TaraBase reporting: your energy portfolio, visible from meter to CFO
TaraBase is Discovery's utility data and reporting platform. Every client gets a login to dashboards that show savings, usage, costs, contracts and emissions, measured against baselines that prove what the work delivered.
TaraBase is Discovery Energy's proprietary platform for consolidating utility invoices, usage, contracts and savings across locations, with dashboards for finance, operations and sustainability teams. It draws on the line-item bill data captured through bill pay and audits, so cost, usage and emissions reports trace back to the bills they came from.
01 / 07
Why utility reporting breaks down at multi-site companies
Utility data is spread across hundreds of invoices and dozens of providers, each with its own format, billing period and units. Reports get built by hand at month end or year end, from whatever bills someone could find. By the time a report reaches the CFO, it is out of date, and no one can say whether the bills behind it were correct.
Reporting demands keep growing. Sustainability teams need complete, auditable usage for Scope 2. Finance wants cost per unit of production or per square foot. Procurement needs contract terms and expiration dates in one place. Benchmarking is now routine for buildings: more than 330,000 US buildings, nearly 25% of commercial floor space, used EPA's ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager in a single year, and seven states, 48 local governments and two Canadian provinces base their building benchmarking policies on it. All of these start from the same utility bills.
TaraBase puts those bills in one place first. TaraBase provides a single integrated view of bills and line-item charges, usage and demand trends, contracts and expiration dates, savings against agreed baselines, site-level and portfolio-level performance, and ESG and energy-intensity metrics.
02 / 07
Four core dashboards
| Dashboard | What it shows | Who uses it |
|---|---|---|
| Savings | Every identified saving against utility, market and fixed-point baselines | CFO, controller |
| Energy | Usage by meter, site and account type, normalized and trended | Operations, sustainability |
| Contracts | Supplier, term, rate, billing type and expiration for every contract | Procurement |
| Bills | Every bill, payment status and charge breakdown by site, utility and date | AP, facilities |
Beyond the core dashboards
- Benchmarking. Usage, cost and calculated metrics such as CO2e by facility, by region and over time, so one site can be compared with another, one region with another, or a site with its own history.
- Contract renewals. Supply contracts are loaded into TaraBase and renewals are flagged well in advance, so nothing rolls over by accident.
- Renewables. Renewable share, cost per MWh and certificate retirements, reported beside conventional energy cost rather than in a separate silo. See renewable energy advisory.
- Your own KPIs. Cost per unit of production, cost per square foot, carbon intensity per dollar of revenue and similar views, configured at onboarding.
- Monitoring. In an ongoing engagement, bills uploaded to TaraBase are reviewed at least monthly for anomalies and changes in rates or tariff rules.
03 / 07
Savings you can verify
A savings number is only as good as the baseline behind it. In TaraBase, savings are the difference between what you paid and a baseline agreed in writing before work starts.
Set the baseline
Tariff rate, prior contract, market index or a custom baseline. Agreed before work starts.
Measure monthly
Actual cost against baseline every billing cycle, logged as realized savings.
Report
Monthly reports for each audience, with your KPIs, frequency and format.
| Baseline type | What savings are measured against | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Tariff rate | The rate the account was on before a correction | Rate reclassifications, rider opt-outs, corrected classifications |
| Prior contract | The supply price in the contract being replaced | Procurement renewals |
| Market index | The market price at the time of contracting | Procurement timing |
| Custom | A method agreed for a specific project or portfolio | Anything the standard baselines do not fit |
When reading any provider's savings report, check three things in the written terms: what the baseline is, how it adjusts when usage, rates or operations change, and whether refunds, credits, avoided costs and estimated savings are counted differently.
04 / 07
Scope 1 and 2 data from the bills
Scope 2 covers indirect greenhouse gas emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heat or cooling, as the US EPA defines it. Scope 1 covers direct emissions from sources a company owns or controls, such as natural gas burned in boilers and furnaces. For most multi-site companies, both start with utility bills.
