SEEING GREENER PASTURES IN GREEHOUSE GAS MANAGEMENT !!!

Business opportunity, corporate brand and Competitive advantage are the top three drivers while compliance and risk mitigation are considered significantly less important. However, Its not surprise when I heard Chris Perceval from WRI commenting in SAP Sustainability Video, that “ Current economic conditions is an opportunity for companies to reshape themselves with lot more innovation for sustainability for outperforming their competitors”, taking right steps now will save money in the long run!. Companies are infact collecting the data for competitive advantage and for maintaining market reputation. However A number of hallmark regulations are emerging right now, with some states, like California, Maine, and New Jersey, regulating carbon dioxide emissions ahead of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Not only regulations are driviing Greenhouse gas management, even companies are also feeling the pressure on financial side, shareholders, insurance firms, lenders and rating companies increasingly wants to see emission reduction and accountability via reports. Walmart announcement asking everyone of its suppliers to calculate and disclose the full environmental costs of manufacturing their costs is a typical example of this trend. If companies ignore these market changes they are in danger of being left behind.
Things are moving at an incredible pace. A key trend and source of confusion – involves registeries and reporting. In the US, the Chicago Climate Exchange and California Climate Registry have led to a proliferation of discussions. In coming years there may be a national system that supports emission accounting and a single standard reporting. CDM is about monitoring this rapidly evolving process very closely.
However, the question remains what is the optimum software solution that can takeup this challenge of tracking Corporate GHG emissions Inventory. . The near term software solutions should aim at helping companies assess their risk, inventory emissions, develop corporate strategies, engineer greenhouse gas and energy management measures, and identify emissions offset opportunities.
The companies should aims at 1) Calculate emissions from sources that company owns or controls 2) Emissions associated with the generation of electricity, steam, or heat purchased or consumed and 3) Emissions from Waste disposal, business travel and employee computing. From a software point of view the solution should suppor companies to i) Establish Emission Inventory Capability ii) Assess Internal options for Emission Reduction iii) Assess extenral options iv) Purchase options and v) Develop some long term Enterprise Sustainability strategy and support in Trading platform. .

Thanks

Jak