Getting Started with the CRANE Tool

What is CRANE?

process diagram

CRANE (Carbon Reduction Assessment for New Enterprises) is an open access, web-based application that allows users to evaluate the greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction potential of emerging technologies The goal of the software is to greatly reduce the time and resources required for investors, entrepreneurs, government agencies, incubators, and philanthropies to perform forward-facing, rigorous and transparent climate impact assessments. The key result is an impact potential for the technology or company, which is the magnitude of the greenhouse gas emissions in million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMtCO2e) that have the potential to be avoided or abated as a result of deploying the new technology. Every analysis includes a summary report that provides additional metrics, assumptions, references, and calculations. Each analysis can be downloaded in multiple formats and shared among stakeholders for further review and improvement.

CRANE’s mission is to make GHG modeling capabilities publicly and globally available, while contributing to a digital ecosystem of organizations and people working on real climate solutions. The CRANE tool does not precisely forecast the future, but rather provides an estimate for future impact potential and a logical basis for that estimate. We hope our users will view CRANE output reports as a helpful starting place for considering climate impact in their own diligence, integrated reporting and conversations.

[Click here to download a shareable 1-page overview of CRANE]

CRANE's Methodology

The CRANE methodology originated from Prime’s in-house process, which was formalized and published in a 2018 report entitled Climate Impact Assessment for Early Stage Ventures. Since then, the methodology has been subtly refined in order for it to be applicable to a broad range of sectors and manifested in software. However, the core framework and approach has not been altered.

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The high-level approach of the methodology is to calculate the difference in emissions between two divergent futures (scenarios):

  • The Reference Scenario, which may be any of a range of possible futures in which the new technology has not been deployed, and the market demands continue to grow at expected rates
  • The Solution Scenario, a future in which the new technology has been deployed.

Each scenario includes projections of the Total Available Market (the largest or broadest market that a technology could theoretically displace), Target Market (the specific market that a technology will displace over time), and Established Market if applicable (an existing, clean technology market that falls within the same total available market as the new technology). The Solution Scenario also includes the Solution Market (the market share captured by the New Technology). The remaining market is the Total Available Market less all the other markets incorporated in the analysis.

For more detailed information on the calculations, we recommend reviewing the Calculation References tab of a CRANE analysis.

This framework does not assess the probability of a given venture to achieve commercial success. Rather, it focuses on describing ERPs that allow investors in a variety of industries and subsectors to compare the potential impact of one venture relative to another and to investigate the underlying assumptions.