The GHG Protocol's Scope 2 Guidance requires companies with operations in markets that offer contractual instruments, which includes the US, to report Scope 2 two ways: a location-based figure using grid-average emission factors, and a market-based figure reflecting the electricity the company has chosen to buy. In the US, location-based factors usually come from EPA's eGRID database, whose latest edition, eGRID2023, uses 2023 data.
TaraBase tracks the consumption that feeds carbon and ESG reporting, including renewable share, emissions factors by utility and region, intensity metrics and REC records.
Every account at every site
Including acquired, leased and recently closed locations. Small meters, vacant buildings and newly acquired sites are often missed until year end.
Usage by billing period, with estimates marked
Estimated reads that are never trued up misstate emissions as well as cost. See estimated reads.
A verified service address for each account
Location-based reporting needs each site mapped to the right grid region.
Contracts and certificates
Supply contracts, REC purchases and retirement records, matched to the sites and periods they cover, for the market-based figure.
A trail back to the bill
Assurance providers ask where each number came from. Each reported kWh should link to its bill, meter and period.
Read more in our guide to Scope 2 data from utility bills.
05 / 07
TaraBase at a 215-facility distributor
A global chemical distributor with more than 215 facilities, 1,000+ accounts and 87 providers uses TaraBase to track spend, usage and emissions across its portfolio, updated daily as new billing data is entered. Its accounting teams use the dashboard weekly across all 13 regions, and executives review it at least quarterly. In one representative billing cycle, $76,206 of charges, 1,058,183.64 kWh and 529.09 metric tons of CO2e were tracked, each traceable to the bill it came from.
The company has reported that completing its GHG Protocol Scope 1 and Scope 2 accounting, CDP Climate Disclosure, ESRS E1 climate reporting and SBTi submissions would not have been possible without TaraBase, and that it eases ISO 14064-1, RE100 and EcoVadis work. These statements describe the company's own experience; they are not a certification or a guarantee of compliance with any framework. Read the full case.
06 / 07
How you get TaraBase, and what it costs
TaraBase is included with utility bill pay, and may be included with larger audit or procurement engagements. Bill pay is the most complete way to feed it, because every bill for every utility type, including water and sewer, is captured line by line before it is paid. Audits and procurement add findings, savings and contracts to the same data set. See pricing.
Access is set by role and configured during onboarding. A TaraBase login is available from the contact page for existing clients.
07 / 07
Questions buyers ask
Who can use TaraBase and what do they see?
Access is set by role. Executives typically see portfolio savings and cost summaries; facilities and operations managers see site-level usage and billing detail. Views are configured during onboarding.
How is savings defined?
As the difference between what you paid and an agreed baseline: the applicable tariff rate, a prior contract price, the market price at the time of contracting, or a custom baseline. The method is agreed before any savings are counted.
Can TaraBase support ESG reporting?
Yes. It tracks consumption that feeds carbon and ESG reporting, including renewable share, emissions factors by utility and region, intensity metrics and REC records. One client uses it for GHG Protocol Scope 1 and 2, CDP, ESRS E1 and SBTi reporting.
Can dashboards reflect our own KPIs?
Yes. Cost per unit of production, cost per square foot, carbon intensity per dollar of revenue and similar views are configured at onboarding.
How often is data updated?
As bills are received and processed, typically monthly, with interval-metered accounts more often. Contract and savings views update as contracts execute or savings are logged.
How do we get access to TaraBase?
TaraBase is included with bill pay and may be included with larger audit or procurement engagements. Every client gets a login, with views configured by role during onboarding.
Sources
- US EPA ENERGY STAR, Facts and stats, more than 330,000 buildings and nearly 25% of US commercial floor space using Portfolio Manager in a year; seven states, 48 local governments and two Canadian provinces using it for benchmarking policies.
- US EPA Center for Corporate Climate Leadership, Scope 1 and Scope 2 inventory guidance, definitions of Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions.
- GHG Protocol, Scope 2 Guidance (2015), dual reporting of location-based and market-based Scope 2 for operations in markets with contractual instruments, including the US.
- US EPA, Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID), eGRID2023 as the latest edition, with 2023 data.
Find out what your bills should have cost.
Send one recent bill per site, or a list of accounts. We tell you where we expect findings before you sign anything. No upfront audit fee.