PracticalSustainability

12 Acquisitions Transformed the Energy Management Software Market in 2011

2012-01-26T19:40:00.004-05:00

The market for energy management software (EMS) and services to help companies reduce energy use and carbon emissions continues to mature. Vendors are broadening their product lines by acquiring smaller, innovative firms. Twelve companies were acquired by larger firms last year, and more acquisitions are expected in 2012. Corporate managers who plan to purchase an EMS in 2012 need to be mindful of this trend as they evaluate vendors.

For decades, software for providing energy use information was an add-on to control systems, monitoring systems, and asset management systems. These early EMS capabilities were often simply displays of current energy use with no data storage or analytics and were frequently tied to proprietary hardware.

In response to the increased need for visibility of a company’s carbon emissions and energy use over the last few years, vendors have responded with a plethora of EMS solutions (here is our list of more than 100 EMS vendors). These newer solutions are full-featured applications with multiple options for data capture, sophisticated data analytics, configurable alerting systems, best practice databases, and innovative work order capabilities.

Large vendors are making these acquisitions to broaden their offering and to become full energy management services companies. These acquired capabilities include procurement, demand response, building commissioning, sustainability, bill management, and energy efficiency. Increasingly, corporate managers can look to one or a handful of companies to meet their energy management needs across a wide variety of applications and sites.

Energy Management Software Service Acquisitions in 2011

Acquired Vendor	Acquirer
Pace (utility bill management, carbon management)	Siemens
EPS Corporation (EMS for manufacturing)	Ameresco
Prenova (procurement)	Ecova
AgileWaves (EMS)	Serious Energy
ENXsuite (sustainability/EMS)	Infor
Summit Energy (utility bill management, procurement)	Schneider Electric
Servidyne (building efficiency services)	SCIEnergy
EnergyConnect (demand response)	JCI
TRIRIGA (building energy management)	IBM
Site Controls (EMS)	Siemens
CPower (demand response)	Constellation Energy
Building Knowledge Networks (real-time monitoring)	Ecova

Notes

- This chart lists vendors that sell energy management systems sold to companies, not utilities.

- Pace and EPS acquisitions were announced in early January 2012

- Ecova was formerly named AdvantageIQ.

- SCIEnergy was formerly named Scientific Conservation.

In our Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting (EECA) Buyers Guide, four of the top twenty companies we analyzed were acquired: ENXSuite, Pace, Summit Energy, and TRIRIGA.

Valuations for these transactions are typically confidential. Schneider Electric paid $268 million for Summit Energy and expects to generate $65m in revenue. This implies a 4x enterprise value to revenue valuation ratio.

Acquisitions affect product road maps, pricing models, contract terms, investment levels, and many other aspects of a solution offering. Managers evaluating current and future vendors for EMS systems need to be aware of these acquisition trends. Acquisitions sometimes work but sometimes do not, and vendors need to thoroughly evaluate the impact of any acquisition.

How to Make Sense of the Confusing Energy Management Software (EMS) Vendor Market

2012-01-11T08:41:00.006-05:00

More companies are purchasing Energy Management Software (EMS) to support energy and GHG reporting to top customers and investors and to reduce energy costs. The market for EMS products is tremendously varied and confusing. By prioritizing a company's needs against five common use cases, corporate managers can avoid the bewilderment caused when confronted with the hundreds of EMS offerings available today.

We define an EMS as a database of energy use and cost data that helps companies track and reduce energy use. Data can be historical - like that obtained from utility bills - or real-time from physical monitors for a single energy load, single facility or multiple sites. An EMS can be a stand-alone product or a module of an operations, maintenance, sustainability, or environmental suite of products.

A Confusing EMS Market

As part of an upcoming report titled A Corporate Buyer's Guide to Energy Management System - A Guide to Develop a Short List of Vendors, our research confirmed that corporate managers are significantly confused about the differences among the over 100 EMS offerings (here is the full list).

Many reasons cause this problem. The EMS category is a largely amorphous product space in which vendor offerings widely differ. Product approaches vary from software-only to hardware-only to hybrid software and hardware products; pricing and business models differ in shared savings, to software subscription, to blended models; and the breadth of solutions fluctuates between energy tracking-centric to control-centric to maintenance-centric.

Even more frustrating, terms like EMS, enterprise energy management, energy intelligence, intelligent buildings and many others are defined differently and even used interchangeably. Moreover, vendors' strengths vary by industry (such as retailing or manufacturing) and by facility type, where the top energy loads differ greatly.

Adding to the confusion are the blurring lines between traditional vendor offerings. EHS vendors now offer carbon and energy management modules, and firms that started as carbon specialists have morphed into EMS providers. Utility bill management vendors added carbon offerings, while demand response providers now sell enterprise-wide energy management software suites, and Building Management Systems (BMS) providers are extending their offerings with more robust EMS capabilities.

Not surprisingly, all this leads to a very perplexing, kaleidoscope-like EMS vendor market.

Making Sense of the Many EMS Offerings with 5 Use Cases

To make sense of these 100 firms, corporate managers must first prioritize their needs, which typically fall into one of five use cases. Often, each use case has a different internal department that is funding the project. The first two use cases are based on energy data from utility bills and the later three are based on data from monitoring devices.

EMS solutions based on utility bill data and which are often multiple sites or company-wide:

1. Utility bill management and payment-related. These services enter utility bills manually, provide an online database of energy use by site, and, optionally, pay the invoice. The benefits are the avoidance of late fees and billing errors and the creation of an energy database. This is typically purchased by Procurement or Sustainability.

2. Sustainability or EHS-related. This software often has modules for EHS-related and/or sustainability needs and uses utility bill data as the data source. The benefits are reduced cost and risk through increased automated tracking and reporting. EHS, Sustainability, Corporate Energy Management, Finance or Facilities teams are the principle purchasers in this scenario.

EMS solutions based on submetering data and which support daily operations

3. Submetering-related (not associated with control). These solutions require submetering of certain energy loads to manage energy use in real time or to allocate energy costs to product lines, customers or tenants. The benefits are lower cost because operators can act upon real-time data, or increased revenue from customers or tenants. These solutions are purchased by Operations, Manufacturing, Facility or Real Estate teams.

4. Demand response-related. Increasingly, demand response vendors offer an EMS to track energy use at one or multiple facilities. The main benefit of demand response is financial payment, which is often a useful way to fund the purchase of submeters and an EMS. These systems are purchased by Operations or Facilities.

5. Control-related. These solutions are asset-specific (HVAC, lighting, manufacturing line, data centers, refrigeration, lighting, etc.), require submetering, and often offer the ability to control assets (either hardware or software based). The main benefits of these solutions rest with operational reliability, with energy management as an optional, and growing, feature. These tools are purchased by operations or facilities and are often specified at the time of construction of the building or manufacturing process.

Unlike carbon software management, many EMS solutions frequently differ by industry and facility type and here are a few examples. EMS solutions from Invensys, Rockwell Automation, and PowerIT are optimized for heavy-energy-use manufacturing sites or industrial processes, while others, such as BuildingIQ, Clean Urban Energy and Serious Energy focus on large commercial buildings. Others, like Credit360, C3 and CA Technologies focus on enterprise-wide energy tracking. Firms such as Phoenix Energy Technologies, Verisae and Novar have strong experience with retail chains.

Many EMS are driven data from submeters, BMS controls, sensors or other physical monitoring devices. Data from these physical monitoring devices must be stored, often in software installed within the company IT network to meet security requirements. Thus, while SaaS-based EMS systems, in which all software is installed outside the company's IT infrastructure, have received much press lately, the reality is that for many EMS applications based monitoring data, software must be installed at the company site. Installation of onsite hardware and software increases project cost.

Use the Cases to Refine Needs and Narrow the List of Potential Vendors

The above use cases help managers refine and prioritize their needs and begin to narrow the field of vendors to consider for a short list. While many factors are useful, understanding the type of data (utility bill or submetered data) used by the EMS, industry strength of each vendor, and a prioritization set of needs based on these five use cases help manages demystify the myriad of EMS offers that exist today.

More Acquisitions: Ameresco Buys EPS Corp

2011-12-15T15:13:00.003-05:00

Another week, acquisition. Ameresco purchased EPS Corp, which sells real-time energy monitoring software for industrial applications. This follows recent announcements of Evoca (formerly AdvantageIQ) acquiring Prenova; Infor's purchase of ENXSuite; and others (such as Schneider Electric's acquisition of Summit Energy).

Look for more even more acquisitions in the next year.

For corporate managers purchasing energy management software, the vendor landscape continues to be fluid. But, more larger companies are expanding service and product capabilities as the importance of energy management increases.

Look for information on our upcoming report, A Corporate Buyer's Guide to Energy Management Software.

Four Key Takeaways from Last Week's Enterprise Smart Grid and ISO 50001 Conferences

2011-11-11T14:18:00.002-05:00

Last week's conference provided 150 attendees a cross section of market viewpoints from a diverse lineup of corporate energy managers (here are a few pictures). ISO related, NGO, utility and vendor also chimed in. Representing a variety of different industries (industrial, manufacturing, retail and university), we learned how the corporate energy management process is managed in each, and the challenges, investments, and tools these managers are using to achieve improved energy performance.

We wrote last week about four key questions that would be discussed and below are the answers.

1. What are the benefits of ISO 50001 certification and the business case for investing money and time?

Today the main benefits of ISO 50001 relate primarily to providing external validation for key customers and senior management that a company has an acceptable, referenceable process for addressing energy management. Not surprisingly the investment to certify for ISO 50001 is lower for companies who have already undergone an ISO 140001 certification. While a different third party certifier may be required for ISO 50001, these companies have already confirmed that their management and customers assign value to the ISO process, and hence the 50001 investment is a logical, cost effective next step.

For companies who have not made ISO related process investments, the value is more related to management's current assessment of how strategically they view energy consumption within their business. And the larger the organization and its number of facilities the greater the investment required to get started. Interestingly Schneider's case study started with just one facility as a means to learn and assess investment and value for broader adoption.

The workshop confirmed that ISO 50001 is descriptive, and not prescriptive. That is, ISO 50001 certification confirms that a company has a well documented energy management process, goals, and procedures to improve in cases when performance is below plan. ISO 50001 does not dedicate what level of energy use improvement is needed. Like other ISO programs, if improvement goals are not achieved, the company needs to document improvement steps. Non-conformance findings by ISO auditors is on process non-conformance, not goal underachievement.

2. What have Staples, Genzyme, Harvard University, Boston Sand and Gravel, and others learned about the financial return for submetering facilities and specific energy loads?

A recurring theme throughout the day is that real time energy use visibility drives savings. Beacon Capital Partners achieved a $30K savings annual savings through optimizing building startup based on real time energy monitoring and also saved $45,000 by turning off systems that were needlessly running during the weekend. Harvard University's School of Public Health saved $1.4M in chilled water use in one year due to better management of systems based on data from submeters.

Millipore has trained their own in-house energy assessment teams to use spot metering to identify opportunities with hard savings estimates and uses this data to build consensus with the site management for future projects.

However, on-going submetering generates lots of on-going data - always a problem for time-starved and understaffed facility and energy teams. One best practice utilized by Harvard University is to an outside consultant to analyze the data and send the University proposed work orders when anomalies are detected. This approach is more actionable than having finding consolidated in large monthly reports.

Three firms mentioned that the implementation cost of sub metering their facilities was a part of demand response programs.

All mentioned the value of the data. "We, including our facilities engineers, thought the facilities were operating well but the sub metering data clearly showed us areas we were missing" was a common theme heard over and over.

3. What are the latest trends in supplier scorecards for sustainability and energy? How aggressively are energy metrics being added to sustainability scorecards and RFPs?

Supplier scorecards and more environmental data requests in RFPs continue as an important growing trend, even in this economy. Firms in many diverse industries like steel, consumer products, computer hosting, and banking are receiving scorecard request from their customers. And it is not always the large customers. Genzyme received scorecard request from the Association of Renal Industries, a small industry trade association.

Tim Greiner from Pure Strategies stated that the scorecard programs take 4 approaches: Measure, Report, Goals/Targets, and Performance, and that each approach has tradeoffs.

4. How are companies using energy management software? What are differences among utility bill management, energy management, carbon, procurement, and submetering software solutions?

Like GHG reporting a few years ago, the vast majority of corporate users continue to utilize spreadsheets to track and manage their energy consumption. One speaker even recommended that to really understand what's going on companies must start with spreadsheets. Then, after developing a good understanding from the brute force data analysis process associated with spreadsheets, a company is in a better position to choose an energy management software that best addresses their particular operational need.

No single software system currently meets all needs. One global firm uses a bill management solution to collect global energy data. A large retailer uses separate software solutions for carbon, utility bill management and submetering data.

Enablon Launches Sustainability Networking Tool – Wizness

2011-11-11T14:12:00.006-05:00

Enablon launched Wizness, an online networking software site for sustainability professionals to trade best practices and advice. The company aims to leverage the large base of installed customers that has users in EHS, sustainability, energy and other departments. UPS is one customer who is an early adopter, notes a Greenbiz article. Members of this networking site do not need to be customers of Enablon, however.

This is novel approach to the problem of learning and networking. Most professionals have networking groups that are industry or position based and this is a unique approach for a vendor-centric approach.

Firm Discuss Pros and Cons of ISO 50001 at Conference

2011-11-01T15:49:00.011-04:00

We had a very productive and interactive half-day seminar today on ISO 50001. Over 80 people discussed the detailed requirements and the business case for ISO 50001 in seminar lead by DEKRA, one of the early certification bodies.

Many takeaways, but some are
- ISO is descriptive, not prescriptive; i.e, ISO focuses on documents the process, but doesn't tell organizations what the goals should be.
- Unlike ISO, DOE SEP is prescription, not descriptive
- Multi-site ISO 50001 is still being studied, as it's a sampling strategy and initial ISO 50001 standard did not consider all issues of multi-site certification
- Another ISO program looking at commercial building (G-SEP)
- ISO 50001 has similar approach as ISO 14001 (environment) and ISO 9001 (quality)

It's very clear that the standard is new and promising. Early adopters are helping drive success cases.

Great Questions for Enterprise Smart Grid Conference this Week

2011-10-31T19:13:00.002-04:00

The following questions were submitted by attendees during online registration for a our Enterprise Smart Grid conference this week.

ISO 50001
- What are the benefits of ISO 50001 and the business case for investing money and time?
- What is the effort for ISO 50001? Why bother? Do CEOs care about this?
- Where is ISO 50001 being adopted?
- How are ISO 140001 and 50001 certifications related?
- We are implementing a global ISO 14001 program instead of certifying each building. Is this common approach for ISO 50001? What if we only did ISO 50001 for one building? - Is it better to invest in LEED-EBOM or ISO 50001 in 2012, as we can’t do both?

Submetering / Real-time monitoring
- How are companies using submetering to bill individual departments or groups to incent behavior change?
- How are firms using real-time monitoring across multiple facilities? What is the ROI?
- Where is submetering working well, especially for labs and datacenters?

Project Prioritization
- How are other large companies prioritizing investments in this tight economy?

Financing / Demand Response
- What types of energy efficiency projects are utilities providing the most incentives for over the next 18 months? How will new FERC orders affect Demand Response?
- What financial incentives are we likely missing?

Senior Management / Project Justification
- Does senior management really care about energy efficiency?
- How are other companies overcoming common hurdles for project approval?

Energy Management Software, BMS, IT, Data
- How are firms using energy management software? What are differences among utility bill management, energy management, carbon, procurement, and submetering software?
- Is it better to have one system for carbon, energy, etc. or multiple systems?
- BMS systems are for comfort, not energy management. But, how can they support energy management program?

Staffing
- We simply don’t have the staff or IT skills to deal with all this new data and software. How are other firms getting value from these new technologies?

Enterprise Smart Grid/ISO 50001 is Sold Out !!

2011-10-28T09:38:00.001-04:00

We're delighted about the high level of interest in our event next week and the great set of attending companies. The event is now sold out. See many of you next week.

Here are 4 key questions we'll discuss next week for which I'll report the highlights in a future email.

What are the benefits of ISO 50001 certification and the business case for investing money and time?
What have Staples, Genzyme, Harvard University, Boston Sand and Gravel, and others learned about the financial return for submetering facilities and specific energy loads?
What are the latest trends in supplier scorecards for sustainability and energy? How aggressively are energy metrics being added to sustainability scorecards and RFPs?
How are firms using energy management software? What are differences among utility bill management, energy management, carbon, procurement, and submetering software solutions?.

Consolidation continues. ENXSuite acquired by Infor

2011-10-25T12:09:00.002-04:00

Consolidation continues in the nascent market for energy and sustainability/carbon solutions. An early pioneer, ENXSuite, was acquired by Infor. Joining IBM, Schneider, EnterNOC and others who acquired firms this year. Look for more acquisitions in next 18 months.

More Firms Gain Value from Submetering Their Buildings

2011-10-25T10:04:00.002-04:00

Increasingly companies today are finding energy savings opportunities based on submetering their facilities. Using this new visibility to current consumption, much of these savings are achieved through simple no-cost, behavior changes, i.e. turning off unneeded equipment. Submetering highlights that fact that these systems were running when they need not be.

Retailers, banks, groceries, and companies with multiple warehouses, buildings or stores require a submetering strategy to achieve additional energy savings beyond the traditional upgrades of lighting, motors, chillers and other systems.

What is submetering?

Submeters are physical metering devices that monitor electricity, gas, water, steam and other utilities. Utilities sell services and use utility grade meters to gather this information. Submeters mirror this data collection for companies that install them. Common applications monitor electricity usage and data are sent, typically every 15 minutes, to energy management software (sometimes through the building management system) for analysis. Using the analytic capability of the software, external consultants, vendors, on-staff personnel, or some combination identify savings opportunities.

A number of different companies such as Diehl, E-Mon and Rockwell Automation manufacture physical sensors, submeters and power monitors, and over a hundred companies sell energy management software.

A typical approach is to add a single submeter for each building or to the utility main meter. (A best practice is to use two submeters per building, one for electricity and one for HVAC, but this is not always cost justified.) More comprehensive submetering strategies deploy multiple submeters in a building and even hundreds for a large, complex manufacturing operation.

What are the benefits of submetering?

Traditional utility bill analysis uses information that is simply too dated (bills arrive 30 to 45 days after usage) and too aggregated (bills are for an entire month, not 15 minute interval). Submetering addresses this information gap, providing real-time, granular visibility of energy use that can be used to affect operations.

