Verdantix Blog

Operational excellence requires more strategic management of energy consumption – and where relevant energy generation – across a whole range of assets. Verdantix describes the gradual movement towards this goal using the concept of energy systems integration....

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Steady deployments of smart meters and grid monitoring devices are generating torrents of big data on energy generation, transmission and consumption. To extract value from these data sets utilities are ramping up investments in new IT systems and analytics software that can handle the high volume, high variety and high velocity of data associated with the smart grid....

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With the rise of corporate sustainability, services firms offering sustainability consulting have followed closely behind. This is unsurprising since CSOs are often new to their roles and embarking on uncharted waters – and it’s clear that consultants anticipate demand for advisory services: a simple Google search of “sustainability consulting” yields hundreds of would-be providers....

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Singapore has little in the way of natural resources, yet has established itself as one of Asia’s major petrochemical and refining hubs, resulting in industrial sectors accounting for more than half of Singapore’s total energy demand....

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Efforts to revive the EU’s floundering emissions trading scheme (ETS) were dealt a severe blow last week. The 2008-2009 recession meant many firms were allocated a surplus of allowances forcing down the market price and reducing the incentive to invest in energy efficiency and low carbon energy generation....

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In an era of stagnant budgets there is a need to reap maximum possible value out of sustainability activities. Effective communications are crucial here. There is undeniably a lot of talk about sustainability, but is the current corporate approach to telling the sustainability story capturing the necessary business value?...

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China is a notoriously difficult market for foreign firms to crack. In spite of this, the size and momentum of China’s smart meter market has demanded the attention of grid infrastructure firms, IT and networking service providers, system integrators and equipment manufacturers from across the globe....

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“Too many conferences and not enough deals”. This is what was said by a speaker at a recent conference in London on financing corporate energy efficiency where Verdantix was presenting. Lack of available finance is often put forward as a fundamental barrier preventing corporates from investing in ambitious energy efficiency programmes. But is this really the case? ...

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On Monday March 25, global software provider SAP released its first Integrated Report. The firm has released a separate Sustainability Report since 2007 but took this a step further in 2013 by integrating the Annual Report and the Sustainability Report into one online document. Verdantix attended an online session hosted by Peter Graf, Chief Sustainability Officer, and Christoph Hutten, Chief Accounting Officer, to launch the report....

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Deep-sea mining is not a new concept, but it’s gaining international attention thanks to both its potential rewards, and uncertain risks. The United Nations (UN) has described the scale of mineral deposits in the world’s oceans as ‘staggering’ and with mineral commodities gaining value, the seabed makes for a tempting opportunity....

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The motivation to invest in green building initiatives, such as better air and light quality, improved energy efficiency or optimised facilities management, varies by real estate developer, investor or occupier. Factors such as the strength of corporate balances sheets, regulatory incentives, the trading conditions within the local market, green leases, the characteristics of individual sites...

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Since 2009 the price of carbon emission allowances in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has been so low that the market mechanism is largely ineffective: in 2006, an allowance cost €30 ($40) per metric tonne of CO2 (tCO2), compared to around €5 ($7)/tCO2 today....

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When will the ‘sustainability market’ take off? It’s a question we get asked all the time at Verdantix. To answer it, we speak to global budget holders and build country-level models to forecast corporate investment trends. Our surveys and models point to a sobering conclusion: corporate sustainability spending in most countries, both developed and emerging, will grow in the mid-single digit range for the next three years. So what is happening to sustainability budgets?...

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On February 14 2013, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank and the largest development institution focused on the private sector, issued a $1 billion 3 year green bond. The triple-A-rated green bond has an interest rate set at 3 year US treasuries, which averaged 0.40% from January 1 to February 22 2013, plus 0.015%. IFC will use the bond to finance renewable energy, energy efficiency and projects which reduce GHG emissions in other ways, such as sustainable forestry, in developing countries....

