If you were a business owner and wanted to take steps to reduce your carbon footprint – it would be helpful to actually assess and understand your carbon footprint in order to get a baseline measurement.
The business of estimating, monitoring, reporting, and reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs) is known as Enterprise Carbon Accounting and there's a bit of a land rush in this emerging sector. It's a software-as-a-service function and a lot of firms have jumped into the fray - all of them attempting to automate and simplify the carbon and energy accounting process for the home and business.
There has been a lot of activity from software giants (Microsoft's Hohm, SAP's acquisition of Clear Standards, Google's interest) as well as plenty of VC investment (KP's investment in Hara, etc.).
According to Groom Energy, a consulting organization in this field, 3000 organizations worldwide have calculated their firm's carbon emission and the number of organizations using ECA software is expected to quadruple in the next three years.
One of these ECA software firms is Noblis. Noblis, amongst other things, is a nonprofit proponent of environmentally sustainable business practices. They have been a relatively quiet player in this field but are now starting to make some noise.
I spoke with Mile (pronounced Millie) Corrigan, principal systems engineer and principal architect of Noblis' TEAL (Total Emissions Analytics) ECA product. TEAL is a suite of analytic tools to help organizations assess and plan their sustainability strategies in order to reduce their carbon footprint and reduce their energy usage.
"The quicker businesses can automate their GHG accounting, the quicker they can manage their cost savings." says Corrigan.
The software model generated by the Noblis software provides the user with "sliders" that allow the enterprise to play with the variables that influence their carbon footprint. For example, the firm could use the software to see how increased telecommuting would affect the firm's footprint. The software can be used to evaluate "what-if" scenarios and examine the emissions impacts of changing corporate practices and policies.
TEAL also has a return on investment (ROI) component for analyzing investments in greening IT equipment and lighting. According to Corrigan, their software "is like Turbo-Tax and will help companies get the info they truly need."
Businesses usually want to do the right thing but there's a lot of confusion on how to get this carbon footprinting thing done. Software like that from Noblis can make this process a little simpler.
Some more ECA resources:
Green.Noblis.org – a resource for news and information on climate and sustainability topics.
Groom Energy has written a report on this nascent market with 51 vendor profiles here.
Most of the methodology used to calculate carbon emissions comes from the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).
