Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down
I talked with Carbonetworks’ President and CEO, Michael Meehan, the other day. We discussed Carbonetworks’ Carbon platform, and how their application helps companies participate in global carbon markets.
Carbonetworks software helps companies understand whether their carbon is going to be an asset or liability to them today and in the future as and works with companies to roll out their carbon strategies.
The television image in the video is from videocrab
Photo Credit Marcus Ramberg
Carbonetworks have developed an incredibly full-featured, online, carbon strategy platform.
This application generates or takes in carbon footprint information, normalizes the carbon data across all of a company’s facilities and then monetises it so companies can think of their carbon as either an asset or a liability on the balance sheet.
But Carbonetworks then goes the next logical step and gives companies access to their marketplace where they offer fully verified offsets as well as a network of other reduction options so companies can have a diverse spread of carbon reduction investments.
Carbonetworks CEO is Michael Meehan and I will be chatting to him tomorrow and podcasting the conversation.
If you have any questions you would like me to put to Michael during the discussion, please feel free to leave them in the comments of this post or email them to me (tom@redmonk.com).
Photo Credit ralphbijker
I have been having some very interesting conversations with people in the carbon software sector these last couple of weeks.
The first was with Michael Meehan of Carbonetworks (which I blogged about here) and we discussed their offering which is a “carbon strategy platform”. From my blog post about Carbonetworks:
The app at its most basic helps companies understand what their carbon footprint is, and then helps the companies translate that into a financial bottom line. The app helps companies see what options they have to reduce their carbon footprint and helps them create a carbon strategy from a managerial perspective on how to proceed in the carbon market.
Then I talked to Stefan Guertzgen, Marketing Director for Chemicals and Franz Hero, vp, chemical industry business unit both at SAP. They were talking about the SAP Environmental Compliance application which, in their words:
enables companies to gather information on the use of energy, in all its forms, throughout the enterprise, identify areas for energy reduction, monitor the implementation of energy excellence projects, and make the results available throughout the enterprise
Earlier this week I was talking to Kevin Leahy, who is a director in IBM’s IT Optimization Business Unit about IBM’s House of Carbon for which they have also developed carbon reporting software for their client base.
Finally, yesterday I was speaking to Gavin Starks, founder and CEO of AMEE. We have talked about AMEE several times before on this blog. AMEE is an open-source, neutral, platform for
measuring the Energy Consumption of everything… aggregates “official” energy metrics, conversion factors and CO2 data from over 150 countries… is a common platform for profiling and transactions (there’s a transaction engine at the core of AMEE)
Noticing a common thread here? Guys, stop re-inventing the wheel.
IBM and SAP (and anyone else thinking of embarking on carbon software) STOP NOW! It has already been done and done well by companies with open api’s (and open data in AMEE’s case).
Get on the phone to Carbonetworks and AMEE, and instead of building another carbon app, use their already comprehensive infrastructures and api’s to get a jump-start and bring best-of-breed carbon software to market efficiently!
Screenshot credit Carbonetworks
I wrote a quick blog post about Carbonetworks the other day when it was announced they secured $5 million in series A financing.
I made the mistake though of assuming their software was a simple carbon accounting solution. It goes well beyond that.
Yesterday, in a phone call with Carbonetworks co-founder, President and CEO Michael Meehan, I discovered that their offering is a full carbon strategy platform.
The app is an online app and according to Michael, Carbonetworks has about 180 subscribers in 23 countries. The app at its most basic helps companies understand what their carbon footprint is, and then helps the companies translate that into a financial bottom line. The app helps companies see what options they have to reduce their carbon footprint and helps them create a carbon strategy from a managerial perspective on how to proceed in the carbon market.
The app can normalize carbon data across all of a companies facilities, and then monetise it so companies can think of their carbon as either an asset or a liability on the balance sheet! This is a clever approach which will change how companies look to their supply chain, or how they approach investments, for example.
Then when you get to the reduction space, Carbonetworks helps there too. Carbonetworks has what they call their marketplace where they offer fully verified offsets as well as a network of other reduction options so companies can have a diverse spread of carbon reduction investments.
Where this gets even more interesting and the reason I called Carbonetworks a platform is because they are currently working on opening up their API so that other companies can use their backend. if they pull this off, they will be the first to market (that I have heard of) with an open platform like this.
If you had programmable access to an online carbon platform like this, what would you do with it? Think of the mashups you could create!
Twitter: tomraftery
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