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On February 12th 2013, Europa - the £140million ($219million) UK facilities management (FM) firm with customers including Barclays, CBRE, Coca-Cola, IKEA, and Lloyds Banking Group - announced the formation of a specialist energy management division. The new division offers end-to-end energy services from procurement, through to demand side energy reduction....

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The World Economic Forum (WEF) – an independent international organisation - confirmed that rising greenhouse gas emissions remain as one of the three biggest threats to global stability in 2013. The recently published annual WEF Global Risks Report 2013 raised the profile of the three biggest global dangers for the year: severe income disparity, indebted state of governments and rising greenhouse gas emissions....

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The UK is undertaking an ambitious smart meter implementation programme, with the target of replacing 53 million gas and electricity meters nationwide by 2019. But the implementation of the meters is just step one in the developing smart meter ecosystem, as utilities will soon require new ICT systems to transmit, store and process the massive amounts of data that the meters will generate. At the heart of these ICT systems will be new smart meter communications networks connected to all UK households that are fast, resilient and secure....

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The Super Bowl is among the largest sporting spectacles in the world as well as the largest television event in the United States (111 million viewers in 2012). On 3 February 2013, Super Bowl XLVII claimed its place in history, not because of the Baltimore Ravens narrow 34-31 victory over the San Francisco 49ers or Beyoncé’s half time show, but because of a power surge at the Mercedes Benz Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana that caused a blackout stopping the game for 34 minutes during the second half....

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Over the last year Europe has witnessed a flurry of industrial plant shutdowns. In 2012, Dow Chemical alone announced plans to shut down operations in Belgium, Holland, Spain, and the UK, whilst Rio Tinto Alcan, Thussenkrup and Aurubus have also closed facilities. This trend of operational closures in Europe has been occurring in tandem with a migration of investment overseas to regions with lower energy prices....

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A new wave of sustainability strategies has emerged: the net positives. 2012 saw the launch of BT’s Net Good, IKEA’s People & Planet Positive, Kingfisher’s Net Positive, O2’s Think Big Blueprint and Pepsi’s Positive Water Impact. Ahead of the curve, Rio Tinto launched its Net Positive Impact biodiversity strategy in 2008....

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Prologis, an industrial real estate owner, operator and developer with interests in 565 million sq ft in 21 countries, closed $1.4 million in PACE financing for an innovative retrofit at Pier 1, their headquarters building in San Francisco on October 15, 2012. This deal, the first of its kind for a San Francisco office, represented 90% of total costs to improve the energy credentials of the 110,000 sq. ...

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Launched in April 2010, the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) is a mandatory UK-wide scheme designed to drive emissions reductions in large private and public sector firms. Initially intended as a cap-and-trade scheme with a limit on allowances and recycling of revenues from allowances among participants, it was rapidly reduced to what amounts to a simple carbon tax...

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Two years ago, there was a flurry of partnership activity in the energy management software market as firms such as CA Technologies, Carbon Systems and Hara teamed up with large global consulting firms and systems integrators such as Fujitsu, Infosys and URS. With many of the software firms short on a global delivery network, it was hoped these partnerships would provide the necessary platform to deliver large scale enterprise-wide implementations. So, how did that work out?...

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Tomorrow, Verdantix’s Rodolphe d’Arjuzon is participating in Sustainable Brands’ inaugural UK event SBLondon. The key theme of the conference is the role of brands in influencing sustainable consumption. At Verdantix we’ve identified emerging business models enabling sustainable consumption based on sharing and reusing consumer resources. The common theme for these innovative models is consumer symbiosis...

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On November 14, the State of California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) held its first of four emissions auctions mandated under its cap-and-trade program passed in 2006. “The Global Warming Solutions Act,” also known as AB 32, established an emissions trading system for California companies representing emissions-intensive industries such as utilities, manufacturing, transportation, and oil refinement and production...

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On November 12 2012 the UK government launched its Energy Efficiency Strategy which aims to change the way energy is consumed across all sectors.. This marks the beginning of the UK’s drive to implement the EU Energy Efficiency Directive by Spring 2014, which was formally passed in September 2012...