Submetering benefits include:

-Identification of unnecessary equipment running at night, off shift, or during the weekend

-Ability to get information back to operators and facility managers the same day and to provide operators with feedback the next day about implemented changes

-Comparison and benchmarking of usage across similar facilities (stores, warehouses, or buildings) and over time

-Detection of utility bill errors by comparing submeter usage with the actual utility bill

-Better management of electricity usage when a facility faces demand limited or peak usage pricing from the utility

Lessons from early adoptions

Early adopters of submetering have secured savings and now have a better view toward the benefits and costs of the projects. They also know where submetering doesn't work. Lessons include

-Be sure to budget for spare parts for submeters and for maintenance (do not believe vendor claims that physical meters are maintenance free)

-Budget for someone's time, on your staff or with a vendor, to analyze the data

-Document savings for senior management

-Do not rely on alarms, as facility engineers are inundated with alerts. Rather, use insights from submeter data analysis to identify specific, proposed work orders for investigation

-Use spot metering as a cost effective compliment to ongoing submetering

Companies seeking to take their energy management program to the next level need to evaluate submetering as part of their plan.

Learn about submetering at the Enterprise Smart Grid Conference, Nov 2nd

Attend this conference to hear case studies from Beacon Capital Partners (which has achieved LEED certification for over 18 million square feet of office space in its portfolio), Genzyme (which has facilities around the world), Harvard University (which operates dozens of buildings that are submetered), Staples, Boston Sand and Gravel, Datotel, and other firms that have implemented submetering.

Wow!! Look at All These Companies Attending Enterprise Smart Grid /ISO 50001 Conference, Nov 1-2 in Boston

2011-10-18T09:37:00.000-04:00

We're delighted to see all the leaders from facilities, operations, sustainability and EHS attending our Enterprise Smart Grid / ISO 50001 Conference Nov 1-2 in two weeks. More will signup. Join us if you can as it will be a very productive day of case studies, lessons, and networking.

Companies Attending Nov 1-2 Conference as of Oct 17

Alcatel-Lucent

American Water

Arch Chemicals

BAE Systems

Beacon Capital Partners

Boston Globe

Boston Sand and Gravel

Burton Energy Group

CB Richard Ellis

City of Boston

City of Boston (MA)

City of Lynn (MA)

Datotel

EDF

EMC Corp

EMD Millipore

EnerNOC

General Electric

Genzyme

Hamilton Sundstrand

Harvard University

Maines Paper & Foodservice

Millard Refrigeration

MIT

Morgan Ceramics

Oracle

Performance Foodservice

Raytheon

Schneider Electric

Stanley Black and Decker

Staples

State Street Corp

Stony Brook University

Textron Defense Systems

The University of Vermont

Unilever

United Natural Foods

United Technology

US Cold Storage

Verizon

Hotels Room for the Conference
If you haven't booked your hotel room yet, contact the Embassy Suites ASAP for a discounted room before they are gone. Contact Megan Eknoian (617) 933-5106
or Megan.Eknoian@hilton.com. Mention Groom Energy for the discounted room rate.

$100K-2M/yr in Demand Response Incentives. Are You Participating?

2011-10-18T09:30:00.002-04:00

In the last few years, demand response (DR) programs, which pay companies for their willingness to reduce energy usage when called by the utilities, have been a "killer app" for many participants. DR incentives are paid to organizations based on how much peak demand can be reduced, i.e. more peak demand = more money.

Utilities, ESCO's like Groom Energy, and DR providers like as Constellation Energy (C-Power), Comverge, EnerNOC, and Johnson Control (EnergyConnect) perform load analysis to determine how best to maximize the demand reduction, without unnecessarily impacting a company's operations.

The dollar amounts can be stunning - from a few thousand dollars for a 100kw backup generator to several million dollars per year for multi-megawatt load reductions. One industrial firm told us they received $2m in demand response fees during 2010, and another said they used DR proceeds to keep their plant operational during a very slow quarter in the midst of the recession. Other companies receive $10K-$25K per quarter and use this money to fund energy projects and to procure energy management software and submeters.

SUPERVALU reported receiving $75,000 per year in demand response fees.

Not surprisingly, senior managers become engaged when they learn about this no-cost, free money, energy efficiency program.

Awareness of the benefits of these programs grows and the USGBC is working on a pilot to get LEED credit for demand response.

However, demand response programs are not available in all US locations and each regional program has its own scope and rules. Here is one directory of providers.

Facility, energy, EHS, sustainability managers should ensure their organizations are taking advantage of these important financial incentives.

You can learn more about the latest demand response developments at our Nov. 2nd Enterprise Smart Grid conference, specifically:

Learn how American Water, Beacon Capital Partners, Boston Sand and Gravel, Genzyme, Millipore, Staples, and others utilize demand response
Learn about DR trends (such as the new FERC ruling) from experts from EnerNOC and Schneidler Electric
Network with the many attendees

AdvantageIQ Renames Itself Ecova

2011-10-17T17:45:00.005-04:00

Advantage IQ renames itself Ecova after integration of acquired Ecos.

Hara Expands Team and Offerings Toward Energy Management; Announces New Customers

2011-09-26T13:34:00.009-04:00

At the recent Hara Energy & Sustainability Summit in San Francisco, Hara announced a new CEO, new products, and new service offerings – all focused on energy management and reduction. While Hara will continue to support its offerings for sustainability, the primary investment and focus is clearly on energy management. This pragmatic move matches the increasing market need for solutions that reduce energy and carbon emissions. With a strong balance sheet, team and product, Hara remains an important vendor for large companies to evaluate for energy management and sustainability software and services.

The new CEO, Dan Leff, has 30 years of operating experience leading energy services companies, including leadership positions at Invensys and Enron Energy Services. After holding the COO position, Dan was selected to be chairman and CEO of Enron Energy Services by the creditor-appointed management team to lead the parent corporation following its 2001 bankruptcy filing. His background in energy complements the enterprise software experience of the founding team and investors. The sales team is also being infused with individuals with experience with selling energy solutions, a contrast to other vendors which deploy traditional software sales reps.

New software offerings were announced. The existing functionality will continue in the base product, now called Hara Energy and Sustainability System of Record. The company announced five modules for this base product and these modules will be delivered over several quarters. Demonstrations of three modules were shown:
• Insight - for energy spend analysis and reporting
• Modeling, Forecasting, Budgeting - for energy budgeting and forecasting
• Efficiency Planning and Optimization – for energy project planning and tracking
Pricing and availability for these modules have not yet been announced.

Hara will continue to support existing carbon, water, and waste features in the base product, but additional features on these areas are a lower priority as the existing product has most of the sustainability features that companies currently need.

All of these software products focus on delivering an energy management and sustainability “system of record” for large companies.

These software products are supported by new professional service offerings for energy spend analysis, opportunity identification, submetering strategy development, KPI identification, capital planning and other energy management related services. Hara will continue to partner with its existing set of partners for energy services and will undoubtedly continue to refine which services it offers and which ones its partners offer.

Hara’s products and services are particularly apt for lighter energy use or scope 2-centric firms in verticals like consumer packaged goods, high tech, pharmaceuticals, and municipalities where the primary energy spend is for indirect energy use. For very heavy industrial companies that need solutions to reduce energy for production facilities (like furnaces, cement, etc.), Hara will partner with other firms.

New customers were announced, including HP (which uses Hara internally and has non-exclusive relationship to use Hara in its services’ business), eBay, Rackspace and Union Bank. These add to an existing roster of over 50 large companies. A good case study on EMD Millipore, a company that has impressed us over the years with its energy management program, was also released.

This is a natural and pragmatic business move for Hara, as the prices for sustainability and carbon management software has plummeted in the past few years and are not high enough to support a large, venture-backed company.

Companies looking for to manage and reduce energy use, particularly indirect energy use with a very strong set of capabilities for sustainability and carbon management, should consider Hara.

Hara is one of the over 100 companies analyzed for our upcoming (fall/winter 2011) vendor landscape report on energy management software which is part of the emerging Enterprise Smart Grid.

Half-day Seminar on ISO 50001/DOE SEP Added. Precedes Nov 2 Enterprise Smart Grid Conference

2011-09-15T12:43:00.005-04:00

We're delighted to add a half-day seminar on two new and important energy management certifications: ISO 50001 and Department of Energy's Superior Energy Performance. Companies like Alcoa, Dow Chemical, Schneider Electric, Volvo and others have already used this approach and certification to reduce energy cost. ISO 50001 offers the same potential to reduce supply chain risk and for supplier differentiation as did ISO 9001 (quality) and ISO 14001 (environmental management).

This half day seminar is on Tues, Nov 1 from 1p-5p EST in Boston. This is the day before our full day conference on Enterprise Smart Grid which focuses on case studies on how firms use demand response, utility incentives, and technology to reduce energy spend by 10-30%.

Excitement is growing for these two events.

The city is full of conventions that week and the hotel only has 22 rooms left in the block. Be sure to reserve your hotel room if you need one as the conference and hotel will sell out.

Information on the event and hotel is here

Gold Sponsors of conference are CA Technology, Hara, and SAP. Exhibitors are Gold Sponsors along with Carbon Systems, Daintree Networks, DEKRA, and Serious Energy.

EPA MRR Deadline in a Few Weeks (Sep 30th)

2011-09-14T15:02:00.003-04:00

The deadline EPA mandatory reporting ruling is in a few weeks Sep 30, 2011. It is expected that 13,000 facilities in the U.S. meet the 25,000 CO2MT reporting threshold.

4 Speakers Added to Nov 2 Corporate Energy Management Conference

2011-09-07T09:36:00.009-04:00

We're delighted with speakers additions for our corporate energy management conference on Wed, Nov 2 in Boston, MA. This day-long event focuses on case studies for energy management using technology, utility incentives/demand response, and select submetering -- all aimed at executives in corporate energy management, facilities, sustainability, operation and EHS.

Speakers added are
- David Brown, President, Datotel
- Victoria Mills, Managing Director, Environmental Defense Fund
- Amy Provenzano, Exec. Dir. Environmental Stewardship, Stony Brook University
- Al Scaramelli, Senior Vice President, Beacon Capital Partners

They join previously announced speakers:
-Nick Balster, Corporate Energy Manager, Precision Cast Parts
-Danny Beaudoin, Manager of Operations, Energy & Utilities, Harvard University
-Ian Bowles, Managing Director, Rhumb Line Energy and Former Secretary of Energy and Environment, State of MA
-Jeff Holmes, Principal Environmental Engineer, Genzyme
-Phil Davis, Senior Manager - Demand Response Resource Center, Schneider Electric
-Gregg Dixon, EVP Marketing and Sales, EnerNOC
-Paul Lukitsch, Worldwide Energy Manager, Millipore
-Bob Valair, Director of Energy and Environmental Management, Staples

The conference is conveniently held at a hotel at the Boston Logan Airport, so you can fly in easily for the day. Full conference details and registration information available here.

Email me for information on discount tickets for corporate energy managers.

Gold Sponsors of conference are CA Technology, Hara, and SAP. Exhibitors are Gold Sponsors along with Carbon Systems, Daintree Networks, and Serious Energy.

As with our previous conferences, this will be a day full of practical case studies and excellent networking. I hope you can join us in seven weeks.

Walmart and CDP Should Ask Suppliers for ISO 50001 Certification

2011-08-30T09:31:00.003-04:00

Supplier scorecards from large companies such as Kaiser Permanente and Walmart, along with global carbon registries such as the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), have driven a marked increase in the number of companies reporting sustainability and environmental data. Large organizations and the CDP should now add ISO 50001, the new energy management standard, to their company scorecards and questionnaire. Driving adoption of ISO 50001 will lead to energy savings, reduced carbon emissions and more efficient supply chains.

What is ISO 50001?
ISO 50001 is the new ISO certification that implements a foundation process for energy management. ISO standards enhance the business process and have been around for decades. Many companies throughout the world have adopted these standards for quality (9001) and environmental management (14001).

ISO certification requires third-party verification. This certification increases consumer confidence and improves the company's brand image. More than a million companies are now certified with the ISO quality standard (9001), and some even have ISO 9001 signs and banners touting this achievement on the front lawn of their facilities.

Key elements of the ISO 50001 energy management standard include establishing an energy baseline, energy goals, monitoring metrics, and management oversight. Particularly important is that the standard focuses on ongoing monitoring and improvement, not just being a snapshot in time of a facility or operations.

When standards are not based on continuous improvement and monitoring, performance can lag, which can lead to a false sense of confidence. We already see this with some new buildings that were as LEED-certified as new builds but became out of spec and, in some cases, below code over time because management's attention to operations waned after achieving certification.

The ISO 50001 standard can be applied to a single facility or multiple facilities.

Who is using it?
Leading organizations are already adopting 50001, including Delta Electronics in China, Schneider Electric of France, Dahanu Thermal Power in India, AU Optronics of Taiwan and Bad Eisenkappel in Austria. Other companies such as Alcoa, 3M, Eaton and Nissan are becoming ISO 50001 certified in conjunction with the Department of Energy's Superior Energy Performance program.

Why is it promising?
The 50001 standard directly helps companies save money. In addition, with improvement of the energy management process being tied with company goals, third-party verification directly enables companies along the supply chain to differentiate, and purchasing companies have more confidence in their supply chain.

Why do we need another certification standard?
It's certainly true that the world is flooded with product- and company-level certifications. Ecolabelling.org lists 424 of them, and companies should be very cautious about expanding their supplier criteria. Organizations, however, should adopt standards that have a proven ability to save money and provide competitive differentiation. ISO 50001 promises to be one of these standards.

Adopting ISO 50001 is advantageous because the ISO framework is already a well-accepted global standard that is supported by hundreds of ISO practitioners and is also familiar to senior management. Some organizations already certified with 9001 and 14001 are currently considering 50001.

The contents of company and supplier scorecards matter. The questions asked on scorecards, CDP submittals and other rating systems matter. When LEED award points for bike racks for its green building certification, hundreds of building owners added bike racks, even if there was no clear, safe way to use bikes.

When Walmart added a question about carbon footprint to its sustainability scorecards, thousands of suppliers decided to calculate their company's carbon footprint for the first time.

Such companies as Walmart and IBM will improve the competitiveness of their supply chain by asking their suppliers if key facilities are ISO 50001 certified. We've seen that business benefits from a more systematic focus on quality and environmental management, and a similar opportunity exists with a more methodological focus on energy management.

Although scorecards don't actually need more questions, ISO 50001 questions should be added to some of the less-effective ones. This allows for more focus on energy reduction, where the best financial and environmental returns reside.

Initial Speakers Announced for Nov 2 Corporate Energy Management Conference. Case Studies from Staples, Genzyme, and Many More

2011-08-18T09:57:00.006-04:00

We're delighted to announced the initial set of confirmed speakers for our corporate energy management conference on Wed, Nov 2 in Boston, MA. This day-long event focuses on case studies for executives in corporate energy management, facilities, sustainability, operation and EHS.

Confirmed speakers are
-Nick Balster, Corporate Energy Manager, Precision Cast Parts
-Danny Beaudoin, Manager of Operations, Energy & Utilities, Harvard University
-Ian Bowles, Managing Director, Rhumb Line Energy and Former Secretary of Energy and Environment, State of MA
-Jeff Holmes, Principal Environmental Engineer, Genzyme
-Phil Davis, Senior Manager - Demand Response Resource Center, Schneider Electric
-Gregg Dixon, EVP Marketing and Sales, EnerNOC
-Paul Lukitsch, Worldwide Energy Manager, Millipore
-Bob Valair, Director of Energy and Environmental Management, Staples

The conference is conveniently held at a hotel at the Boston Logan Airport, so you can fly in easily for the day. Full agenda details and registration information are here.

Golds Sponsors of conference are CA Technology and Hara.

As with our previous conferences, this will be a day full of practical case studies and excellent networking. I hope you can join us.

C3 Unveils Products and Customers; Shakes Up Energy Management Software Market

2011-08-12T00:40:00.005-04:00

After operating in stealth mode for three years, high-profile software startup C3 unveiled its software products and customers this week. Founded by software veteran Tom Siebel, the company raised $45 million and attracted luminaries such as Condoleezza Rice to its Board.

And the company's newly announced software offerings and customers shakes up the market for energy management software.

The company generated considerable interest and rumors as it operated under the radar to refine its software and land initial customers over the last several years.

Based in San Mateo, Calif., the company employees 130 people (80 in San Mateo and 50 in China for development) and sells software that manages energy and emissions for an entire organization. The software optimize activities that "measure, mitigate, and monetize" energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.

The sophisticated, software-as-a-service (SaaS) suite has five components: C3 Energy (for energy management), C3 Sustainability (for greenhouse gas inventory), C3 Mitigation (to track energy projects and their return), C3 Incentives (a library of government and utility financial incentives), and C3 Foundation (for energy modeling, key performance indicators, security, etc.)

The software products are differentiated in a number of dimensions, including ability to handle massive amounts of data (generated from interval data from utility and submeters), modeling of energy loads, content libraries for federal and utility incentives, and scenario planning. The products are supported by an accomplished senior management team and a strong balance sheet.

The company announced seven customers. Three companies use C3 software to manage their own energy use and projects. These include Pella, a discrete manufacturer, Dow Chemical, and Masdar City, a municipality in the United Arab Emirates.

Four firms deploy C3 software products to enhance services they offer to their customers. These include PG&E, which uses the software as a value added services for its largest commercial and industrial customers. Other companies in this category include Constellation Energy, GE Energy and Siemens.

The business model is sales of software, sold as a subscription service, and software implementation services. The myriad of other needed services, such as energy audits, change management, and system integration, are handled by C3 business partners such as CH2M HILL, Deloitte, and SAIC.

The unveiling of C3 heats up the large and fragmented market for energy management software. Traditional carbon vendors like Hara and ENXSuite that morphed to energy management firms are direct competitors. Companies like EnerNOC, Scientific Conservation, BuildingIQ, Serious Energy, and Clean Urban Energy that focus on commercial office buildings have new competition with C3. Industrial-focused vendors like PowerIT Solutions and EPS Corp will face sales battles with C3 in the future.

The company's goal is to be the global software leader for enterprise energy management software. With substantial capital, an experienced management team lead by a proven CEO, and progressive customers, C3 has a very good shot at the market leadership.

Thousands of Suppliers Work This Summer for July 31 CDP Submittal Deadline

2011-07-26T11:10:00.003-04:00

Thousands of suppliers are working hard this summer to complete survey submittals to the Carbon Disclosure Project as a July 31 deadline approaches.

Many of them are small and medium-size suppliers of large companies, such as Walmart or Bank of America, and were asked by these companies to send environmental data to the CDP. Requests by large companies, especially Walmart, have caused many companies to calculate their carbon footprint for the first time.

"We have seen a sharp increase in supplier participation over the last year, with twice as many Walmart suppliers registering in 2011 to measure, manage, and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate change strategies to CDP," said Keith Littlejohns, senior account manager, Carbon Disclosure Project.

The CDP is the largest registry of voluntarily reported carbon and sustainability data in the world. Initially, the CDP targeted companies with the largest market capitalizations, but in the past few years they expanded the number of company participants with their Supply Chain program, which launched in 2007. Over 50 companies now participate in the CDP Supply Chain program, with Walmart being particularly notable.

