Heineken NL Commerce gains deeper carbon insight with Coolset
Heineken NL Commerce partnered with Coolset to get a detailed view of its commercial carbon footprint, going beyond the consolidated global figures reported by Heineken globally. The Dutch entity's emissions are tied to commercial activities like marketing, events, logistics and customer operations, requiring a more granular and internally structured approach. Coolset's ability to combine spend-based data with activity-based enrichment, alongside straightforward bulk data delivery, made it the right fit. The result was a footprint mapped to Heineken Nederland Commerce's internal organizational structure, giving teams clear ownership of their emissions and actionable insight into where to focus. The collaboration was described as cooperative and efficient, with minimal time investment required on the client side.
About
Heineken is one of the world's most recognised beer brewers, with a strong commitment to sustainability embedded in its global strategy. Its Brewing a Better World programme spans three pillars: environmental sustainability (including water, circularity, and CO₂), social impact, and responsible alcohol use. Each pillar carries specific targets at both global and local levels.
Heineken Nederland Commerce is the Dutch entity responsible for the marketization of Heineken products on the Dutch market. Its carbon footprint has a distinct composition: centred on commercial activities such as marketing, events, logistics, and customer relationships rather than production.
Heineken Nederland Commerce has ambitions aligned to the global targets: Scope 1 and 2 net zero and a 26% reduction of scope 3 emissions by 2030, and full value chain net zero by 2040.
The challenge
Heineken, a public company, extensively reports sustainability performance at a global level and meets CSRD requirements, earning recognition by being voted as the best ESG Report at the IR Impact awards. However, Heineken Nederland Commerce wanted a more granular view of its own commercial footprint.
The challenge was specific: to go beyond the consolidated global figure and understand the emissions tied to commercial activities in the Netherlands: marketing spend, events, customer-facing operations, and logistics. While the brewery's production emissions sit in Heineken Nederland Commerce's Scope 3, at the same time the organisation has influence over which products are sold, which packaging formats are used, and how products are transported to customers.
To make meaningful decisions and accelerate decarbonisation, the team needed detailed, reliable data - structured in a way that could be used for internal steering.
Why Coolset?
Heineken Nederland Commerce evaluated several providers before selecting Coolset. Three factors drove the decision:
- Methodological fit: Heineken's global reporting already used an activity-based methodology. Coolset's ability to start from a spend-based foundation and enrich it progressively with activity data matched exactly how the team wanted to build its additional footprint in a straightforward way. Efficiently, without duplicating existing processes or introducing unnecessary complexity.
- Ease of data delivery: Coolset accepts large bulk data exports in spreadsheets from Heineken's systems. There was no need for complex integration or manual reformatting, just a clean data handoff that made the process genuinely low-effort.
- Price and pragmatism: Coolset offered the right combination of depth and value. The commercial approach was clear and transparent, and the team found working with Coolset to be straightforward and collaborative from the first conversation.
The impact
The collaboration delivered the granular insight Heineken Nederland Commerce was looking for. The team now has the specific actionable insights of its carbon footprint, including for example logistics emissions.
Additionally, Coolset mapped the emissions data to Heineken Nederland Commerce's internal organisational structure, aligned to channels such as retail and out-of-home. This meant the results could be connected to internal ownership and reporting lines, rather than just the acitivity-based emission categories spanning departments.
The outcome was not just data, but a tool to drive insight for decision-making: identifying emissions hotspots, understanding which commercial choices drive the largest impact, and generating productive internal conversations about where to focus.
Customer success
Heineken Netherlands describes the collaboration with Coolset as cooperative, pleasant, and efficient. The Coolset team asked the right questions, guided the process well, and kept the time investment on the client side to a minimum.
Data delivery worked well: Heineken Nederland Commerce exported data from its internal systems and shared it with Coolset. A simple, clean process that required no heavy lifting. Onboarding was handled quickly, and the working relationship felt collaborative throughout.
The quality of the conversation mattered as well. Spend-based carbon analysis has real complexity beneath the surface, and Heineken Netherlands valued that the team could discuss the nuances together rather than relying on automated outputs alone.
Favourite features
- Drill-down navigation: The ability to move from high-level totals into category-level detail, and then deeper still – quickly understanding where emissions originate and what is driving them.
- Speed and responsiveness: The platform is fast and dynamic, making it easy to explore data interactively without friction.
- Organizational mapping: The ability to structure the footprint according to internal reporting lines — giving different teams and business units a clear, relevant view of their own emissions.
What's next?
The work done with Coolset drove clear results: a structured understanding of the commercial footprint, an internal dashboard built on that data, and a stronger foundation for emissions reduction conversations across the organisation.