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The EU this week announced a year-long suspension of the inclusion of flights between Europe and non-European countries in the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). The announcement by EU Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard, followed a meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Council (a specialised agency of the UN) on November 9, 2012. ...

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UK growth in solar PV has been remarkable over the past four years. In 2009, installed capacity in the UK was just over 27MW, but today is in excess of 1,387MW. This growth has largely been fuelled by generous government incentive programmes – Feed in Tariffs – which offer guaranteed payments for each kilowatt of generated electricity. ...

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Following the impact of superstorm Sandy, more than 7 per cent of the US population were estimated to be without electrical power on Tuesday 30 October 30. In New York City alone 3 million people were left without power primarily in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn....

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With ageing grid infrastructure and the growth in distributed generation, UK energy regulator Ofgem estimates that £15 billion ($24.1 billion) of investment will be required over the next ten years to maintain the reliability of the UK’s electricity network. While large scale investment in the network is certainly required, perhaps the final bill need not be so high....

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Sports apparel firm Puma released its pioneering corporate Environmental Profit & Loss account (EP&L) in November 2011. A year later and the firm has followed this up with the publication of four product-level EP&Ls, detailing the value of the environmental impact of Puma products....

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Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world in terms of landmass and population, the sixth largest economy in terms of GDP but in terms of corporate spending on sustainable business initiatives Brazil ranks second only to US and ahead of Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the UK in recently published Verdantix market sizing reports....

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"We will have one million electric vehicles on our roads by 2015”. This bold statement by Barack Obama in his January 2011 State of the Union address already looks close to unachievable as only 17,000 Battery EVs (BEVs) and less than 35,000 Plug-In Hybrid EVs (PHEVs) have so far been sold...

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On 3 October2012 the Seattle headquartered sustainability and green building consultant Paladino and Company, announced that it had acquired S.D. Keppler & Associates (SDK). No financial details were disclosed. Since formation in 1994 Paladino have developed a skillset in green building technical analysis and portfolio optimization from working on projects such as the RAND Corporation’s 300,000 sq ft headquarters in Santa Monica, California....

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On 18 September 2012, CaliforniaFIRST, a collective of 14 Californian counties and 126 cities, launched the largest Property Assessment Clean Energy (PACE) programme in the US. In this instance, PACE programmes will use municipal bonds to finance the up-front costs of energy efficiency investments, such as upgrading lighting fixtures with more energy efficient LEDs, on-site renewable energy investments, such as installing rooftop solar pv, and water efficiency investments, such as installing low-flow plumbing fixtures....

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For years, NGOs, activists and the press have spoken out against the toxic threats of chemicals in consumer products. Some examples include bisphenol-A (BPA) in plastic products, thermal paper and aluminum can linings; phthalates in children’s toys and soft plastics; brominated flame retardants in textiles and electronics; and nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPEs) in chemical cleaners. Concerns include carcinogenicity, aquatic toxicity, and other human-health and environmental effects....

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The December 31st 2012 expiration date for federal production tax credits (PTCs) for wind energy is impending (and 2013 for other renewables). Facing uncertainty that the 2.2 cents per kWh tax credit will get renewed by a lame-duck Congress, a string of manufacturers such as Gamesa, Siemens and Vestas have scaled back on manufacturing capacity and reduced their workforces in the U.S....

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In 2011 Japan suffered the largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, in the wake of an earthquake and tsunami that struck on 11th March. Before the disaster Japan was the third largest generator of nuclear power behind the U.S and France, with almost 30% of its electricity coming from nuclear power...

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The European Union has raised the bar for firms to up their game for managing the environmental impact of their products. According to the Recast of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, which came into effect on August 13 2012, EU member states will have to...

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On August 26, 2012, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA announced that Arctic sea ice had reached its lowest extent since the previous Arctic ice low point in 2007. From an ecological standpoint, the rapid change in Arctic sea ice cover is particularly alarming. Beyond the loss of local biodiversity, the melting of the Arctic sea ice currently recorded at 4.3 million square kilometres will accelerate the rate of climate change due to the release of methane which has a global warming potential 56 times greater than CO2 over a 20 year period....

