Decarbonization is not certification: why ecological proof is becoming essential

Introduction

The number of technical offers to support decarbonization is growing. Combining engineering, financing, works and maintenance, they aim to simplify the energy transformation of industries, local authorities and large-scale projects.

But behind this growing integration, a key question remains unanswered: who verifies the real impact of the choices made on ecosystems?

At IRICE, our answer is clear: there is no sustainability without method. There is no method without proof. And there's no proof without an independent third party.

1. The risk of high-performance but blind engineering

Today's major technical structures offer comprehensive solutions:

• carbon audits,
• energy performance plans,
• infrastructure financing,
• low-carbon trajectory management.

These devices are useful. But they are designed by those who sell the solutions.

With no external verification framework, benefit assessment is based on internal calculations, with no third parties, no counter-expertise and no shared indicators.

Emissions reductions are announced. Biodiversity is supposed to win. The investment is described as sustainable.

But all this remains declared. Not certified.

2. The limits of purely carbon-based reasoning

Decarbonization does not guarantee sustainability. Reducing GHGs is not enough to protect the environment. Optimizing consumption does not guarantee the regeneration of living organisms.

Low-carbon is a condition. Not an end. There are many planetary limits: climate, but also biodiversity, soil use, the nitrogen cycle, the water cycle...

A sustainable strategy therefore requires a systemic approach. And this approach requires tools capable of documenting the real contribution of projects to the overall environmental balance.

3. IRICE: making measurable what is claimed

IRICE is an independent third-party certifier of ecological performance. We don't install anything. We don't sell technical solutions. Our sole mission: to objectivize the real effects of a project on the natural environment.

We have developed two key tools:

• Biodiversity Performance Score (BPS): a cross-disciplinary scientific diagnosis based on 6 ecological performance criteria (functionality, pressures, dynamics, cohabitation, evidence, sustainable finance).
• Effinature standards: a certification framework compatible with new-build (NC), renovation (EV), multi-site (HOR) and high ecological value (HVE) operations.

These tools enable our partners to link their low-carbon trajectories to objectivized, traceable, comparable and auditable ecological results.

4. A complementary architecture for integrated offerings

We don't compete with technical operators. We complement their action by introducing the rigor of measurement and the credibility of certification. Where a design office figures a CO₂ saving, IRICE verifies the associated ecological impact.

This link is all the more crucial as the European biodiversity strategy for 2030 and the new CSRD / Green Taxonomy requirements impose :

• to demonstrate the impact on nature,
• quantify biodiversity co-benefits,
• secure extra-financial declarations using recognized tools.

Conclusion: towards a new standard of accountability

The time for technical promises is over. The time for ecological accountability has begun.

IRICE proposes an independent standard, compatible with all decarbonization trajectories. Because environmental credibility cannot be decreed. It has to be demonstrated.

Are you embarking on a low-carbon trajectory and want to anchor your action in a measurable ecological reality? Contact IRICE. We work independently, in support of your technical partners.