Walmart has encouraged its 100,000 suppliers to start reporting to the CDP as part of the Walmart's Supplier Sustainability Assessment. Suppliers complete this assessment online and receive a score. Walmart has the most extensive supplier-scoring program for sustainability in the industry, but other large companies, notably Procter & Gamble, have launched similar programs. (P&G is not, however, currently participating in the CDP Supply Chain program.)

Suppliers who participate in the CDP Supply Chain program vary in size from the very small (e.g., a single-location dairy) to very large (e.g., Pepsi), and suppliers are asked a wide range of questions about sustainability strategy, risks, goals, and reduction programs. Questions from the CDP survey include the following:

· Is climate change integrated into your business strategy?
· Did you have an emissions reduction target that was active (ongoing or reached completion) in this report?
· Please provide details of your intensity target
· Did you have emissions reduction initiatives that were active within the reporting year?
· Have you identified any climate change risks (current or future) that have the potential to generate a substantive change in your business operations, revenue, or expenditure?
· Please describe your gross combined Scope 1 and 2 emissions for the reporting year in metric tons CO2e per unit currency total revenue

While sustainability has become less important for many companies because of the r
recession, complying with requests from top customers always remains a priority, especially in highly competitive markets.

A request from such a large customer as Walmart or Bank of America, which are customers that often represent a substantial percentage of the supplier's revenue, is often the tipping point for small and midsize companies to securing budget and management attention for calculating a firm's carbon footprint, refining its views on climate risk, and pulling together a list of energy-reduction projects.

In addition to environmental benefits, calculating a company's carbon footprint consistently leads to cost savings, since it's often the first time that senior management seriously looks at aggregated energy use and cost.

The CDP and its Supply Chain Members such as Walmart should be commended for starting such programs, and other large companies should follow this trend.

Having more energy-efficient suppliers translates into supply chains that are healthier financially, more flexible, and, in some cases, competitively differentiated.

4 Tools to Better Understand the Enterprise Smart Grid

2011-06-30T09:43:00.004-04:00

Based on trends in the market and with our customers, we launched four tools to help you better understand the opportunities associated with Enterprise Smart Grid.

The Enterprise Smart Grid is the integration of sub-metering, software and hardware to manage and reduce corporate energy costs. These applications vary widely across verticals and often include multiple vendors. Companies have told us repeatedly about the need for more case studies and ways to better understand the vendor landscape.

The new tools are:

1. www.enterprisesmartgrid.org: an informative website that defines and highlights the burgeoning market and its promise.

2. Free white paper

3. A conference on Nov. 2 in Boston to share case studies

4. Upcoming vendor landscape report (to be release in the fall)

Adoption is increasing for six reasons:

- Companies need a more comprehensive approach to reduce energy costs as companies expect energy prices to begin to rise as the economy recovers
- Senior management has more comfort level with demand response programs and want better visibility and control
- Managers want to participate in more utility rebate programs, as well as custom utility rebates for behavior changes, which often require more measurement and verification
- Companies need to reduce energy intensity in response to questions from top customers (e.g., Walmart and Procter & Gamble) and investors
- More companies are adding corporate energy managers focused on tracking and reducing energy consumption
- Companies need to retain behavioral changes in the face of employee turnover by tracking usage systematically
- More utilities recognize the need to not just focus on reliability and efficiency, but to also focus on the intelligent balance of supply and demand

Join the conversation: send us feedback. share comments on the website, or join us in November for the conference.

Enablon Raises $15m. Looks to Pull Away

2011-06-22T11:10:00.006-04:00

Enablon is one of a handful of recent Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting (EECA) vendors which have raised money to accelerate growth in the carbon, energy and sustainability software market. Enablon announced a $15m round. Hara recently announced a $25m round and PE International raised money at the end of 2010 for growth and it's merger with Five Winds.

This new funding gives these vendors more capability to further their lead in the marketplace and puts pressure on vendors which have not raised money.

Other vendors have sold: Tririga to IBM and Summit Energy to Schneider Electric.

7 Sustainability Trends Every CFO Needs to Know

2011-06-09T08:57:00.003-04:00

Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) are in a unique position to drive sustainability into their organizations for competitive advantage. This article highlights seven sustainability trends every CFO needs to know.

CFOs are already involved in many aspects of sustainability. Numerous functional teams that work on parts of sustainability report to the CFO. These groups include investor relations, risk management, EHS, legal, procurement/supply chain, IT, facilities/real estate, and HR. Moreover, the corporate finance team often leads key business processes, such as budgeting, capital appropriations, internal and external financial reporting, executive compensation, and energy management that directly affect the achievement of sustainability goals.

1. Sustainability Reporting is Mainstream

Despite the recession, Climategate, and the lack of cap-n-trade legislation, sustainability reporting has become mainstream in business. The number of companies responding to the Carbon Disclosure Project has grown from 235 to 3,050 in just eight years, and this number will grow dramatically as Walmart and other large companies encourage their suppliers to also report to the CDP. The number of companies using the GRI framework has increased as well, from 100 in 2000 to 1,800 today.

Most large companies now publish CSR reports that include carbon emission data. Companies that don't publicly report sustainability data are increasingly viewed as laggards by investors, customers, employees, and other stakeholders.

Sustainability reporting is weaving its way into RFPs and customer evaluation programs. In some industries, companies have seen a marked increase in requests for environmental data in RFPs. Bank of America , General Mills, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Walmart, and others are now asking their suppliers for details about carbon emissions and energy use.

CFOs need to ensure that good quality sustainability data is reported publicly to prospects and customers.

2. Green Ratings Matter

Green ratings such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, Greenpeace Supermarket Seafood Sustainability Scorecard, and countless others continue to be more influential for a company's brand image. Product-level rating initiatives, like Good Guide and the Sustainability Consortium, are also maturing their approaches. Companies ignore these trends at their peril.

3. Investors Care

Investor interest in sustainability continues to grow. According to INCR, shareholder resolutions were up 40 percent last year. The reputation of companies like Apple and Berkshire Hathaway is at risk because of their continued refusal to publish carbon emission details. Voluntarily reported emission data sent to the CDP now appears on Bloomberg terminals and Google Finance alongside audited financial information for detailed peer company comparison and trend analysis. Last year for the first time the SEC issued guidelines on reporting climate risk.

4. Companies Combine Financial and Nonfinancial Reporting

Increasingly, companies are now combining traditional financial reporting with sustainability reporting. Novo Nordisk now combines its CSR report with its annual report. Timberland even reports quarterly sustainability metrics along with its quarterly financial numbers.

Financial accounting standards boards are also beginning to support supplementing financial reporting financial information. The International Integrated Reporting Committee (IIRC) is an effort to combine non-financial environmental data with financial reporting and is supported by FASB and other accounting organizations.

5. Sustainably Impacts Key Business Processes

In many companies, sustainability is treated as a marketing effort. "Ensure we get the good green ratings, but don't touch operations" is a common approach but is shortsighted. Consider sustainability like quality, and infuse it in all relevant business processes throughout the company. Capital appropriation requests need to include energy cost estimates when comparing alternatives. Profit and loss owners need bonus incentives and tools to reduce energy, water, and waste use. Supplier evaluations need to also account for sustainability attributes of suppliers.

6. Corporate Energy Management Emerges

While energy prices have dropped since the economic crash in 2008, they are starting to rise again. Leading companies are aware of this trend and also realize that energy is the flipside of carbon. Reduce energy use and carbon emissions decline. In response, boards of directors are adding a corporate energy reduction goal (often expressed as an energy intensity goal) to complement a previously established carbon emissions goal.

More companies are adding corporate energy managers to increase visibility in energy use across all locations and to expand corporate energy management beyond simply energy procurement. Companies are learning to view energy as a cost that can be managed and not simply a "fixed expense" that cannot be controlled.

7. Spreadsheets Are Not Sufficient to Support Emerging Processes

Spreadsheets are wonderful and flexible tools for tracking energy and sustainability data, but they are insufficient as these processes mature and as public transparency of corporate sustainability data increases. Similar to financial processes, sustainability and energy management processes require database-driven software with standard features such as user management, audit trails, and easy ad hoc reporting to reduce risk to a company's brand image with top customers and stakeholders.

Because of the large number of functional areas that report to the CFO, sustainability offers the CFO an opportunity to drive sustainability into the organization for cost savings and competitive differentiation. Your organization needs your leadership in this area.

Two U.S. Regional Cap-n-Trade Programs Take Hits

2011-06-01T06:11:00.005-04:00

Two regional cap-n-trade programs in the U.S., RGGI and AB 32, had setbacks recently. The governor of NJ branded the RGGI program a failure and had NJ quit the program, and program participation in NH has been questioned by state lawmakers.

On the other side of the country, a judge orders a stop for now on the CA cap-n-trade that was scheduled to start in early in 2012.

These are the two most active cap-n-trade programs in the states and, like the federal proposals, they simply no longer have the support of the voters or politicians.

Wow! Hara Raises $25M More for Carbon and Energy Management

2011-05-18T08:20:00.008-04:00

Software vendor Hara announced it raised an additional $25m, increasing the total capital raised to $45m. This fundraising further cements Hara’s leadership in the carbon and energy management software category that we call Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting (EECA).

The Series C founding round includes a handful of strategic investors (GE, NRG Energy, and ConocoPhillips) and new investors Focus Ventures and Navitas Capital. Ray Lane, the former COO of Oracle and partner at current investor Kleiner Perkins, joins the board as chairman.

The funds are for international expansion, acceleration of the product roadmap especially in energy management, and I suspect possible acquisitions.

Hara is already a leader in the EECA category with over 50 large customers, but this additional funding clearly separates them from the rest of the pack. Only the secretive startup C3, believed to have raised nearly $40m, has raised anything close to this amount of money.

This funding puts pressure on competitors such as AdvantageIQ, CA Technologies, Credit360, Enablon, EnerNOC, Enviance, IBM/Tririga, PE International, Schnieder/Summit Energy, SAP and others.

Carbon solutions for heavy emitters (oil/gas, utilities, and chemicals) remain dominated by EHS vendors like Enviance, Enablon, IHS, SAP, and a handful of smaller firms. The jury is still out whether Hara will expand its roadmap for heavy emitters that are the stronghold of traditional EHS vendors. The more likely scenario is that Hara will take its current product strength with low emitters, expand internationally and strengthen its energy management capabilities with 1-2 acquisitions.

This significant funding round makes Hara an even more formidable competitor for carbon and energy management solutions and a less risky vendor choice, even for the most risk adverse company.

The Next Chapter for The Climate Leaders Program

2011-05-17T12:13:00.003-04:00

Last year the EPA poorly handled the end of the well regard EPA Climate Leaders Program, and this week the EPA announced that it will be working with Pew, TCR and ACCO on a national awards program.

This is a great step forward with three groups that are well recognized. More details are needed, but it presumably means that the technical guidance developed for voluntary reporting and verification developed by TCR will be the basis for reporting.

Operational Data Improves CSR Report Credibility

2011-05-10T09:40:00.002-04:00

It's springtime and most sustainability teams are in the midst of finishing or have just finished their corporate sustainability reports, CDP submittals and other external surveys. This now-annual spring ritual provides sustainability leaders the opportunity to re-secure management commitment to sustainability definitions, goals, and projects and to further strengthen their CSR reports with detailed environmental and operational data.

Many CSR reports are heavy on the platitudes and light on specific data. Like traditional annual reports, CSR reports backed with strong data are more credible.

The increase in public reporting of environmental sustainability data, especially among large companies, in the last ten years remains stunning. The majority of Fortune 500 companies now issue a CSR report, GRI-based reports are at a all-time high, and the number of companies reporting to the CDP has increased tenfold in seven years (from 350 in 2003 to 3,050 last year).

In fact, companies that don't publish basic sustainability information and carbon footprint information are justifiability viewed as laggards.

Despite ClimateGate, the recession, lack of carbon regulation and flattening consumer interest in sustainability, it is unlikely there will be any abatement in reporting trends. Notwithstanding the variance in reporting breadth, quality, and data veracity, sustainability reporting is here to stay, driven in part by the need to maintain a positive company brand image, requests from top customers, and a corporate desire to be responsible.

Like the company's annual report, the yearly update of the public CSR offers an opportunity to review sustainability goals and secure re-commitment from senior management and employees toward achievement of these goals. Public goals and progress reporting drive organizational focus in ways that internal goals often cannot.

When reading traditional annual reports, financial analysts quickly skim past the glossy pictures, platitudes, CEO letter and other marketing fluff and head straight to the financial numbers and footnotes.

Savvy CSR report readers do the same. The value is in the numbers.

In addition to providing detailed environmental data, leading companies are adding real substance to their CSR reports by combining financial and non-financial environmental data. This combination is a natural for companies who truly aim to deliver to shareholders strong financial return in a sustainable way.
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American Electric Power is one company that now combines its CSR report with its annual report. Another, Novo Nordisk, is aligning the process of controlling the reporting of non-financial environmental data with that of financial data according to Sarbanes-Oxley.

Other companies go still further and have moved from yearly reporting of sustainability metrics to quarterly reporting. Quarterly reporting really ups the imperative of good data gathering systems and management commitment and it strongly cements the link between the sustainability team and operational teams in the company.

Line managers are used to accounting for and executing plans on a quarterly basis. The tracking and reporting of sustainability metrics demonstrate to the organization that, say, quarterly GHG emissions is an important operational metric similar to common measures like shipments, orders, or returns. Sales, operational and financial teams are very familiar with "closing the quarter" for data collection and reporting. Driving toward quarterly reporting of sustainability data ensures better data quality, more time to react when projects are below expected results, and avoids the year-end data crunching rush.

When sustainability is genuinely an important company imperative, the associated business processes need to be tracked and managed quarterly like all other critical business processes (sales, quality, customer satisfaction, profitability, rhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifetention, etc.).

One of the true leaders in quarterly reporting of sustainability data has been Timberland.

Yearly or quarterly goals for environmental aspects of operations or products are particularly impactful and impressive. These include energy reduction (either energy intensity targets or absolute reduction goals), more environmentally-friendly product ingredients and product packaging, a more sustainable supply chain, facility improvements, and reduced use of landfills and water.

The public reporting of environmental data tied to operations is not easy but materially enhances the credibility of CSR reports. Sustainably leaders need to continue to drive their organizations toward this end.

Wow. A Company Issues its 20th Sustainability Report

2011-04-29T15:14:00.004-04:00

Wow. I was impressed to learn that Henkel has issued its 20th sustainability report. Read Joel's article.

Harvard's Green Carpet Awards Is a Great Recognition Program

2011-04-27T11:34:00.002-04:00

Recognition of sustainability and energy projects makes mundane process and infrastructure improvements gratifying and rewards team work.

Harvard University's Green Carpet Awards provides an outstanding example of a successful internal reward program. Hosted by Harvard's Office for Sustainability, the annual celebration and recognition event honors the creativity and hard work that students, staff and faculty bring to the university's sustainability efforts and goals.

The program honors community members from across the university's 12-plus schools and departments, with 55 individual awards and seven team project awards. It provides an array of ideas for sustainability leaders to hone their own award programs and demonstrates the important role the sustainability office plays in identifying innovations and opportunities while supporting, coordinating, and harvesting the organizational energy for sustainability improvements.

On April 11, about 500 people attended the 90-minute award ceremony in Sanders Theatre in Cambridge, Mass., which included short lectures, musical performances by student groups, and videos produced by students and the Office for Sustainability.

With 650 buildings, central steam generation plants, and 37,000 students, faculty and staff, Harvard University is a large, complex organization. Nevertheless, it has been consistently a leader and innovator on the sustainability front.

The University has had a formal sustainability office for a decade. Initially created by a faculty and staff initiative, it was a first for any major university. In 2008, Harvard established the university-wide Office for Sustainability to oversee and expand sustainability initiatives.

The campus has 88 LEED certified buildings, the most of any institution. In 2008, the university set a very aggressive, publicly stated greenhouse gas emission goal of a 30 percent absolute reduction by 2016, from a 2006 baseline. This goal is inclusive of growth as the university has already added more than several million square feet of new buildings during this time period. The university is making progress in achieving this goal and has seen reduced energy usage across all schools and departments, regardless of growth.

The Green Carpet Awards program is impressive. Two hundred projects and individuals were nominated, including project teams of three to 16 people from all areas of the university. Projects were wide ranging and included initiatives for infrastructure improvements, behavior change, waste/water reduction, green buildings, green teams and renewable energy. Innovative projects, such as the use of reuseable containers for biowaste, populated the submissions.

In many cases the financial savings are significant. A retro-commission lab facility project saved $500,000 per year. Another green building project led to a 56 percent reduction in energy use while another lowered energy cost by 49 percent. A system that reduces the number of air changes in labs, always a difficult balancing act with concerns for safety, netted significant environmental benefits. In another case, an executive education program was honored for greening their program, including eliminating the use of 45,000 bottles of water annually.

Projects were judged by a selection committee of 18 people and included faculty, deans of schools, the CFO, vice presidents, students and other leaders.

Videos from Harvard professors speaking about the challenge of climate change and Harvard's GHG reduction goal were presented and music from a student band and a capella groups performed. A delightful hip-hop music video titled "Turn Off the Lights," produced by undergraduate students, was met with thunderous applause.

Organizations are populated with individuals passionate about sustainability and energy reduction. Recognition programs, such as the Green Carpet Awards, are a powerful tool to reduce environmental impact, save money and reward cross-functional team work and project execution.

The Greenest Store in the World - a Powerful Showcase Facility

2011-04-06T12:01:00.002-04:00

The Whole Foods store in Dedham, MA may just be the greenest grocery store in the world.

This showcase facility demonstrates leading energy and sustainability practices to Whole Food customers, employees and investors, as well as the local community. Showcase facilities are a powerful learning tool for companies that are implementing sustainable business practices.

Whole Foods isn't the only leading company utilizing showcase facilities. The Procter & Gamble manufacturing plant in Auburn, Maine, for example, is a zero-waste facility. The Empire State Building, managed by Malkin Holdings, uses 100 percent Green Power.

When I toured the Dedham Whole Foods store, my expectations were naturally high, but I left impressed.

What is so remarkable about this particular store? The store is notable because of the actual implementation of so many leading sustainable and energy practices in construction, facility operations, store operations and culture:

* All structural steel is made from 100 percent recycled materials and the building uses a white roof
* Renewable constructions materials include Marmoleum surfaces and Trikeenan wall tiles
* 90 percent of the store's energy needs are met by a 400kWh fuel cell and 80 kWh solar panels
* The refrigeration system's rejected heat is reclaimed and used to heat water
* Kitchen exhaust systems are on-demand and do not run continuously
* Skylights and automated lighting reduction control are used extensively
* 80 percent of store waste is reused
* Grocery bags and cash register tape are made from 100 percent recycled paper
* The store has innovative programs such as wine cork recycling and the promotion of multiple containers for meals and lunches. Customers can come in and try sustainable cleaning products before they buy them in an in-store cleaning and sink area

Sustainability is evident in the building, operations, products, company culture, employees and customer interaction.

