04 · The Climate PM Practice2 min read
A day in the life of a carbon-aware PM
A working playbook for building carbon thinking into everyday product management: daily habits, the first month, and growing into climate leadership.
Theme 04
The Climate PM Practice
What does a product manager actually do differently when carbon is on the roadmap? This theme is the practice side: carbon as a metric next to latency and cost, reading LCAs as product diagnostics, working across compliance and procurement, and the persona and segmentation work that climate software needs.
Entries
04 · The Climate PM Practice2 min read
The surprising simplicity of starting your first LCA
LCAs are less like a chemistry degree and more like learning to cook. Think of one as a health check-up for a product, and start small.
04 · The Climate PM Practice2 min read
Why every product and business leader should understand LCA
Product management is evolving and so is business. A practical guide to life cycle assessment for leaders who will never run one themselves.
04 · The Climate PM Practice2 min read
Make carbon a product metric
If we can track latency and cost per request, we can track carbon per request. A reading list and a case for treating emissions as a first-class metric.
04 · The Climate PM Practice2 min read
From LCA curiosity to collective action at PNW Climate Week
Co-leading a first life cycle assessment workshop in Seattle for 60+ consultants and sustainable design professionals, and what the room taught me.
Common questions
- What is a carbon-aware product manager?
- A product manager who treats emissions as a first-class product metric: measured, budgeted and traded off in decisions alongside cost, quality and speed, and who understands the data, standards and stakeholders behind that number.
- Do product managers need to run LCAs themselves?
- No. They need to read one: understand the functional unit, the system boundary and the hotspots, and turn those findings into product decisions. Screening-level LCAs are a practical starting point.
- What does an early climate tech PM hire need to know?
- The organization and sector, the LCA data sources, reporting and compliance requirements, multi-sector reach, user personas and segmentation, and how AI and data governance apply to all of it.