope to offer a one-stop-shop for managing stakeholder environmental expectations and ultimate operational efficiency for certification reporting, in the UK, Australia and beyond!

Tools like XYCLE and the Certscape platform are paving the way for industries to navigate the complexities of sustainability regulations and certification with confidence, turning challenges into opportunities for growth, whilst making compliance responsive yet simple and effective for users.

If you want to know more about the case study get in touch - we’d be happy to walk you through our solutions and book in your trial sessions!