Yes, the store is a newly constructed facility and this gave Whole Foods the opportunity to incorporate sustainability into the design from the ground floor. But, the company's investment in sustainable facility and operations went much farther than many new builds.

Kudos to Whole Foods.

Seeing does lead to understanding. In the world of 100-page CSR reports and a sea of thousands of Tweets, the physical experience of a showcase facility is powerful.

Company leaders should not underestimate the profound influence of showcase facilities, be it a manufacturing plant, office, warehouse, retail outlet or fleet. Showcase facilities play a critical role in the important but difficult process of culture change toward sustainability.

My Few Notes from Babson Energy Conference

2011-03-31T16:38:00.004-04:00

I attended the first half of the Babson College Energy and Environment Conference today. Here are a few of my notes.

Kathryn C. Brown – Senior Vice President – Public Policy Development and Corporate Responsibility, Verizon
- I agree with the earlier speaker that nuclear is off the table for a new energy source for the U.S. Who would have thought of this 2 years ago.
- Momentum for climate change is clearly bruised. Coal is on the rise after the nuclear problems in Japan and the oil spill in the Gulf. Incentives for renewables is at a low.
- Recommends Michael Porter's recent article: Creating Shared Value

Sheeraz Haji, CEO of Cleantech Group
- China accounted for 2/3 of the clean tech IPOs (63/93)
- Cleantech investing has returned as of Q1 2011, with solar leading the way.
- Recent IPO winners are Amyris where Kliener and other investors made 8x money
- He sees value in add data services to unused assets (cars, buildings). RelayRides is example of using data services to monetize unused car time.

5000 People Access Carbon Data via Bloomberg Terminals in 2nd Half 2010

2011-03-29T08:20:00.005-04:00

The trend to measure and evaluate companies on non-financial measures, such as carbon emissions and other environmental and social factors, continues. Bloomberg, the maker of the ubiquitous "Bloomberg terminals" for investors, added Carbon Emission data from the Carbon Disclosure Project to its plethora of financial information to help investors make cross-company comparisons. A recent article reported that 5,000 unique people accessed this information in the second half of 2010. While this is a low number compared to the total number of Bloomberg users, it indicates an emerging investor interest in this area and is a trend line to watch. (Thanks to Chris Williams for alerting us to this article.)

SAP Uses Downward Graph to Show Emissions

2011-03-25T09:55:00.004-04:00

SAP displays its company emissions data in a refreshing way, turning the common emissions bar graph upside down. This was noted in GreenBiz article.

Schneider Electric Purchases Summit Energy

2011-03-24T17:04:00.005-04:00

The second Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting (EECA) vendor was acquired this month. Schneider Electric's purchase of Summit Energy for $268 million continues the movement by large firms into the energy, carbon and sustainability space. IBM purchased Tririga last week. Look for more acquisitions this year as the economy slowly recovers, energy prices rise and large companies look to buy versus build.

More Companies Set Public Energy Reduction Goals

2011-03-23T13:32:00.003-04:00

Increasingly companies are setting public energy reduction goals as senior management teams better recognize the link between reduced energy consumption, cost savings and an improved company carbon footprint.

During this recession and with energy prices starting to rise, sustainability leaders who do not have a formal energy reduction goal should establish one this year to take advantage of the benefits not fulfilled by an emissions reduction goal.

In the past five years, leading companies set public carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction goals and reviewed and reported progress annually. The process of achieving these goals demonstrated to organizations the power of energy reduction. A lighting upgrade project that was previously "deferred maintenance," for instance, is now a project with strategic benefits and a strong financial payback.

Energy reduction is often measured as a ratio of energy use to revenue, energy use per product shipped (e.g. an automobile or barrel of beer) or energy use per square foot of facility space. Goals can also be measured by the absolute amount of energy consumed.

Many leading companies, such as Clorox, Johnson & Johnson, Ingersoll Rand, PPG and Toyota, have publicly set energy reduction goals. Owens Corning has an energy intensity goal of a 25 percent reduction against its baseline year of 2002. Kimberly Clark plans to improve energy efficiency by 15 percent. Starwoods Hotels and Resorts announced last year plans to reduce energy use by 30 percent in each of its hotels.

Companies also intend to reduce energy intensity in their supply chains. Procter & Gamble specifically asks suppliers about energy use in its Supplier Environmental Sustainability Scorecard, while other large companies are doing the same with their own supplier scorecard programs.

Establishing an energy reduction goal offers benefits that carbon reduction goals do not in today's business climate. Energy reduction directly translates to dollar savings, which is easier to sell internally, especially to line managers and board members who are skeptical about climate change. Reduced energy use is straightforward to understand by many in the company, as energy reduction sounds less technical than greenhouse gas abatement.

Instituting an energy reduction goal is straightforward but requires internal education and CEO support before making it a publicly stated goal. The EPA Energy Star program has good resources to help energy and sustainability teams set goals.

Goals can be set as either as absolute or intensity targets. Many energy and sustainability teams track both measures because both are useful in understanding changes and trends in company energy usage.

Investing the time to secure CEO and board support for a public energy reduction goal is well worth it. Energy visibility and accountability within most companies is diffuse and nonexistent. A publicly stated energy reduction target powerfully focuses the company to execute on the reduction opportunity. This public commitment galvanizes accountability, support and process improvements.

ClimateGate, a lack of carbon regulation legislation and the recession have clouded support for some sustainability efforts, but progress need not be sacrificed. Energy reduction has broad, organizational support, fits in with the need for companies to be operationally lean during a recession, and reduces the company's environmental impact. When announced and tracked publicly, corporate energy reduction goals save the company money and ensure progress toward environmental objectives.

IBM to Acquire Trirga

2011-03-23T08:49:00.003-04:00

IBM to acquire Tririga, which sells software for facility and energy management and includes module for carbon tracking. Tririga is one of the 20 vendors we profile in our recent Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting (EECA) Software Buyers Guide. This continues the trend of very large companies like IBM and Deloitte buying smaller firms to bolster their offerings.

Green Carpet: a Great Recognition Program

2011-03-18T09:57:00.003-04:00

Green Carpet is a great sustainability recognition program at Harvard University. This yearly program recognized projects and teams through the University and the 2011 awards are on April 11. The Harvard sustainability team also shares a tremendous amount on their website of their activities.

Affordable Energy Management Software Starting at $50/month

2011-03-14T06:46:00.005-04:00

EnergyCAP gave us an overview of EneryCAP Express, their SaaS offering for energy and utility bill management that launched in January 2011. The software is designed for small and mid-sized organizations that process up to 250 utility bills a month and need a solution that is easy and flexible, yet powerful. Ideal users are colleges, local governments, and multi-site businesses in North America. In addition to utility bill management and organization-wide energy database, the software includes ENERGY STAR, weather data, benchmarking and GHG/Carbon tracking capabilities. Users get up and running quickly and easily thanks to extensive use of wizards and online Help videos.
Organizations can sign up online for a free trial now and pricing starts at $50/month. Read more here.

EPA (Part 98) GHG Reporting Solution Starting at $5K/yr from ESC

2011-03-04T09:14:00.007-05:00

Focused software solutions for EPA Part 98 are emerging in the marketplace. We recently had a briefing update with Environmental Systems Corp (ESC). ESC is the industry leader in providing software air emissions compliance solutions to the electric utility industry and has been expanding its offerings in response to the U.S. EPA Mandatory GHG Reporting (Part 98). This best-of-breed solution solves the problem of compliance reporting and record keeping through a cloud-based/SaaS offering and starts at an affordable $5K per year. ESC has over 650 power plants using its stack monitoring solution and over 100 companies using CIMVision for EPA Part 98 Reporting. The demo showed CIMVision to be easy to configure and tailor to company-specific requirements. This is a great example of a vertically-specific solution for greenhouse gas management.
Here is a screen shot:

Groom Energy Updates Carbon Software Vendor Report and Names Leaders. ECA Renamed to EECA.

2011-02-08T08:38:00.005-05:00

Today we launched the fourth version of our carbon software report. We modified our category name from previous versions of the paper from Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) to Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting (EECA). The additional “E” reflects the growing customer need to manage carbon and energy together.

Despite a challenging economic environment and stalled climate legislation, the emerging Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting (EECA) software market grew 400 percent during 2010 and is forecast to grow another 300 percent in 2011. More than 200 large corporations, such as Arch Coal, Bayer, RJ Reynolds, Safeway, and Wyndham Hotels, purchased EECA software in 2010.

The 2011 EECA Leaders are: Advantage IQ, Enablon, EnerNOC, Enviance, Hara, IHS, Johnson Controls, PE International, SAP, and Summit Energy. The selection criteria considered the number of customer deployments, technology features, energy management capabilities, market vision and financial stability.

Key Research Findings:
- Many energy /utility bill management vendors now offer strong carbon modules
- Responding to environmental data requests from stakeholders for sustainability and compliance is the top driver among purchasers.
- Supply chain initiatives like the Walmart supplier assessment program continue to drive sustainability efforts.
- The overall market is approaching maturity and acquisitions and venture capital investment dropped significantly from 2009 to 2010. There were no acquisitions and $11M in financing raised by PE International compared to 5 acquisitions and $47M raised by multiple firms in 2009.

The report is available for $795 per single user and $995 for a company license. To review an abstract of the report or to purchase online click here.

Energy Management Becomes a Priority as Vendor Landscape for Carbon Software Evolves

2011-02-04T12:55:00.003-05:00

Software solutions to help companies to manage, report and reduce carbon emissions continue to evolve. Our research shows that customer needs and vendor solutions to reduce and report carbon emissions matured in 2010.

Here are a few highlights from the upcoming Groom Energy and Greenbiz report on software vendors that offer a carbon management product. To reflect the increased emphasis on energy management, we're renamed the software category from Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) to Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting (EECA).

While momentum for carbon regulation has essentially stopped in many countries, the need to report and manage carbon emissions has not. Top drivers for companies to report carbon emissions include requests from top customers for environmental data and brand and company image enhancement.

Companies have realized that carbon and energy reduction involve the same processes and data. More job titles and descriptions include both carbon and energy responsibilities and companies are looking for software and services that reduce both carbon emissions and energy use.

In response, vendors continue to innovate and to offer new features and services. We note a number of important trends. One is the trend toward integrated solutions that offer a carbon reporting module along with other features. Software to manage carbon is no longer solely available as a stand-alone product, and is now often a module of larger suite of energy management or environmental, health and safety (EHS) capabilities.

Over 75 vendors offer a carbon module and we group vendors into three categories:

* EHS vendors, such as Enviance or I H S, which offer a carbon module.
* Traditional energy management vendors, such as Johnson Controls or EnerNOC that sell a carbon module
* Specialists vendors that started with carbon and have expanded to energy management. This includes firms such as CarbonSystems, Hara, and ENXSuite

Firms that are heavy emitters of carbon, like oil & gas and utility companies, tend to use carbon modules from EHS vendors. Firms that are lighter emitters of carbon, such as retailers and services firms, tend to purchase carbon modules from traditional energy management or specialist vendors.

Firms are moving beyond using spreadsheets to manage carbon data and to database driven, multiuser, auditable and commercially supported software products. Hundreds of firms purchase carbon software in 2010, including Arch Coal, Bayer, RJ Reynolds, Safeway, and Wyndham Hotels.

For 2011, we expect the trend by companies to manage carbon and energy together to increase and for vendors to expand energy management offerings.

Our upcoming Groon Energy and Greenbiz report names 10 EECA Leaders based on technical competency, financial strength, customers, energy management capabilities and vision.

Top 10 Carbon Reporting Trends in 2010

2011-01-07T14:05:00.002-05:00

Corporate greenhouse gas emissions reporting continues to evolve at a rapid pace. As we celebrate the New Year, it's instructional to take the opportunity to reflect on the highlights of 2010 and their impact on this market. Many of the changes are healthy as sustainability and emissions reporting moves away from "feel good" disclosures towards risk identification and competitive advantage.

Here is my list of the top 10 Carbon Reporting Trends in 2010:

1. Supplier Evaluations on Sustainability Become Mainstream

Led by large organizations such as Bank of America, Proctor and Gamble, Tesco, and Walmart, and often starting initially with tier one suppliers, surveys of suppliers' carbon footprint and efforts to reduce carbon, energy and waste are now pervasive. Environmental performance has been elevated to a standard item now on many supplier evaluation forms and RFPs. Senior executives ignore this trend to their peril.

2. Climate Regulation is Mostly Dead, Except for the U.K., California and the U.S. EPA

In general, the recession, lobbying and a lack of public support has stopped most climate regulation. No global accords were reached in Copenhagen in 2009 and the 2010 climate meetings in Cancun were a non-event. Governments raided funds raised by RGGI and the Carbon Reduction Commitment to meet general fund deficits, and in other countries implementations of carbon regulations were delayed. The European cap-and-trade program faces fraud allegations.

In short, there is very little momentum for climate regulation in the world today. The State of California is a large exception: Voters confirmed support for moving forward with a regional cap-and-trade in 2012, but watch its implementation as the state struggles with high unemployment and massive budget deficits.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues to move forward with direct carbon dioxide (CO2) regulation, but some experts predict implementation delays as the regulations are challenged in the courts. Sustainability leaders and EHS professionals need to ensure their largest facilities that meet facility-level thresholds for regulation are compliant, but the trend towards extensive carbon regulation is over for the foreseeable future.

3. Two Pioneering Voluntary Climate Initiatives Cease

Despite widespread support and success, the U.S. EPA abruptly began winding down its Climate Leaders program. The Chicago Climate Exchange, a pioneering effort to voluntarily trade carbon, announced the cessation of trading in late 2010. Despite these early efforts ending, the Carbon Disclosure Project program continues to grow, supported in part by Walmart and other large companies.

4. SEC Issues Guidance for Reporting Climate Risk

In February, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidance for publicly traded companies to report climate risk in official financial statements, such as 10-Ks or annual reports. This action amplifies the importance of calculating a company's carbon footprint and assessing its climate risk. Look for more disclosure requirements from investors and insurance companies in the years ahead.

5. Scope 3 Standards are Here!

After years of work and testing, the World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development have nearly finalized internationally recognized standards for calculating the indirect or so-called Scope 3 emissions of companies and products. The WRI/WBCSD standards for Scope 1 and 2 emissions are well accepted, and hopefully these new Scope 3 standards will become a global standard as well. Understanding Scope 3 emissions is essential for identifying a company's largest "carbon hot spots" and to assist in the prioritization of efforts and investments. Sustainability leaders should monitor Scope 3 case studies and determine if the benefits merit the cost of data collection.

6. The Green Rating Wars and Beauty Pageants Continue

The plethora of green ratings for companies and products continues to proliferate, and companies continue competing for better rankings. Newsweek recently entered the fray, joining the influential rating systems maintained by the Carbon Disclosure Project, Ceres, Climate Counts, Dow Jones, Good Guide, Greenpeace and others. Leaders need to prioritize and participate in the ones that are critical to major stakeholders, despite frustrations with the multitude of different data request formats.

7. Waste Tracking and Reduction Become More Mainstream

Companies, especially retailers and manufacturers, have discovered the cost savings of green or lean operations and reduced waste. Subaru and others started to advertise "zero landfill" manufacturing plants. Discussion of water reduction and footprinting increased in 2010, but debates about water footprinting methodology has slowed adoption. Expect more reporting needs for waste and water this year.

8. Awareness of the Power of LCA Grows, but its ROI Remains Problematic

While understanding of the value of LCA to identify carbon hotspots and to defend green product claims grows within the organization, the costs of product level LCA remain high. While a few efforts continue with product-level carbon reporting, wholesale adoption of product-level reporting is low and will remain so.

9. Carbon Management or Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) Software Becomes Well Established

More than 200 large companies purchased carbon management software in 2010 as companies began to automate their carbon management business processes and move away from spreadsheets.

10. More companies Link Carbon and Energy Management

Companies now better understand that carbon and energy are flip sides of the same coin. Enhanced company reputation drove awareness at the Board of Directors level for sustainability initiatives, and the recession and need for cost savings are driving more energy reduction projects. Energy accountability and visibility at the corporate level improves data collection for energy use and increases support for projects with solid paybacks. If sustainability leaders and CFOs have not already added energy intensity as a key performance indicator (KPI) to their sustainability scorecards, they need to do so.

This year will inevitably bring more change. Key trends to watch are the adoption of Scope 3 reporting standard, the rise in third-party verification of reported carbon data due to concerns and legal risks over greenwashing of reported emission data, and any increases in public reporting of energy intensity metrics (energy per revenue dollar or per product shipped).

Which ones did we miss? What are you monitoring?

ECA vendor PE Raises USD $11m

2010-12-16T12:12:00.003-05:00

PE International, a leading provider of sustainability management software and an Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) Emerging leader, announced today a USD $11m funding round from Siemens Venture Capital and Gimv.

Our view is that this is a great move by PE. With a long list of customers, PE is extremely experienced in the product and company carbon management areas, and this capital will allow it to increase market awareness and sales coverage as it competes with larger and well capitalized competitors. We suspect PE will deepen its relationship with Trade Wind in the US. This will also help PE address prospect concerns about vendor viability as the ECA vendor market consolidates from 75+ vendors.

Highlights from GHGMI Survey on Use of Carbon Mgmt Software

2010-12-06T12:20:00.002-05:00

Greenhouse Gas Management Institute (GHGMI) surveyed over 1,000 climate/carbon professionals worldwide about their adoption and use of carbon management software. The top findings are

- GHG/Carbon software is used by a minority of practitioners today
- Nearly 60% who had used software found it sufficient, while 1/3 found it insufficient
- The carbon market is nascent and use of carbon management software is not widespread
- Those who are software are generally experts in the field

Full survey (use of carbon management software is only a small part) is available here for free.

A Primer for Navigating the Energy Management Landscape

2010-12-03T09:13:00.000-05:00

Corporate energy and sustainability leaders increasingly are involved with companywide or multiple-site energy management programs and tools. Yet understanding the vendor landscape can be very confusing.

This column details nine categories to help you visualize and organize the 100+ energy management vendors in the North American market, not including residential solutions.

The bottom line represents the biggest reason to examine the vendor landscape as achieving energy cost savings through better corporate-wide processes and tools becomes more important. Senior management has realized that energy and carbon are the flip sides of the same coin, and reductions in energy directly help meet stated carbon reduction goals. CFOs also understand that energy costs may be the second fastest growing expense after healthcare costs, and are learning the value of driving energy use visibility and accountability into the organization.

In the current difficult business climate, which often doesn’t offer much revenue growth, margin enhancement through energy savings is a critical use of corporate time and capital.

Companies are responding by establishing or strengthening corporate energy management and asking sustainability teams to become involved with energy reduction.

Maturity of the process and tools, however, varies.

