Tag Archive for 'carbon accounting'

What are your top tips for helping RedMonk/GreenMonk become carbon neutral?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on September 5, 2008
in carbon neutral
. 13 Comments

Global Warming
Photo Credit azrainman

My colleague in RedMonk, Stephen O’Grady wrote a great post a few weeks back on his blog titled RedMonk: We’re Not Perfect, But We Try.

The post was about how we realised in RedMonk that there was a flaw in the way we licence our content as Open Source, something we had criticised other companies for. We addressed this flaw by hiring another company to write an Open Source WordPress plugin called Progressive Licence so that our content is now truly Open Source.

In a similar vein, we here in GreenMonk have criticised other companies efforts to be carbon neutral without having any concerted effort to become carbon neutral ourselves.

So we have decided to try to make RedMonk a carbon neutral company

This won’t be easy, we are a company of 5 people split across 3 countries (US, UK and Spain) with varying office set-ups and all doing crazy amounts of travel. I know that in my own case, my travel footprint will likely far exceed all my other activities and unfortunately, this is not travel which can be avoided.

It will be further complicated by the lack of standards in this area. Still we are determined to do it and we will post progress updates on this site.

As a first step, I’d like to enrol the help of the readers of this blog - what are your top tips for helping us become carbon neutral?

by-nc-sa

Carbon accounting software starting to take off?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on July 21, 2008
in carbon accounting
. 2 Comments

Carbonetworks Carbon Balance Sheet Screenshot credit Carbonetworks

We in GreenMonk have written previously about carbon accounting software and the huge opportunities which are about to open up in this space.

Carbon footprint reporting is increasingly becoming part of the purchasing process with purchasers seeking carbon footprint data from their vendors. It will in time be mandatory and when that happens, every company will have a requirement for this kind of software. Companies establishing a name for themselves at this early stage will be well placed when that requirement comes to pass.

No surprise then to see the announcement on Cnet today that software company Carbonetworks received $5 in series A funding for its online carbon calculator from clean-tech venture firm NGEN Partners.


Climate Earth is another player in this space, to my knowledge hasn’t announced any funding yet and their website could stand some work but their Team is impressive.

These companies should be working with AMEE so that everyone can benefit from the data.

Watch this space, more companies and more offerings are likely to spring up and don’t be surprised if some of these early players become attractive acquisition targets for more established software houses.

by-sa

Carbon accounting meet lifestreaming II

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on June 11, 2008
in carbon accounting and social software
. 3 Comments

Dopplr calculates my travel Carbon footprint

In my last post I postulated that social software could be used to capture people’s lifestream information and that this could be used by companies to help calculate their carbon footprint.

The case I put forward was more suited for the increasing numbers of people working from home. However, I neglected to point out another painfully obvious example - Dopplr.

Dopplr markets itself as the travel serendipity engine -

Dopplr lets you share your future travel plans privately with friends and colleagues. The service then highlights coincidence, for example, telling you that three people you know will be in Paris when you will be there too. You can use Dopplr on your personal computer and mobile phone. It links with online calendars and social networks.

However, potentially far more useful is how Dopplr have teamed up with AMEE (the world’s energy meter) to produce a chart of your travel-related carbon footprint (see the chart above of my travel footprint).

This ties in completely with my earlier post about the potential synergies attainable from combining lifestreaming software and the requirements of carbon accounting.

Can you think of any other use cases for the intersection of lifestreaming and carbon accounting?

by-sa