Enterprise Carbon And Energy Management Approach

Business analysts and accountants are now centering focus on carbon emissions as a commodity. As energy efficiency is becoming the center of discussion in energy use reduction and sustainable resource planning, carbon emissions become a commodity for trade.

We may soon see legislation that creates a market for carbon trading, adding another line to the expense sheet. Meanwhile, society is increasingly aware of the bad guy role that carbon plays in our environmental world and will increasingly demand that corporations fully address and own their positions as consumers of energy.

Corporate environmental sustainability may not be handled by a department or administered by the role of a junior vice president. Rather, carbon emissions must be addressed as a critical element of an organization's existence. Sustainability must be real, measurable and visible as part of every organization's absolute requirement to help slow the effects of climate change.

Collaborative approaches in enterprise energy and carbon management are now starting to emerge as the traditional systems are just not that holistic in approaching the problem. Sustainability resource planning software is an example of a software-as-a-service approach and is a way that distributed organizations can address this issue from the ground up as they move toward compliance.

The new-age enterprise energy management and carbon management systems will be heavily software-based that could monitor, report, and manage emissions which are consequences of energy consumption. A variety of IT systems already exist within the typical organization, designed to handle employee, customer, financial, raw material and finished product management. Enterprise carbon and energy management systems will become a critical addition to existing software systems and will be based on the need for greater operational efficiency, enhanced communications, mandated compliance and reputation differentiation.

Traditional methods of accounting are no longer acceptable in addressing problems of enterprise energy management and in reducing consequent greenhouse gas emissions. A system must be put in place to fully analyze multiple assets across a diverse array of operational areas, creating a structured database of information, providing a meaningful analysis of performance information and enabling proactive management.

Distributed organizations are able to use carbon and energy management software to gather data from the asset level, calculating the true cost of ownership for all their assets, engage energy supply and demand management products, analyze and process utility bills, manage carbon emissions and other critical resources.

According to a market overview of enterprise carbon and energy management systems, released by Forrester Research in November, 2009, these systems are in the early stage of adoption, but such sustainability software will become a high priority as energy management in general becomes a clear focus of attention.