Although energy management as a process has been around for decades, maturity fluctuates significantly across industries and firms. Sophisticated energy management operations are typically companies where energy is a large portion of operation costs (e.g. steel or airlines) and these energy-intensive firms have a president or VP of energy, use sophisticated energy management tools (at least for their production or fleet operations), and use contracts to hedge against energy pricing volatility.

Other companies localize energy management and let local plant or facility managers determine the appropriate tools and processes.

Regarding tools, the vast majority of software solutions developed over the last 30 years have been for a single facility, process or group of similar facilities or processes, and many companies use spreadsheets to manage and track energy use and costs. Most offerings are sold as a service or as a contract based on savings, but some vendors offer a software-only option.

Dividing Energy Management Vendors into Nine Categories

At a high level, energy management offerings can be organized into nine categories.

In the list below, the energy management vendor categories are arranged from consumption to demand/procurement to outsourcing.

The vendors listed below are only representative and not exhaustive.

Utility Bill Management and Payment
Business Problem: streamlining utility bill management for many facilities, detecting billing errors, reducing late payments, and sometimes payment
Typically purchased by: finance or accounts payable
Representative Vendors: AdvantageIQ, Entech, NISC, Pace Global, Summit Energy
Notes: These solutions are a great source of energy use information for company footprint and leading firms now offering enterprise carbon accounting (ECA) modules.

Manufacturing -- Operations Support / Process Automation
Business problem: providing real-time information on manufacturing processes so operators can make adjustments to keep lines running and save money. Data are typically gathered from meters or sensors and solution may include human machine interfaces (HMI) and work order capabilities.
Typically purchased by: plant operations
Representative vendors: Emerson, EPS, GE, Invensys, Rockwell, Schneider, Siemens
Notes: Solutions are very process specific or industry specific.

Industrial Controls
Business problem: sophisticated building and industrial control systems using PLC and other devices
Typically purchased by: operations or facilities, typically as part of larger purchase
Representative vendors: Johnson Controls, Honeywell, Siemens
Notes: Solutions have been typically hardware-specific, but this is slowly changing.

Building Management Systems / Facility Management Systems
Business problem: lower building operating and occupancy costs through controlling building mechanical and electrical systems
Typically purchased by: facilities
Representative vendors (many vendors): Cisco, EnerNoc, Interval Data Systems, Johnson Controls, Site Controls (Siemens), Verisae, Tririga

Enterprise Energy Management (EEM)
Business problem: software tool to track enterprise-wide view of energy spend and usage
Typically purchased by: CFO, CIO, VP Operations
Representative vendors: (many vendors), AdvantageIQ, eComponents, EnerNOC, EnergyCAP, ENXSuite, McKinstry, SAP Energy Data Management, Pace Global, Site Controls (Siemens), Summit Energy, Verisae
Notes: Data capture through meters or bills remains hardest part of the problem.

Demand Response
Business problem: Earning money by curtailing energy use at peak times based on trigger events
Typically purchased by: operations
Representative vendors: EnerNoc, Constellation(C-Power), Comverge
Notes: Not available in all areas.

Energy Procurement/Sourcing
Business problem: reducing energy cost through improved energy contract and purchases
Typically purchased by: procurement
Representative vendors: Co-eXprise, Delta Energy, Prenova, Summit Energy, World Energy
Notes: Some solutions are specific to commodity (e.g. natural gas) while others run auctions and offer hedging contracts.

Energy Service Companies (ESCO)
Business problem: Achieving energy reduction through performance energy contract, thus avoiding large outlays of capital
Typically purchased by: CFO in municipalities, universities, schools, and hospitals (MUSH)
Representative vendors: Johnson Controls, Siemens
Notes: Typically 5-15 year contracts with shared savings.

Outsourced Facility Management
Business problem: outsourcing entire process of facility management
Typically purchased by: CFO or VP operations
Representative vendors: Cushman & Wakefield, Grubb and Ellis, Johnson Controls, Jones Lang LaSalle,
Notes: Long-term contracts for building owners.

• Other vendor categories include fleet operations and data center/green IT.

As the need for corporate-level visibility and management of carbon emissions and energy spend continues, corporate sustainability and energy leaders will need to sort through these different vendors to determine the appropriate energy management for their company.

Expect more innovation over the next 24 months in this area.

Webinar: Life after EPA Climate Leaders. Dec 9th

2010-12-02T19:23:00.002-05:00

Thursday, Dec 9th 3p ET/ Noon PT

Many of the 200+ large companies that were a part of the EPA Climate Leaders program are now evaluating different voluntary reporting options.

Join us for this free webinar on this topic (it's part of a day-long Greenbiz/Groom Energy online conference).

Panel discussion: What options are companies considering after the phase-out of EPA Climate Leaders program?

- Rich Goode, VP Sustainability, Alcatel-Lucent

- Bruce Klafter, Director EHS and Sustainability, Applied Materials

- Jennifer Kaminski, The Climate Registry
- Paul Baier, Groom Energy (moderator)

Register here (registration button is in top right hand corner)

Are You Considering Buying Carbon or Energy Management Software in 2011? Take Our Survey

2010-11-23T09:27:00.001-05:00

More firms are considering investments in software or software/services to better support the growing business processes of carbon and energy management. Are you?

- What is driving the business case?

- What are others companies expecting to spend?

- Which vendors are other companies considering?

If you are contemplating an investment, take our free, confidential survey on purchase intentions to share your ideas and to learn from others. The survey takes 15 minutes and you'll receive a summary of the responses (no company names will be shared).

The survey is open to companies and institutions (but not to vendors or consultants). Here is the link for the survey.

5 Tips for a Smooth ECA/Carbon Management Software Installation

2010-11-15T09:50:00.002-05:00

(This piece originally appeared on GreenBiz.com)

Companies are increasingly investing in carbon management or Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) software to better track, report and reduce carbon emissions, and to trim energy spend.

Much has been written about the benefits of software investment, but little has been shared about the do’s and don’ts of an actual implementation. To fill the void, I caught up with Mike Watson, senior manager of sustainability at Intuit.

In this Q&A, he shares five key lessons he learned from the company’s rollout of ECA software.

Paul Baier: Describe the scope of operations and carbon tracking at Intuit.

Mike Watson: Intuit is a software company with revenues of $3.5 billion and 7,700 employees. Intuit is a provider of business and financial management solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, consumers, accounting professionals and financial institutions. We have approximately 40 facilities and data centers in the United States and facilities in the U.K., Canada and India.

We started tracking carbon emissions in 2007, using a variety of tools and consultants. We track Scope 1, 2 and most of Scope 3, including our supply chain operations and marketing collateral. In 2010, we started tracking trash from facilities and water usage, and in 2011 we will add emissions from our point-of-sale hardware business.

PB: What drove the need for Enterprise Carbon Accounting software?

MW: Like many companies, we were using spreadsheets to track and report our carbon emission data. This spreadsheet was becoming onerous as our internal and external reporting needs increased, namely due to reporting for stock fund indices, such as the DJSI SAM, FTSE for Good, and Bloomberg sustainability index, as well as the Carbon Disclosure Project.

We also needed a way to track our progress of reducing emissions 15 percent from 2007 levels by 2012. We could not determine if our strategies to reduce emissions were working and we needed a system to track our progress.

PB: What is the current state of implementation of the ECA software?

MW: In early 2010, we completed the initial implementation of our current ECA software. We are very happy with the software and the software has improved productivity, reduced risk and helped us to identify focus areas for reduction of energy in our facilities and data centers. It also has helped paint a clear picture for our executives on how we are progressing against our emissions reduction goals.

PB: What lessons did you learn during implementation?

MW: We learned many things during the implementation, but I’d describe the top ones as the following:

1. Decide on your hierarchy and organizational structure before you begin.

This is a critical step because it determines how your data will roll up and the flexibility needs of your reports.

2. Know what are you solving for: reporting emissions, progress against goals, or initiative tracking.

Write these specific goals down and ensure management alignment on these before implementation. Our software tool, like many, has many configuration options, and trade-offs are sometimes required. A clear set of prioritized goals helps tremendously and reduced need for re-work.

3. Understand who is going to use the tool and what are they going to use it for.

Which departments and teams and, ideally, which specific people will be using the system for data input, data analysis and reports. What are their skills sets? Which implementations do they need to have access to?

4. Engage with stakeholders up front.

Review the data sets, reports, and capture inconsistencies before you load the data from your existing spreadsheet into the ECA software. Once the data is in, it is more difficult to fix errors.

5. Identify the sources of data and who is going to own the entering of the data.

What is the process and data ownership for this? This drives collaboration, engagement and ownership.

PB: How long did the initial implementation take?

MW: Because we had our organizational structure defined prior to implementation, which is a major step, it took us about four calendar months to implement from start to finish.

PB: How is energy usage tracked with the software? How frequently is energy use updated? Monthly? Quarterly?

MW: We update energy consumption monthly for all of our facilities and data centers.

PB: What are next steps?

MW: One of the reasons we chose our current ECA software was the ability to collaborate with other companies. What I mean by collaboration is as more companies load their strategies and initiatives into the tool, we’ll be able to share ideas on what strategies and initiatives are working and not working.

Why Every Company Needs a Corporate Energy Manager

2010-11-01T11:21:00.002-04:00

Why do so many companies fail to capitalize on the abundant opportunities to save money through improved energy purchasing and efficiency?

One reason may be the lack of high-level positions for energy management at many companies. This is an important first step and practically a "no brainer" because the position can often pay for itself in as little as four to five months.

Sustainability leaders should advocate for this role either within their own group or at the corporate level. They will often be able to justify it based solely on the expected savings that will be realized.

Opportunities to save money are everywhere. In our consulting work we consistently see opportunities to reduce overall energy spend by 5 percent to 15 percent through projects with a two to three year payback period. This is serious money for companies with energy budgets approaching $50 million, and starts to really add up for firms in the $500 million range.

A typical project may improve energy purchasing practices or increase energy efficiency. For example, one organization realized $4 million in savings with renegotiated contracts for electricity. Another saved $200,000 per year through implementation of a demand response program. Yet another found $350,000 through lighting upgrades and incentives. Finally, a wholesaler reduced its electricity use in its frozen warehouses by 80 percent after converting to LED lighting.

Generating savings need not require a capital investment. Zero capital projects exist as well. One retailer, for example, saves $60,000 per year at each of its distribution warehouses by adjusting the temperature set points for its frozen and refrigerated warehouse to be cooler at night and warmer during the day when electricity rates were 50 percent higher. This same retailer saves $15,000 annually by recharging its electrical forklifts at 6 p.m. instead of 3 p.m., as was previously the custom, in order to take advantage of reduced electricity rates.

Why aren't other companies exploiting these kinds of opportunities? There are many reasons. Here are a few examples:

1. There is often a prevailing attitude that "savings" projects are "deferred maintenance" with dubious returns and should only be done when absolutely necessary.

2. Incentives at the corporate and local levels are often aligned (e.g. production targets vs. overall energy spend).

3. Getting capital requests "through the system" often requires strong internal selling skills and determination to get things done, which may be lacking for some energy project requests.

4. Operations engineers are often overwhelmed with keeping operations (production lines, warehouses, offices) running and do not have the time, inclination, expertise or the proper incentives to look for and implement energy savings initiatives.

5. Lack of knowledge in the CFO's office about the opportunity.

A lack of energy accountability, another contributing factor, is very common. Who owns the company's energy budget? It's surprising how often this question results in a "blank stare" when posed to companies we consult. They often have executives responsible for revenue, overall budgets and managing health care costs, for example, but not for corporate energy expenditures.

This lack of energy ownership can cost companies millions. In many cases, senior management does not realize how much they're spending on energy across all sites, or that energy is often second only to health care in terms of overall cost growth.

At the local level, a lack of ownership leads to huge waste. For example, at one very large manufacturing facility, certain machines and operations were needlessly left running during the third shift, yet no one "owned" the responsibility for determining when the machines could be shut off, costing the company $40,000 in energy in one month.

Energy accountability, visibility, and corporate management are the first steps to pursuing these changes and realizing the potential savings. A corporate-level energy manager -- typically a director-level, but can be vice president-level if energy spend is large enough -- who works with senior management and a cross-functional corporate energy management team is essential. Corporations, especially outside of energy intensive industries, such as steel, are increasingly starting to establish these positions.

Here are some of my recommendations:

• Establish a corporate-level director of energy management with responsibilities for driving improved energy purchasing and consumption practices. For highly decentralized organizations, this role will be a corporate services function for the line.

• Increase CEO and CFO education about the total dollar amount of corporate-wide energy spend. The CFO should especially be pushing their organizations hard for projects that increase energy efficiency.

• Drive energy spend visibility by calculating energy spend for the overall corporation, its lines of business, and individual facilities and plants.

• Include energy spend in quarterly operations reviews

• Establish an energy management cross-functional team that meets at least quarterly.

Revenue growth for many companies in this current economic environment is very difficult. Enhanced margins can be achieved through energy reduction, which begins with corporate visibility and an empowered, corporate energy manager.

Join us for a webinar Oct 28 with Wyndham Hotels and CA

2010-10-16T18:29:00.002-04:00

Learn how Wyndham Worldwide measures and improves environmental performance in their hotels around the globe.

Energy, carbon, and sustainability issues are putting tremendous pressure on organizations today. Energy costs and brand concerns alone are enough to put sustainability management on the agenda of C-level executives. Yet, these challenges provide an opportunity for you to ultimately turn sustainability programs into a competitive advantage.

Webinar registration information here.

Joins us for free webinar with AEP and Fujifilm

2010-10-13T19:29:00.001-04:00

Join us for free webinar

Silo vs. Enterprise: Practical Approaches to Corporate Compliance with AEP, Fujifilm and Enviance

October 14, 2010, 11:00 AM PDT / 2:00 PM EDT

Many companies employ different software solutions at the plant level than for air, water, carbon and other corporate environmental data, yet the demand to report environmental data throughout the business is increasing. This hour-long webcast addresses practical approaches to deploying an environmental data strategy company-wide, while preserving the investment in local solutions and avoiding hours of laborious spreadsheet work. In addition, you'll learn how other companies have solved these problems.

Register here

First Day at NAEM conf.

2010-10-13T19:24:00.002-04:00

First day at NAEM national conference: 500+ attendees and 50+ vendor exhibit booths. Great case studies.

Sustainability and EHS continue to blend (lots of change for EHS professionals). Corporate-wide needs for sustainability data request to top customers and general CSR reporting to investors offer EHS a real opportunity to expand their role from local regulatory compliance to company leader. If EHS is not leading, it is not clear to me which team will.

A Stunning EPA Climate Leaders Meeting: Headline from the EPA “Go Pound Sand”

2010-10-05T17:42:00.007-04:00

These are my notes from the EPA Climate Leaders meeting today and reflect my personal observations and views.

The headline is that this program is done. The EPA has absolute zero interest receiving input from large companies about this voluntary program. The transition process to sunset this program is rushed and amateurish.

Clearly there is a change at the EPA level on how they want to work with large companies in voluntary programs.

Around 150 attendees are this last EPA Climate Leaders meeting.

Some specifics of program wind-down
- Program closing down (EPA website and brand logo to be retired Sep 2011)
- Transition for existing companies has not been clearly worked out
- Frustrations are very high. Companies remain in shock.
- The EPA plans to issue an RFP later this year looking for an NGO that could replace part of the program.

Large companies remain extremely frustrated. During the Q&A session, many large companies (SC Johnson, DuPont, Merck, and Ingersoll Rand) publicly expressed disappointment and frustration. Private conversations were even more heated. No one spoke publicly in support of EPA decision or the wind-down process.

Gina McCarthy, Assistant Admin, Office of Air and radiation, EPA, was blunt and unrelenting: “Our relationship with you [200 climate leaders] must change.” She left after her talk and some Q&A.

A few of the many issues companies raised were
- NGOs are not a replacement for credibility that comes with an EPA program
- What happens with publicly stated goals (will they be recognized?)
- How do we message this transition internally?
- Loss of face or credibility internally for companies
- Mandatory reporting requirements are different than voluntary reporting. We invested in voluntary reporting to reduce our reporting costs for mandatory.

Companies feel burnt. Companies were burnt.

The EPA could have done a variety of things to help ease the transition, such as allowing existing program members to use the EPA Climate Leaders logo for the next 5 years as they achieve their reduction goals, increasing service fees for the free technical consulting, provide more time on the transition, etc.

But, it seemed very obvious to me, from the blunt comments from Gina McCarthy to the absolute deflated EPA Climate Leaders program team on the dais after Ms. McCarthy left, that the EPA has zero interest in maintaining a partner relationship or even a working relations with the large companies.

Executives from SC Johnson, Merck, and Cummings were very articulate in their feedback. One company said they traveled to the conference in hopes of sharing ideas on how to keep the program going, but this is not an option.

Everyone including the EPA agrees that the program was very successful for the last 8 years.

The Administration and the EPA have a very different approach on how it wants to work with businesses. Buyer beware in participating in the next EPA programs.

5 Reasons For EPA Climate Leaders to Joining TCR

2010-09-29T10:43:00.001-04:00

Denise Sheehan, the new executive director of The Climate Registry (TCR), provides five reasons for EPA Climate Leaders to joining TCR after the canceling of the EPA program:

1. Leverage your existing investment in EPA Climate Leaders by building on your existing greenhouse gas (GHG) data and public goal setting with the TCR program. Access TCR's expert training, tools and technical support.
2. Increase credibility with investors by measuring and verifying that your carbon footprint is in line with high quality, international standards.
3. Increase the confidence of your CFO as she or he assesses climate risk for the purposes of reporting to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Provide your CFO with real, accurate data about your carbon risks.
4. Enhance your company's image with customers, employees and NGOs. Use TCR's high quality reporting standards and have real data to back up your leadership claims.
5. Save time with one-stop shop reporting by disclosing your global company emissions, as well as North America emissions, to TCR to measure your progress over time.

Contact TCR for more information. If you are attending EPA Annual Event next week, let others know on this website.

P&G Announces Accelerated New Vision for Sustainability

2010-09-27T11:27:00.005-04:00

Below are my notes from a Greenbiz webinar for which P&G announced expanded Vision for Sustainability. More info from Joel Makover article here.

Overview
P&G reaches 4 billion consumers today and will increase to 5b in a few years
Presenter was Len Sauers, VP Sustainability

PG Vision
- Use 100% renewable energy for plants
- Use 100% renewable packaging
- Zero land fill waste
- Eco product design

Goals for 2020
(measured and reported publicly each year)

Products
- Replaced 25% of petro-based materials
- 70% of washing machine loads use cold water
- 20% packaging reduction
Operations
- 30% of renewable energy at plants
- <1% manufacturing waste
- 20% truck transport reduction volume

(note water is not specifically address here, but PG has other goals)

Working with WWF in 3 year partnership (WWF Assessments tools for sourcing materials and packaging)

Notes from Q&A
- PG strong believer in LCA
- Business benefits include improving "moment of truth" with skeptical consumers and enhanced employee retention/recruiting

TCR Announced New Executive Director

2010-09-22T11:54:00.002-04:00

The Climate Registry (TCR) named Denise Sheehan as its new Executive Director. TCR and Denise have a great opportunity to transition many of the Fortune 500 companies who are enrolled in the EPA Climate Leaders to the TCR program.

Are you attending the EPA Climate Leaders Mtg Oct 5 and 6 in New Orleans? Let Others Know.

2010-09-20T11:28:00.000-04:00

We've received many emails from people who already purchased tickets to attend the the annual Climate Leader conference next month. The EPA is closing down the program and many wonder who is still attending the Oct 5-6 event.

If you are going, please consider registering at this free website to let others know. Best Buy, Alcatel-Lucent, Applied Materials and others will be participating.

Many Surprised and Dismayed by EPA Decision to End Well Regarded Climate Leaders Program

2010-09-16T16:26:00.001-04:00

The U.S. EPA announced this week that it is phasing out its highly regarded Climate Leaders program, a voluntary national carbon registry for hundreds of large companies like 3M and Pepsi.

This decision comes a month before the annual Climate Leader conference and caught many off guard. Informal calls and emails with 10 large companies confirmed that the announcement was a surprise. One sustainability executive told me that he just completed his presentation for the Climate Leaders meeting next month and was then told he is no longer on the agenda. Bruce Klafter, Managing Director of EHS and Sustainability at Applied Materials sent a letter to the EPA expressing his disagreement with this decision and wrote a blog post about it.

The program was an invaluable source of business and technical help for companies starting to measure carbon emissions and a great vehicle for networking. We have always strongly recommended the program to large companies and a handful of our smaller client companies were considering joining the Climate Leaders Small Business Network.

The ending of this program may help participation rates in other voluntary registries like Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), Carbon Trust, The Climate Registry (TCR) and others. Each program has different strengths and deficiencies. For example, CDP has a global view but offers little technical support. TCR has good standards for reporting and verification, but is not supported by all states and is not global.

What are your thoughts and concerns? Do you think this is a big deal? Does it add to climate change skepticism? Does it leave large companies looking for technical help from other registries?

Speaking at Duke/EDF Climate Corp Event This Week

2010-09-13T11:00:00.004-04:00

This Friday I'm joining a panel discussion at the Duke / EDF sponsored "Capturing the Energy Efficiency Opportunity:
Lessons from EDF Climate Corps" conference. The conference focuses on the challenges of driving more energy efficiency savings in large corporations. This should be a productive day as EDF Climate Corp fellows and EDF have been involved with great projects in this area with many companies.

October is Energy Awareness Month: An Opportunity for Sustainability Leaders

2010-09-09T10:39:00.001-04:00

In the U.S., sustainability and energy leaders should consider employee awareness activities for October Energy Awareness Month. Started in 1991 by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Energy Awareness Month promotes energy awareness and energy savings. Increasingly, corporations, institutions, and governmental agencies are participating by having their own, internal programs.

A fall energy awareness program benefits sustainability and energy teams alike and complements a company's spring Earth Day activities. It highlights the fact that energy and carbon are flip sides of the same coin and reinforces the "we walk the talk" message from senior management. Most importantly, energy awareness promotes energy reduction which in turn saves money.

Setting up and running a program need not be difficult. The DOE provides free resources and the EPA through Energy Star also has useful, free tools.

Effective programs emphasize energy savings at home, not just at work. Home energy audits (often subsidized now by local utilities) are very effective at pinpointing home savings through improved lighting, better HVAC and simple home improvements, which increase energy awareness of employees.

UK ECA Vendor Carbon Guerrilla Land SAP Exec as Chairman

2010-08-27T10:30:00.006-04:00

UK-based Carbon Guerrilla is another software vendor providing tools for GHG management or Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA). Carbon Guerrilla have a strong team with SAP veteran, Les Hayman, recently joining as Chairman, and have secured a number of customers (British Red Cross and others). The business model is very low cost (starting at 360 pounds per year) and high volume. They have a focus on meeting the immediate GHG regulatory needs in the UK for Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme (CRCEES), previously known as the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC).

Briefing Update: Climate Earth – Practical Business Examples for Scope 3 Data

2010-08-24T06:55:00.003-04:00

We had an enlightening recent update with Climate Earth (CE). Climate Earth is a software, data and services company that helps a company identify its largest carbon opportunities for reduction and revenue enhancement, with a particular emphasis on scope 3 emissions. In addition to proprietary software and expertise, Climate Earth maintains a proprietary database of product emission data.

CE shared two exciting customer case studies which utilize Scope 3 carbon data for revenue enhancement and cost savings. The first is Webcor Builders, a $1.5B full service general contractor and the largest commercial builder on west coast. Webcor is using the CE offering to enhance and differentiate Webcor core value proposition of designing and building green buildings. The CE offering calculates a full carbon footprint for a proposed building, including emissions from material use. The offering allows Webcor to collaborate with suppliers and show its client the emissions variances of different material mixes (cement, glass, etc.). These are new capabilities that Webcor uniquely offers clients and help to increase competitive differentiation.

The other customer case example is on the procurement side. CE is assisting PG&E, a large CA utility, to identify the largest carbon emission goods and services in its $6B purchases of things like transmission lines, telephone pools, and trucks. The immediate project goal is to prioritize purchased categories which have highest carbon impact.

One emerging insight is that the largest carbon hotspots may not be with tier 1 suppliers or in the largest spend areas.

CE most direct competitor was Planet Metrics which was acquired by PTC. Consultants using traditions tools such as spreadsheets and labor are the most common competitors to CE.

The CE offering is an exciting development in the emerging area of helping companies cost effective identify its largest carbon hotspots, which usually are in Scope 3.

Scope 3 Standard to be Finalized in December

2010-08-20T08:08:00.000-04:00

The emerging global standard for companies to measure and track Scope 3 greenhouse gases (GHG) is on schedule for finalization in December.

Scope 3 emissions often represent the largest area of a company's GHG impacts by far -- up to 75 percent in many cases -- yet a widely supported industry measurement methodology does not exist.

Initial reactions to the current draft standard vary. Some companies testing the new standard are bullish and plan to implement it, while others are more cautious and taking a wait-and-see approach. Sustainability leaders should continue to track the progress of this standard for this important emissions area to determine if it makes business sense to calculate their own Scope 3 emissions.

The WRI and WBCSD are leading the process for defining and finalizing a standard for Scope 3 emissions, which is called "Scope 3 (Corporate Value Chain) Accounting and Reporting Standard." The initial draft of this standard was released last fall, with road testing just completed. The draft standard and initial feedback are available online.

The draft measures emissions from 16 areas, include upstream activities (such as direct emissions from suppliers, product emissions, inbound transportation, and waste) and downstream activities (outbound product transport, product use, and end of life disposal). Employee commuting and business travel are also covered.

Cynthia Cummis, senior associate at WRI, manages the development of the Scope 3 standard. Thirty-five large companies completed road testing of the Scope 3 standard, based on the initial draft from last year, she said. The feedback has been extensive and helpful.

Companies testing the standard have found it beneficial in identifying and prioritizing carbon "hot spots" or activities that drive the largest emissions. SC Johnson, a $8 billion global manufacturer of household products such as Windex, participated in the testing and calculated its Scope 3 emissions for 2009. They found the process practical and are considering tracking Scope 3 emissions on a yearly basis, and possibly even adding a Scope 3 corporate reduction goal.

Other companies are taking a wait-and-see approach. Some are waiting for the standard to be finalized, while others do not see a business return in the calculation, especially since Scope 3 calculations require data gathering from many groups.

Since Scope 3 emissions dwarf Scope 1 and 2 emissions, conscientious sustainability leaders need effective tools to identify the activities that drive the largest GHG emissions. The new Scope 3 standard is a promising tool for this.

Notes from NAEM GHG Conference Chicago

2010-08-03T15:39:00.006-04:00

Congrats to the NAEM team, Carol Singer Neuvelt, Virginia Hoekenga, and Mike Mahanna, for a successful conference in Chicago Aug3-4

Results of 125 NAEM members on GHG reporting
. EHS owns data and process at most companies
. tracking: - most companies still using spreadsheets
. reduction efforts focused on energy efficiency
. public reporting to CSR/Web, CDP, EPA mandatory reporting, TCR, CTS, WWF Climate Savers, DJSI
. supply chain request increasing
. concerns with duplicative reporting CARB, EPA MRR, TitleV
how to normalize data
oconcerns about supply chain trends, ability to accurately measure or even to reduce, manage multiple requests

GHG Regulation policy update
. globally: no binding agreement
. US federal: no agreement
. CA: AB 32. CA may push for
. EPA direct regulation
endangerment finding
light duty vehicle is heart of this
mandatory reporting rule (MRR) and WCI
. June 3 Tailoring Rule (under Clean Air Act)
stationary source
numerous legal challenges
initial threshold was 25K, now 50K

Regional cap and trade programs
RGGI: fossil fuel.
WCI: to begin 2012. applies to major industrial and commercial sources
CA, NM only US states ready to roll out

AB 32
planning its own cap and trade jan 1 2012
subject to election November: will seen as referen Prop 23 would suspect AB 32 three quarters.

NACI: North American Climate Initiative (new group. expect to hear more about this)

Lessons from Scope 3 Working Draft
- Speakers: David Rich, WRI;
Scope 3 basics
. upstream (emissions from purchased goods: , business travel, etc.)
. downstream (emissions from sold product, use of sold products)
. other: employee commuting
. Sep 2010: second draft for public comment
. Dec 2010: final standard
. Road testing: 70 companies have test

SC Johnson, Frank Ericson, Director Environmental, Safety
. scope 1 and 2 since 2002.
. very active in EPA CL (8% absolute reduction, 5 year goals)
. 40% of electricity from renewable/green (co gen, wind, bio fuels)
. motivated to help WRI scope 3 become global standard
. 5 of 16 categories of Scope 3 used; other categories did not apply
. 7 upstream, employee, rest downstream
. distribution (Walmart, Tesco) VERY interested in this data from JCJohnson (consumer products manufacturer)
. initial conclusions
good exercise to understand hotspots; help to prioritize investments
help build awareness beyond our internal operations (scope 1 and 2)
requires more internal partnership from multiple internal groups (raw materials, product design, sales, outside vendors)
. plan to set scope 3 goals for next 5 years
feedback to WRI on Scope 3 standards
like to adjust baseline when better data becomes available
Q&A
. 80% of tier 1 suppliers provided data for base year 2009
. Comparability of scope 3 across companies is not design or goal of WRI scope 3 standard

Ford: Christina Bosch, Supply Chain Sustainability
. goals: identify hotspots. use phase of cars is ~90% of emissions
. huge supply chain: 1600 direct suppliers; 4600 sites; 130,000 parts
. too many parts to do traditional LCA
. limited Scope 3 WRI
. focused on feasibility
. sent request to 25 suppliers (use excel as data collection tool)
. response rate
80% of 25 responded; 80% of those had emission
50% had reported emissions
60% had done some type of LCA
1 supplier had requested info from it’s suppliers
. lessons
trade offs because data will never be completely accurate and supplier compliance will vary
. cross functional team involvement MUCH higher for Scope 3 than scope 1 and 2
. Recommendations to WRI on scope 3: more flexibility on data accuracy with suppliers

Different tools for GHG management

PPG Industries, Liz McMeekin, Environmental Manager, PPG
. $12B, 150 mfg facilities, gather scope 1 and 2, 5 year goals to reduce GHG emissions; formed “Energy security and climate change committee” which reported to Board member
. Gather energy data monthly, report internally quarterly
. Initially used Plantware later purchased by ESS (now part of I H S)
. tool was designed for plant level, did not have hierarchy for organizational level reporting and tracking
. extensively customized from 2000-4
. lessons
Board level/senior management commitment essential
document roles and responsibilities
local champions are essential for large facilities
regular and broad internal reporting of progress is necessary to sustain the process.
. lessons – technical/tactical
avoid at ALL costs specialization of vendor database
routine reminders for data submission a must
tie in to existing business unit data evaluations where possible to ensure consistent KPIs
plan for flexibility for unit conversions (e.g natural gas usage reported in ft3, kwh, btu)

Fuji Film, Brian Stenson, Manager, EHS,
. overview: 50,000 ee ww, 5,000 in US; external reporting to TCR
. needs: data, reporting, minimize duplication of effort, data consistency, reconcile year to year
. key requirements: SaaS, customizable (but supported), powerful, secure
. selected Enviance
. using system for internal incident reporting, corporate metrics, EHS Compliance calendar (really task manager, cc to manager, late, done, etc.), GHG reporting
. reporting carbon, waster, waste
. Lessons
critical to show how tool makes job easier for internal user
make sure everything is visible to all internal users

Abbott Labs, Sacha Boon, Principal Environmental Specialist
. overview: 85,000ee, 85 mfg facilities, scope 1 and 2 reported for years
. lessons learned
single person responsible for data entry at facility
attachment upload critical for data entry and auditing
go for data entry person to see previously entered data (threshold values, deviation reports)
Try to use automation when possible. for instance, engineer tech at facility were reading meters on hand written log. logged were scanned/fax, then engineering entered into spreadsheet,

It's Time to Give Up Spreadsheets for Tracking Carbon Emissions

2010-07-30T11:56:00.001-04:00

CFOs, CIOs and sustainability teams at large companies have used spreadsheets for years to track corporate carbon emissions. We are now, however, at a tipping point where the benefits of carbon management software, also known as enterprise carbon accounting (ECA) software, outweigh the benefits of spreadsheets.

With many large companies recently completing their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports and Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) questionnaires and entering budget planning in the fall, it is time to move away from spreadsheets to reduce risk, save money, increase productivity, and establish an enterprise-class source of record for carbon emission data.

Investors and Top Customers Demand High Quality Carbon Emission Data

The calculation and reporting of carbon emissions today is a standard, mainstream business process and needs to be treated as such. The majority of Fortune 500 companies now publicly report carbon emissions via their website and registries such as CDP, and companies that don't are viewed as laggards.

Regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, and investor advocacy groups, such as Ceres, are demanding more accurate data. Meanwhile, emission data submitted to the CDP is widely available to investors through Bloomberg terminals and Google Finance. Financial accounting groups, including the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), are debating carbon emission disclosure standards and approaches, which will likely become a future requirement.

Investors are ever more insistent that reported environmental data have the same rigor and processes of reported financial data. Leading companies, including BASF Global and Novo Nordisk, already report with fully integrated financial and non-financial information, both of which are supported by rigorous data, control, and auditing processes. Other companies treat voluntarily reported carbon data with same transparency as financial data. El Paso Corporation, for example, issued a press release to correct an error in its voluntary submission to the CDP.

Companies are finding their top customers, such as Bank of America, HP, Procter and Gamble, and Walmart, asking for carbon emission data and, in some cases, scoring their processes against competing suppliers.

Large companies simply cannot afford the brand and image risk of incorrectly reported emission data to these important stakeholders.

7 Major Problems with Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets allow a single user to enter, manipulate, analyze and visually represent numerical data with great flexibility. It can also be easily distributed via e-mail or a network-accessible location. Without a content management system to coordinate and track changes from multiple sources, however, spreadsheets quickly becomes unwieldy and error-prone.

Problems are compounded when a spreadsheet becomes so complex that only the original author can make required fixes and improvements. This leads to the "spreadsheet guru" -- the irreplaceable employee who is the only person in the company who understands the 15MB spreadsheet.

As carbon data collection and reporting needs increase, spreadsheet disadvantages become more acute and lead to additional labor costs and frustration when coordinating changes and updates. The major problems of spreadsheets include:

1. Lack of proper documentation and audit trails
2. Propensity for errors, especially without proper cell protection and lack of validation and testing of spreadsheet formula and macros
3. Difficulties in reconciling year-to-year data sets
4. Poor tools for creating and enforcing data ownership, including global standards for asset types and energy usage
5. Inability to generating real-time reports and read-only views across the organization
6. Difficulties obtaining ad-hoc reports and analysis for numerous internal and external stakeholders
7. Difficulties in managing and sharing large files

These problems are compounded by sporadic backup processes and high training cost if or when the spreadsheet guru leaves.

Moreover, spreadsheets hamper sustainability team effectiveness. Sustainability team members with responsibility for the carbon emissions file spend an inordinate amount of time managing this spreadsheet. These activities include gathering, correcting and inputting data, reconciling current emissions with emissions from previous years and baseline calculations, and creating custom reports by country, division, product line or customer.

Team members should focus on communicating and educating stakeholders about sustainability plans and identifying reduction efforts, not draining time as spreadsheet monkeys.

To reduce risk when using spreadsheets, firms must spend more money on labor, either with its employees or outside consultants. The good news is that this does not need to be the case.

Numerous Cost-Effective Software Solutions Are in the Market

The market for carbon management or ECA software has been emerging during the past few years. Our research shows that more than 75 companies now offer a solution, including a handful of leaders. Many of these solutions more than adequately meet customer needs and are cost effective.

Sustainability teams need to educate the CFO and CIO about the importance of good carbon management processes and tools and to develop budget requests for software investment during the upcoming fall budget season.

This summer too many hours were spent on managing spreadsheets for CSR and CDP reports for this important, and now mainstream, business process. Better solutions now exist.

Hara Continues Strong Momentum in 2010

2010-07-20T22:29:00.002-04:00

Briefing Update

Hara had continued its impressive market share and customer progress in the software category for managing carbon and energy, a category we call Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA). Backed by well-regarded investors and $20m in investment, Hara launched last summer and has taken this emerging market by storm. We named Hara as one of the 2010 Emerging ECA leaders in our vendor report published in January. Recently we caught up with Chris Farinacci, Chief Marketing Officer of Hara, and left impressed with the strong execution by Hara in the first half of this year.

Large companies continue to choose Hara. Diebold, Hasbro, Reed Elsevier, and Safeway are newly announced public customers (this is impressive given how long it takes to secure customer approval for press releases). These customers join Aerojet, Akamai, Brocade, Coke, News Corp, and numerous other unannounced customers that have invested in Hara products. From our contacts, customer satisfaction remains very high, impressive for an early product in an early market.

Hara has strengthened its lead with municipalities, recently signing Las Vegas and striking a partnership with ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA, a non-profit focused on helping cities become more sustainable with more than 600 local government members. Las Vegas joins San Jose and Palo Alto, other Hara municipal customers.

The City of Palo Alto is a good municipal case study as the city relies on Hara to monitor the city's 160 ongoing projects pertaining to areas of sustainability, energy efficiency and natural resource management. Using the Hara product, city employees in 13 departments track facilities responsible for the bulk of the reductions and use them as best practice examples for other departments to drive further efficiencies. Hara software helped track and report first year reductions of electricity use by 8%, natural gas by 25%, and solid waste by 22% -- leading to a carbon emissions reduction of 12%.

A strong team and balance sheet, a compelling product, and excellent sales and marketing execution position Hara extremely well as this software market grows and begins to consolidate.

"Too Many Visionaries, Too Few Grunts"

2010-07-20T22:01:00.000-04:00

Good post: "Too Many Visionaries, Too Few Grunts" from Auden Schendler of Aspen Skiing Co.

Comparing The Walmart and P&G Supplier Sustainability Scorecards

2010-07-07T17:29:00.001-04:00

This spring Procter and Gamble (P&G) rolled out a sustainability scorecard program for its suppliers. The program requests information on energy, carbon emissions, waste, and water. Responses are graded on a 1 ("Far Exceeds Expectations") to 5 ("Far Below Expectations") scale. The effort initially involves a group of 400 suppliers, of which some had a July 1, 2010 deadline to report. Details of the program are online and a good article about the program can be found here.

P&G joins Walmart and other large companies in implementing supplier sustainability scorecards programs. Similar to the Walmart Supplier Sustainability Assessment program (centered on 15 questions), the P&G program is clear and simple. Both initiatives focus on carbon, water, and waste and offer clear scores and performance expectations for suppliers. Each program is very transparent and easy to implement.

Differences in the programs do exist, due to company type (P&G is a manufacturer and Walmart is a retailer) and philosophy. The P&G program is performance based (actual results per output units) and more explicitly focused on yearly supplier improvement, whereas the Walmart effort is goal orientated (does the supplier have a goal). Walmart asks for information on sourcing policies, 3rd party certifications, and community involvement, and P&G does not.

Both firms have done an absolutely outstanding job with these efforts and these programs are models for other manufacturers and retailers considering supplier scorecards.

Sustainability executives should expect more data requests in coming years from their top customers as other large companies implement similar programs. Executives can use these two programs as examples of the types of data that will likely be requested and begin to prepare their organization accordingly.

10 Things I've Learned About Carbon Footprinting

2010-06-28T22:43:00.002-04:00

As part of GreenBiz.com's celebration of 10 year for its website, the Joel and team asked me to list the 10 things I've learned about carbon footprinting.

Briefing Summary: CA Technologies. EPA Portfolio Mgr Integration, New Customers

2010-06-25T00:32:00.002-04:00

CA Technologies (formerly CA) recently provided us a briefing update on new product capabilities and a number of new customers. They announced new features for their flagship Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) product called CA ecoSoftware. New features include bi-directional integration with EPA Portfolio Manager (CA Technologies’ can be system or record or read-only application) and enhanced reporting with CDP, GRI and CRC. For companies with US facilities, we see tremendous value with EPA Portfolio Manager and see this as a leadership step for CA Technologies.

CA Technologies continues to close deals, especially with customers who value energy reduction, including data centers. Announced new customers include Logicalis, 1500 person provider of ICT solutions and is apart of $4.2B Datatec Ltd. CA Technologies has a nice video case study of its win with Tesco.

Differentiation lies in the breadth of solution (carbon reporting to device monitoring), global size and scope, energy management especially for datacenters and initiatives/program alignment with goals, and integration.

CA Technologies continues to be a very credible vendor in this area for straight forward carbon reporting needs as well as comprehensive enterprise carbon, sustainability and energy management.

New Name and CEO for CarbonNetworks

2010-06-09T12:27:00.000-04:00

CarbonNetworks brings in new CEO and renames itself ENXsuite.

Similarities Between the Quality and Sustainability Movements

2010-05-12T09:22:00.000-04:00

For those of us who lived through the Quality movement during the 1980s and 1990s, the similarities with the sustainability movement are striking. David Lubin and Daniel Esty highlight commonalities in a recent Harvard Business Review article (another good article for executives and sustainability leaders). Highlights are:

- Most corporations are flailing around with a hodgepodge of sustainability initiatives

- Sustainability, like quality, is a mega-trend for corporations for which adoption moved from defense to offensive tactics

- The sustainability movement, like the quality movement, will follow 4 stages:
1. cost and risk reduction
2. redesigned products and processes
3. revenue growth strategies
4. differentiated value propositions that provide sustained competitive advantage

- Value creation is driven through executive buy-in and execution throughout the organization. Similar to Chief Quality Officers, the Chief Sustainability Officers must lead an effort to institutionalize this new thinking and processes into the company. Critical roles for the Sustainability executive are
1. secure CEO commitment to integrating sustainability into strategy and operations
2. guide the CEO and management team through the 4 stages listed above through education, visualization of goals, specifying accountability, reward systems and tracking results and successes
3. ensure that results and best practices are disseminated widely, especially to employees
4. drive a process for developing shared goals with management and a broad set of stakeholders
5. develop key performance indicators (KPI) that support a differentiated strategy

Age of Corporate Transparency is Here

2010-05-04T15:16:00.001-04:00

Age of Corporate Transparency: HBR Cover Article

Corporate transparency is here to stay. At our recent conference, chairman and founder of Seventh Generation, Jeffrey Hollender, spoke about the importance of radical corporate transparency (such as publicly detailing more product information than competitor's products).

The April article in the the Harvard Business Review is "Leadership in the Age of Transparency" and is a must read for senior executives. Highlights include:
- Companies are increasingly responding proactively to external risks of their actions before being regulated (e.g. Kraft changed its use of trans fat before regulatory changes)
- Greater accountability for corporations and senior management is unavoidable
- Proliferation of information continues. For example, scorecard.org provides a list of polluters by zip code and a list of company owners of top polluting sites. This information was not easily unavailable ten years ago
- Stakeholders regard a company as responsible when it measures and manages its negative impact on society
- The worse of all worlds is to be made responsible (through regulations, fines, etc.), but to still not be considered responsible
- Most corporate efforts are an incoherent jumble of activities under banners of corporate social responsibility, sustainability, give-back and philanthropy

My Notes from NAEM Sustainability Conference

2010-04-29T20:27:00.004-04:00

Below are my notes from the NAEM Conference: Essential Steps in Building a Best in Class Corporate Sustainability Programs
Palo Alto, CA Apr 28

The event was sponsored by Roche/Genentech and NAEM. Great conference everyone

Raw Conference Notes from Paul Baier

A. Essential Steps for Getting Started

Bruce Klafter, Head of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, Applied Materials

Key elements in sustainability operations
- Data gathering critical. energy use and raw material data simply didn’t exist initially with facilities and supply chain
- Analysis
- Benchmarking (initial benchmarks were from public info, then peers
- Planning
- Vision/principles
- Goal setting
- Implementation

Getting started
- need to have key executives to endorse project
- be sure to involve CFO or someone from finance
- one lesson: much better dynamic in group, rather than individual meetings; drive toward steering or governance meeting if possible

His role is to report what other groups are doing, but don’t “own” project. Need to give lots of recognition

Start small and partial is better than none for carbon inventory
- Applied started with 4 locations, 75% of footprint (now 110 locations)
- we learned how to do basic footprint and then can do benchmarking

Guiding principles (built from review of 50 CSR reports)
- energy efficiency
- design for environment
- pollution prevention
- employee and public outreach

No separate sustainability budget, all part of ‘business as usual”

Corporate goals
- reduce Co2MT by 20% by 2012
- product design: reduce energy and resource consumption by 20%

Supplier scorecard
- one of the most critical issue for sustainability, especially for electronics (e.g. HP doesn’t make anything, but they spend $60B will outsourced manufacturers)

Metrics are critical (KPI); reviewed quarterly, published more frequently

Reporting
- transparency is important
- reporting is key element of our strategy; publishing a report drives alignment and action internally.
- use peer comparison/benchmarking by department in other companies to drive internal behavior

CSR report now called Corporate Citizenship report
- initial report was very anecdotal and initially report every 2 years; over 3 years moved to a report which lots of data, goals, detail

Price of carbon used for carbon abated
- use price of carbon as academic and awareness exercise
- get price from CCX, use to calculate abatement

Dave Asplund, Global EHS manager, Juniper Networks
initial pressure points for action were requests from investors and customers
- media now asking CEO about company’s reduction program
data is key
- first footprint in 2005, EICC in 2007, CDP 2008, first CSR report in 2010; GRI in 2010
- goals is to be in middle tier of peer group
footpring
- “toes print” not yet footprint. because outsource so much of our manufacturing [funny quote]
- targeting offices of 100+ ee
CEO is being asking about their carbon footprint. reporters asked CEO about carbon reduction strategy and CEO didn’t have one, so this pushed action
“my biggest challenge is cross functional support”, this won’t be important internally until sustainability is important for CEO and executive management [PB, customers drive this]
supply chain
- biggest challenge is getting data for CDP. avoid if not in the contract

B. Sustainability goals and metrics

Joe Bialowitz, Project Manager, Environmental Stewardship, Kaiser Permente
employee engagement
- turn off lights (2,000 people in pledge), used approach similar to Walmart PSP
- connect health and safety with environment

C. Supply Chain

Rodney Davis, Manager Global Sustainability, Mattel
started with compliance
Sustainability model: Design it; Make it, Live it
- Design it (products)
- Make it (energy efficiency, water, waste)
- Live it (personal commitment
Single most important thing we have done is to have crisp and clear strategy backed up by true management commitment
Still too early to require our suppliers to work with their suppliers. We want to walk the talk first

Yonnie Leung, Manager, Supply Chain Performance, PG&E
- supply chain defined as $4B yearly purchase for power plants, wires, engineering services, office (excludes energy purchases which are $12B)
-started 3 years ago. benchmark Walmart, HP. High tech firms as group doing most in supply chain
- initial focus on 20 important suppliers. Moving in next 12 months to define benchmark
- Add green evaluation in RFP and supplier score cards. Buyers must be on board and this takes education. Buyer support needed to ensure green criteria has “teeth”
- Aim to have top 20 suppliers have baseline GHG footprints by 2012
PG&E announced sustainability officer (first utility to do this)
only 20-30% of our suppliers have even started their sustainability journey
Carrot vs. stick incentives. Few years ago PGE had to pay 5 suppliers to go Green Supplier Network review 3 years ago. Today, a few suppliers helped fund large LCA project with Berkeley

D. ECA/GHG software panel

Katie Excoffier, Sustainability Manager, Genentech
- issued 4 CSR reports over the years, cover energy, water, waste, commute, travel, health and safety trends
- initially used giant spreadsheets, external reporting to Climate Leaders, Roche acquisitions
- Roche CEO very committed to sustainability, increases visibility. made spreadsheet
Software selection: SaaS (not to burden IT), sustainability focus, interface with utility data (PG&E); involved small team. 2 month selection process (driven by securing 2009 budget)
- implementation: upload spreadsheets with historical data. software was useful to help us to become more precise; found hours. 2 consultants 2 days per week. consultants now deployed for higher value add. Working with automated data feeds from local utility (PG&E)
- biggest surprise/lesson: decision for incremental approach worked well. perhaps a bit more planning on implementation
critical to ensure that ever data that goes in can come out easily in spreadsheets, especially for local data entry

Ramana Kolluri, Manager, EHS Management Info Systems, Barrick Gold (world’s largest gold producer with 26 mines, 20,000 employees, on DJSI)
- publish responsibility report since 2002, GRI framework
- RIMS: Responsibility Information Management System to collect, manage, and compile data
- Evaluated 18 evendors, short listed 4
- Selected Entropy, how a subsidiary of BSI (British Standards Institute)
Software selection: completed requirements document; needed to short list to 4 quickly, must haves (multi-language); were open to premise based; selection was EHS, sustainability, IT. 6-8 month process
- Business justification: justified along with safety incidents (helped to drive down safety incidents)
- Implementation: biggest challenge was user training and user acceptance
Biggest surprise/lesson: we didn’t involve enough people, especially at local level. we spend enough time looking at local requirements (e.g. some locations have internet down 20% of time). Key is to make tool valuable for local site manager, not simply a corporate reporting tool

Nayeem Sheikh, Global Energy Manager, Cisco Systems
- drivers budgeting, reporting (EPA, CDP, CSR, DJSI, Greenpeace,others)
- Energy and water focused. 80% of GHG emissions from real estate operations
- Use data entered monthly and quarterly spreadsheet. Data entry a real pain
25% reduction goal from 2007 to 2012 approved by EcoBoard/CEO
Developed Environmental Data Tool (EDT)- spreadsheet based
- Currently evaluating tools: needs to manage energy, water, and waste. take directly from meters, OCR, directly from utility. Want to get away from manual data entry.
- software selection currently ongoing: looking at 5 vendors; keys are automation at major sites, SaaS, affordable, use historical data (data collected since 2002; large amount)
- business justification: mandates, labor savings through automation

Attending NAEM Sustainability Conf on Wed

2010-04-26T22:58:00.003-04:00

Rather than hosting, I'm attending a conference. A nice change for me! On Wednesday, I'm attending the NAEM Sustainability Conference in Palo Alto. The have a good set of speakers lined up. I look forward to comparing observations from our recent conference, which was attended by mostly East Coast firms, with a conference which mostly CA-based firms.

SAP to Acquire TechniData AG

2010-04-21T07:46:00.004-04:00

SAP announced that it is acquiring long time partner Technidata AG, strengthening its offerings in the EHS and Sustainability area. Last year SAP purchased Clear Standards, an SaaS Enterprise Carbon Accounting software vendor. The EHS vendor market has a number of well established players (IHS, Enviance, Enablon, ProcessMap, Dakota Software) which may also make acquisition sense for large vendors like SAP or Oracle as environmental compliance functionality becomes more strategic as companies continue to invest in sustainability.

Excellent Conference!! Thanks

2010-04-16T12:53:00.003-04:00

Thank you to everyone for a great conference yesterday. The speakers, networking, exhibitors and questions were outstanding. Onward!

Great turnout of Fortune 500 companies at Green Enterprise 2010 Conference

2010-04-14T08:48:00.001-04:00

It's great to see the excitement about our sold out Green Enterprise 2010 Conference tomorrow. Great turnout of Fortune 500 companies.

Green Enterprise 2010 Event SOLD OUT

2010-04-12T19:44:00.002-04:00

Our Groom Energy Green Enterprise 2010 conference this Thursday, April 15 is SOLD OUT. Email pbaier@groomenergy.com for wait-list placement.

5 Things To Reduce Chemical Risk in Your Supply Chain

2010-04-02T00:17:00.000-04:00

5 Things To Reduce Chemical Risk in Your Supply Chain
Written by Tim Greiner of Pure Strategies

Companies face seemingly overwhelming obstacles to uncovering and managing supply chain chemical risk (recall the problems of lead in toys a few years ago). Many suppliers typically provide little information on the chemical make up of components and processes. When they do provide data, it often lacks the necessary detail and specificity to identify chemical hazards. From contaminants in toys to BPA in children's products, companies need policies, programs and tools to protect their customers and brands from chemical risk. Lack of transparency of chemical risks in your supply chain is a direct business threat.

We recommend firms take 5 steps
1. Develop a chemicals disclosure policy with your suppliers that requires disclosure of chemical hazards in materials, sub assemblies, packaging and ingredients they supply.
2. Assess chemical risk against a set of criteria. The criteria should be drawn on hazards such as the Red List of Chemicals or could be drawn from lists used by others in your sector.
3. Reduce hazards by substituting the worse chemical hazards with safer chemicals and materials.
4. Be transparent with your customers, consumers and NGOs. Don't hide hazards from your stakeholders. It is far better to be proactive and communicate thean to react during a crisis.
5. Trust, but verify. Despite best intentions, any supply chain needs audits to ensure suppliers faithfully adhere to your standards.

These 5 steps represent the core of a chemicals management program. Beyond this core, more advanced practices include a safer chemical methodology, advocacy for chemicals policy reform, and industry collaboration on supplier chemical management.

Learn more about this topic from Staples and Clean Production Action, a leading NGO in this area, at our conference in Boston April 15.

I'd like to thank Tim Greiner for contributing this piece on chemical risk. Tim is a nationally recognized sustainability expert and founder of Pure Strategies. - a Boston-based consultancy working with leading brands such as The North Face, Seventh Generation, and Stonyfield Farm.

14 Things Every Employee Can Do To Be Sustainable

2010-03-25T13:09:00.001-04:00

Earth Day (April 22) is right around the corner and many companies are once again finalizing corporate programs for this annual event. Earth Day 2010 marks its 40th anniversary. We have found companies have tried a wide variety of activities to increase awareness and to change behavior with employees and often use Earth Day as a kick-off event. The NRDC and Garrison Institute recently published a list of 14 specific activities that employees can do at home and at work (such as carpooling and reducing household energy). The paper also quantifies the total emission reduction potential if all individuals in the US took these measures. We would add two things to this list. One, understand the top 2 drivers of GHG emissions at your company (e.g. process emissions or electricity), as most employees can't name the top emission drivers. Two, talk with 3 other employees about sustainability, since peer-to-peer evangelicalism is the most effective communication vehicle.

What is your company doing for Earth Day?

Is it Worth Reporting Carbon Emissions to CDP? The Case for Reporting, including Data on Bloomberg Terminals

2010-03-19T13:57:00.000-04:00

Recently two companies told us they did not see the business case for reporting carbon emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). Their rationale is that the reporting standards are too flexible (firms are not required to report emissions or can only report Scope 1). We disagree. While some of these critiques are valid and we hope the CDP moves toward verification (perhaps using The Climate Registry verification protocol), the CDP has become the leading registry for large companies (with firms like Walmart, HP, and Bank of America asking their top suppliers to report as well) and provides firms with an additional vehicle to market their environmental programs. Reported emissions information is increasingly being compared across companies by investors and researchers. Here is a screen shot of emission data reported to the CDP and then passed along to Bloomberg terminals (used daily by investors). We encourage firms to ensure their CFO and investor relationship officer are aware of trends like this.

Will Others Follow Safeway and Join the Sustainability Consortium?

2010-03-05T10:14:00.001-05:00

Here is a quick refresher about the Consortium. Last year, Walmart launched a major sustainability initiative called the Sustainability Index, involving 3 components. One component is a set of 15 questions for Walmart suppliers. Many suppliers have answered these questions and received a numerical assessment from Walmart. Walmart has shared publicly the questions, but this program is only for Walmart suppliers and the assessment scores stay within Walmart. These questions do not ask for product-level environmental information.

The second component is a non-profit group called Sustainability Consortium. The non-profit is lead by academics and industry experts and Walmart provided some initial funding. The goal of this group is to develop and share information and methods for calculating the carbon footprint of products. Initial product level information for carbon is not expected for at least 3-5 years due to the challenges of multiple methodologies and data collection. Safeway announced joining this group and other large companies are considering joining as well.

The third component of the Sustainability Index is labeling for carbon and environmental data for specific products. This may eventually come out of the Sustainability Consortium but is years away from implementation.

So, will others follow Safeway? Walmart has demonstrated great leadership with this program. We believe that other large companies will join the Sustainability Consortium to monitor and to influence any potential outcomes. However, the devil is in the details when calculating carbon footprint for products using Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). The methodology differences among LCA approaches are large and the challenges in data gathering and agreeing on estimates are daunting. "Carbon" or "sustainable" must be defined at the product level, but this presents problems such as who decides and arbitrates this definition. Definitions matter. Labeling matters. Product differentiation matters. After decades we don't have agreement for product definitions for natural or organic. Why is sustainability or carbon any different?

It will take years, maybe decades, before the industry agrees upon a widely-accepted, product-level carbon labeling program. Kukos to Walmart and Safeway in starting this long but important journey.

In the near term, however, suppliers should expect additional sustainability questionaires from their top customers as other large retailers (and other large companies) consider replicating all or part of Walmart's Supplier Sustainability Assessment program.

Where Should the Sustainability Team Live in the Organization?

2010-02-23T15:30:00.000-05:00

Coordinating and providing leadership for sustainability across a global enterprise is extremely challenging, especially when involving all functions (e.g., sales, product, supply chain, facilities, marketing, and HR). Here are 5 options we've seen for the organizational structure with respect to the sustainability team:
1. Separate sustainability team. Often lead by a VP, reporting to CFO, General Counsel, COO or CEO, this team is separate from EHS, facilities, and environmental affairs. We see this in less than 10% of firms have this.
2. Part of EHS. We are finding more "EHS&S" titles at companies and noticed that NAEM is now using this abbreviation.
3. Part of Facilities. A common place for firms which have mostly Scope 2 emissions with little manufacturing and no EHS department.
4. Part of Environmental Affairs. Tends to focus on regulatory matters.
5. None. Sustainability efforts are coordinated with a cross-functional team, ideally with strong executive sponsorship and leadership.

Which structure is best? Our experience is that while selecting the most appropriate organizational structure is important, it is not the most crucial success factor. For any of the above options to be effective, the following elements must also be in place:
- CEO and Senior Management commitment
- The correct leadership skills of the sustainability leader
- Assurance that sustainability is the #1 job priority for at one empowered VP or Director
- Clear and well understood business case for investment and action

Tickets go on Sale for Groom Energy Conference April 15 in Boston

2010-02-23T14:22:00.002-05:00

Tickets went on sale for Groom Energy Sustainability Conference in Boston on April 15. CEO of Seventh Generation to keynote. Info here.

Seventh Generation CEO to Keynote Groom Energy Conference Apr 15

2010-02-09T14:16:00.000-05:00

Our next Sustainability Conference will be April 15 in Boston and we're delighted to have Jeffrey Hollender, CEO of Seventh Generation, as our confirmed keynote. A leading manufacturer of sustainable products for chains such as Whole Foods and Walmart, Seventh Generation is an early leader in greening its products, culture and operations and has much to teach us all. Other agenda topics are:
- Lessons from suppliers who completed the Walmart 15 question Supplier Sustainability Assessments
- Implications of recent SEC ruling on disclosure of climate risk
- Lessons for firms responding to CDP surveys (due this summer)
- Reducing business risk from toxins in products and supply chains
- Leading trends in employee engagement
Mark your calendar for this exciting event. More information will be coming soon.

Will California Suspend its Landmark Carbon Regulation Law?

2010-02-09T14:14:00.000-05:00

California has been a leader in promoting carbon and energy reduction efforts. In 2006, it passed a pioneering law for carbon regulation called AB 32. However, in the face of the recession, groups are pushing for a ballot measure to suspend implementation this law. This battle will be closely watched as many other states look to CA for leadership on this issue. Last year, Australia delayed by one year the implementation of its cap-n-trade carbon tax due to economic concerns. Clearly the recession and Climategate has affected both political and public will for carbon regulation.

SEC and Investors Demand More Disclosure on Climate Risk

2010-01-28T10:29:00.001-05:00

SEC and Investors Demand More Disclosure on Climate Risk

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted to encourage companies to disclose the effects of climate change. Potentially a watershed event, this is the first time the SEC has ruled that companies should report climate risk. State retirement funds, other investors and NGOs have been pressuring the SEC to require more disclosure. Ceres published a helpful fact sheet on this SEC vote that should be read by all CFOs.

Notable News
- Climate lawsuits gain clout. A small Alaskan village sues energy companies for $400m to move all inhabitants off its island and federal appeals courts allow climate suits to continue in other states. These legal cases and others help firms and insurance companies quantify the legal risk from climate change.
- Climategate fallout continues. Scientists admit that the speed of glaciers melting due to climate change was not based on real science and was greatly exaggerated. Scientists involved refuse to share data.
- Over 60 firms are testing the draft scope 3 standards from WRI. Some companies expressed concern to us about the practicality and affordability of these draft Scope 3 standards and we are following the feedback from these early testers.
- Two Fortune 500 firms, Nike and Yahoo!, drop carbon offsets.

Upcoming Events
- Free webinar on Tuesday, February 2: Hear a case study of News Corp's use of Hara software to manage carbon and energy data, including what drove the business case and lessons learned. Click here to register.
- Upcoming Spring Conference: Look for information soon about the Groom Energy ECA conference being held in Boston this April.

Groom Research Reports
- NEW: we released a new research report "ECA Buyer Survey: A Survey of Purchasing Intentions of 16 Large, Global Organizations for ECA Software"
- Last week an update to our ECA vendor report was published (60 vendors listed, 20 profiled, and 8 named as ECA Emerging Leaders)
- Both reports are available here

GHG Software Innovation Continues: 60+ Vendors Offer Solutions

2010-01-20T14:29:00.000-05:00

GHG Software Innovation Continues. 60+ Vendors Offer Solutions -- 8 Identifed as Emerging Leaders

Over 60+ vendors now offer software to manage, track and report GHG emissions, a process we call Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA). We recently updated our ECA software vendor report and identified 8 vendors as Emerging Leaders. The New York Times wrote an excellent article about this growing market and our report. Click here to see a list of the 8 vendors, a brief report excerpt and how to order the report.

Another Company Moves to Quarterly CSR reporting
Quarterly reporting of non-financial, environmental data along with financial and operational data is an emerging practice. Sainsbury, a UK retailer, is yet another company that recently moved to quarterly CSR reporting. Timberland started this practice last year and has an impressive set of quarterly reports. While it is more burdensome, Timberland told us that of one of the benefits is that the CSR team is closer to the operational pulse of the company. The company now reports quarterly environmental goals and results, just as it always does with revenue, expenses, and production volumes.

Notable News
- Some states are urging the U.S. EPA to delay implementing new GHG regulation because they fear it will overwhelm them with paper work and slow construction projects.
- Walmart competitors in Canada, like Home Depot, Staples and others, agree to attend Walmart's Green Business Summit.

Upcoming Events
- Free Feb 2 webinar: Hear a case study of News Corp using Hara software to manage carbon and energy data, including what drove the business case and lessons learned. Click here to register.
- Upcoming Spring Conference: Look for information soon about the Groom Energy ECA conference being held in Boston this April.

8 Emerging ECA Leaders. List of 60 vendors of ECA/GHG Software

2010-01-19T12:14:00.003-05:00

Groom Energy updated its research report for Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) software. This is our third report update and is by far the most comprehensive report available today. We analyzed 60+ vendors and named 8 vendors as ECA Emerging Leaders (listed alphabetically)
1. Enablon
2. Enviance
3. Hara
4. IHS
5. Johnson Controls
6. PE International
7. ProcessMAP
8. SAP

Click here to purchase the report.

New York Times published an article on the report.

Green Ratings Continue to Proliferate, but are Too Important to Ignore

2010-01-13T17:35:00.003-05:00

Green ratings systems for companies and products continue to proliferate and some are too influential to ignore. We estimate that 80+ company ratings systems (e.g., Calvert Ratings, Ceres, Climate Counts, Dow Jones, etc.) exist and 200+ programs rate products (e.g., Energy Star, GoodGuide, etc.). Ecolabelling.org lists hundreds of them. Colleges and universities face at least 6 different rating programs. Greenpeace recently released its rankings on electronics industry (Nokia is #1 with Ninendo last) and its report on seafood practices at retailers is influential (Wegmans and Ahold are at the top, while Trader Joe's and Meijer rank at the bottom).

Dave Douglas, Chief Sustainability Officer at Sun Microsystems, was particularly articulate about the inherent "morality" implicit in each rating system. Click here to watch a short video of his talk at our conference last year on this topic.

Green ratings programs obviously need to be monitored and organizations need to participate in the more influential ones. Today is a different world than it was 5 years ago, especially with the proliferation of social media, easy web publishing and smart phones. All companies will operate in a world of significantly more transparency. This is particularly problematic for bad news, which travels so quickly on the internet (e.g., look at the customer service problems with Google's new phone). What are your thoughts? Are you inundated with Green Rating systems?

Upcoming Events
- Free Feb 2 Webinar: Case study of News Corp using Hara software. Learn what drove the business case and lessons learned. Click here to register.
- Upcoming Spring Conference: Look for information soon about the Groom Energy conference in Boston in April.

Software Startup C3 Reports $26m in Financing

2009-12-30T14:03:00.005-05:00

C3, a software startup associated with Tom Siebel, reported $26m in financing. In stealth mode for well over a year, C3 recently added information on its website about its target software category, Energy and Emissions Management, and its high profile board of directors, which includes Condoleeza Rice among others.

Look for C3 to make a strong run against early leaders such as SAP, Hara, IHS, and Johnson Controls in the market for software which manages energy and carbon data.

3 Hurdles to Decisive Corporation Action on Sustainability

2009-12-23T14:31:00.003-05:00

The post summarizes an excellent article in MIT Sloan Management Review about the hurdles to corporate investments for sustainability culled from a research initiative. The 3 identified hurdles reflect challenges we see with our clients and are good reminders to sustainability leaders who are refining plans for 2010.

Improved company or brand image is the top business driver, but no standard definition of sustainability is widely accepted and the business case can be illusive
- Improved company image is, by far, the most frequent business benefit cited, followed by cost savings, competitive advantage, and improved employee recruitment and retention
- While business drivers are numerous (commodity price volatility, customer demands, investor and NGO pressure, regulation risk, need to attract and retain employees, etc.), the business case for sustainability-related investments can be hard to build, in part, because no single established definition of sustainability exists
- The most frequently cited definition for sustainability is the so-called Brundtland Commission definition of triple bottom line: economic, environmental, and societal considerations

3 hurdles to decisive and effective corporation action on sustainability
Based on research, the article cites three common hurdles:
1.Organizations don't understand what sustainability is or what it means to their enterprise
2.Companies have difficulty modeling the business case or even finding a compelling business case
3.Execution is flawed because of internal skepticism and lack of measurement

Implications for sustainability leaders
The first two hurdles are communication challenges. Sustainability leaders need to invest more in defining and promoting a common language and a fact base of the opportunities and threats facing their organization. Surprisingly, 70% of respondents in the research did not have a strong, written business case for sustainability.

In addition to overcoming skepticism and improving measurement, our experience suggests that accountability needs to be improved. Only 12% of firms have a sustainability director, cross-functional teams rarely drive substantial change, and few line managers have sustainability metrics in their operational goals.

Is US Federal GHG Regulation Still 5 Years Away?

2009-12-15T14:38:00.001-05:00

Is US Federal GHG Regulation Still 5 Years Away?

Passage and implementation of a US cap-n-trade bill is perhaps 5 years out. At the EPA Climate Leaders meeting last week, Ralph Izzo, CEO of PSEG, Yale Professor Dan Esty, and others confirmed a similar time frame. Congressional timing and political resolve are significantly impacted by other pending bills (health care, jobs, finance reform), the deficit, Climategate, and the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Experts are split on whether direct regulation by the EPA through its endangerment finding will pass legal challenges. Experts tell us that lawsuits against the EPA are highly likely and the key question is whether a federal judge would issue an injunction to halt any direct EPA regulation.

It's our view that regulation gyrations will continue to be newsworthy through 2010, but actual regulation won't be passed and implemented for years. Large companies will push aggressively to stop the EPA from regulating directly without Congresionally-passed GHG laws. Meanwhile revenue-hungry states like CA and other countries will push forward with their own regulations.

What is your view on this? Email me and let me know.

Concerns Grow About WRI Scope 3 Working Draft

WRI recently released for comments drafts from the working groups on Scope 3. Two drafts were released: one for Product Life Cycle accounting and one for Corporate Scope 3. Scope 3 emissions often make up the largest part of an organization's footprint, and many organizations want to report and reduce these emissions. The Corporate Scope 3 reporting draft break emissions into 18 categories, including generated waste, business travel, distribution of products, and disposal of sold products.

A number of large companies and consultants at the EPA Climate Leaders meeting expressed concern about the complexity of these 100+ page protocols and the ability to financially justify the data gathering. Two large retailers and a global computer company told me the protocols are becoming needlessly complex, unaffordable to implement and less relevant because of lack of comparability across periods and companies. I did not find anyone supportive of the current drafts, but some were hopeful about future drafts.

Scope 3 is clearly an important area. Hopefully, WRI will continue to hone this standard and define one that is implementable and as widely accepted and respected as the Scope 1 and 2 standards.

Don't expect any increase in public scope 3 reporting by companies until WRI finalizes the standard, which could take 1-2 years.

Pricing Trends for GHG/ECA Software - Take our Survey

Are you considering purchasing GHG/Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) software in the next 6 months? Groom Energy published a report reviewing 51 software vendors and identified 7 Emerging Leaders.

If you are with a large company (sorry, no consultants or software vendors), then consider taking our 10 minute online survey about key features and pricing. In return, we'll provide you a summary of what we learn about key features, the business justification and pricing. This is a free survey and is a time effective way for you to learn about the latest purchasing trends. Email Paul Baier at pbaier@groomenergy.com for the online survey link.

Notes from Day 1 at EPA Climate Leaders Partners Meeting

2009-12-03T09:31:00.001-05:00

This week I attended the EPA Climate Leaders (CL) Partners meeting in National Harbor, MD (near Washington DC). EPA Climate Leaders is a very well respected GHG voluntary reporting program run by the EPA with over 200 Fortune 500 companies participating. Over 250 people attended the event, many from large companies such as GE, Staples, Genzyme, Boise, UTC, Sun Microsystems, Sprint, Anheuser-Busch and many others.
My Day 1 notes:

The EPA CL Program continues to grow, but changes to program
- EPA Climate Leaders program continues to grow (67 new partners this year – 17 large companies, 50 small companies)
-EPA is currently accepting feedback on program changes (changes are expected to be announced in January). Proposed changes include move to use absolute reduction goals only (drop intensity goals), public publishing of reports, more programs for small business, and incorporation of scope 3 (when guidance is finalized from WRI). Lots of discussion and debate about pros and cons of absolute vs. intensity/relative goals

Federal cap-n-trade is _at least_ 3 years away from implementation in the States
- This is based on Q&A with speakers, hallway discussions, etc.

Scope 3 work at WRI is getting more complex, skepticism increasing
- I spoke with 3 people who attended the WRI scope 3 working group meeting this week. The concern is that the effort continues to get more complex (current draft is apparently 125 pages) and dominated by LCA purists. One person mentioned concerned that a poorly received and implemented Scope 3 effort hurt the well received scope 1 and 2 efforts by WRI

Numerous companies are actively looking at Enterprise Carbon Accounting software and considering investments in Q4 or Q1.

Frustration with numerous NGOs was expressed privately (“pay to play”, bullying, etc.). This is a growing trend that the NGOs need to get ahead of if they want to keep their credibility (especially in light of the credibility hit scientists took with the leaded climate emails)

Headed to EPA Climate Leaders Partner Meeting

2009-12-01T13:11:00.002-05:00

I'm headed to EPA Climate Leaders Partners meeting in MD. Topics of interests
- what are company investment priorities in 2010, and are these above 2009 levels
- which firms are considering buying GHG/Enterprise Carbon Accounting software in 1H '10
- info on new CL program (absolute goals only?)
- trends and investments in Employee Engagement and Green Supply Chain
- trends/interests/business case for purchasing offsets/REC
- trends in combining carbon with energy management internally (to give energy spend more visibility and to give allow sustainability to leverage ROI from energy spend

Walmart Publishes Weighting for Supplier Assessments

2009-11-20T15:57:00.001-05:00

Weights for Walmart's Supplier Sustainability Assessment (SSA)

Walmart has implemented a numerical sustainability assessment of its suppliers based on 15 questions. Suppliers receive a sustainability assessment score between 1-100. Walmart recently published the details of the scoring here, and a summary of weighting for the different evaluation areas shows where Walmart is placing its emphasis:

* 30% for GHG footprint and GHG reduction goals
* 30% for packaging, solid waste and water reduction
* 20% purchasing policy and product certifications
* 20% social compliance and community

Walmart has demonstrated impressive leadership with the transparency and breadth of this program. If you supply to Walmart you obviously need to be familiar with this material, but it is also a very useful model for other companies considering measuring their suppliers (especially tier 1 suppliers) on sustainability. A number of companies are considering a similar approach. Email us if you have questions in this area.

Pricing Trends for GHG/ECA Software - Take our Survey

2009-11-20T15:56:00.000-05:00

Pricing Trends for GHG/ECA Software - Take our Survey

Are you considering purchasing GHG/Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) software in the next 6 months? Groom Energy published a report reviewing 51 software vendors for Greenhouse Gas (GHG) or Enterprise Carbon Accounting software and identified 7 Emerging Leaders.

If you are with a large company (sorry,no consultants or software vendors), then consider taking our 10 minute online survey about key features and pricing. In return, we'll provide you a summary of what we learn about key features, the business justification and pricing. This is a free survey and is a time effective way for you to learn about the latest purchasing trends. Email Paul Baier at pbaier@groomenergy.com for the online survey link.

IHS Continues Acquisition Efforts with ESS: Strengths Offerings for Heavy/Medium Emitters

2009-11-10T20:22:00.002-05:00

We recently had a briefing with a number of executives from IHS about their recent acquisition of ESS. IHS has acquired a number of environmentally-related firms in the last few years (ESP, Dolphin, EnvironMax) and is one of the Early Leaders in Enterprise Carbon Accounting software for tracking and managing carbon data. ESS is the latest and deepens a robust set of offerings for heavy and medium emitters of carbon, and IHS told us they continue to look for promising acquisitions.

We had numerous questions about the integration of ESS, especially for companies which don’t currently have any IHS products. For these prospects, IHS will conduct a needs assessment as part of the sales process to determine which of its environmental and Greenhouse/Enterprise Carbon Accounting offerings make the most sense. Sales reps will carry all products. From a development standpoint, the ESS and other IHS products are all Microsoft-based and IHS will continue to maintain product roadmaps for each product and build integration elements. Deployment options remain varied from on-premise, to dedicated hosted, to SaaS hosting.

IHS continues to build upon a strong offering for heavy emitters (organizations with a large scope 1 emissions) and heavy EHS requirements. Firms which are scope 2 centric (i.e. mostly office buildings, assembly shops, warehouses, and possibly fleets) will need to evaluate their EHS needs in light of the deep air and compliance depth offered by IHS. Firms concerned about the financial viability of software vendors will find solace in the financial strength of IHS ($1B in revenue, $110m in cash on hand).