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Since 2010, New York City Local Law 84 has required private owners of buildings measuring over 50,000 sq ft to disclose property level energy and water consumption performance. On August 3rd 2012 the Mayor’s Office published a harvest of energy data compiled from 1.7 billion sq ft of commercial real estate in 2010; representing the largest local database on building energy use in the United States....

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Shale gas has been game-changing in many ways for the US energy markets. The technological breakthroughs which opened up the vast tracts of shale gas fields across the US were seized upon by many of the world’s largest oil & gas and mining firms including BP, Chevron and Exxon Mobil. But not all is rosy....

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As a heat wave gripped much of the eastern US during July 2012, power-hungry air conditioning units were forced to work overtime putting enormous stress on the grid. US utilities have faced these conditions before and have traditionally tried to manage them through activating peaking power plants which provide additional grid capacity. This year however, New York utility, Con Edison, also attempted to influence the demand-side by using its Twitter account to provide energy-saving tips to customers on how to optimize air conditioning units and advice on when households should use appliances....

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On August 1 2012, social networking firm Facebook published its carbon footprint, energy mix and total energy use for the first time. Facebook revealed that in 2011 its carbon emissions totalled 285,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide across its data centers, employee travel and commuting, offices and server transportation. Facebook’s decision to lift the lid on its energy consumption and carbon data reveals the impact of competitive pressures for transparency....

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Why does the UK, which is home to sustainability leaders such as Marks & Spencer and Unilever, and which passed the world’s first Climate Change Act in 2008, lag behind Australia, China and the EU in building energy efficiency performance? This was one of the findings from a report published by the non-profit organisation, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, in July 2012....

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Power cuts are nothing new for India but the ongoing two day power cut in northern and eastern India is unprecedented in scale cutting off power to more than 600 million people. Sudden, prolonged and far-reaching power cuts lower economic output and discourage inward investment – not what the country needs as it looks to boost economic growth which has fallen to its lowest level in seven years....

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Even before the start of the thirtieth Olympiad, the London 2012 Olympics had already won one gold medal: for being the most ambitious games yet with regards to sustainability. A report by BioRegional and WWF, both involved in London’s sustainability promises during the bid stage, highlights that performance against the bid’s 76 ambitious targets is however, mixed...

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In the relatively mature and concentrated market for environmental management software, both organic development and external acquisitions contribute to creating and maintaining a degree of product differentiation. IHS’s acquisition of the online environmental health and safety (EH&S) compliance information portal, CyberRegs, from Citation Technologies is an interesting move to solidify their EH&S compliance and sustainability management capabilities....

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In June 2012 the UK government announced that from April 2013 firms quoted on the main market of the London Stock Exchange will be required to report their emissions of the six Kyoto greenhouse gases. Firms will disclose their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions while reporting on Scope 3 emissions will be ‘encouraged’....

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Should corporate responsibility and sustainability performance indices include fines for breaking market rules, bribery, profiteering from cartels and ripping off customers? Yes....

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In April 2012 Mexico’s National Congress, with the overwhelming support of its members, approved the country’s first Climate Change Act. Natural disasters, such as the floods of 2007, which covered 80% of the low lying state of Tabasco, helped galvanise support in Congress. The act places the world’s 11th biggest economy, which registered 3.8% economic growth in 2011, on a legally binding path to reduce emissions by 50% on 2000 levels by 2050 with a 30% reduction in business as usual levels by 2020....

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How do you move beyond the first generation of carbon strategies? Microsoft provided an interesting example when it launched a new plan which combines an internal price of carbon and a recharging mechanism to fund both offsetting and clean tech investments. From July 1st, the beginning of their next fiscal year, Microsoft will charge internal individual business units a fee based on the carbon emitted from their data centres, employee air travel, offices and software development labs....

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The market for environmental services is often thought of as mature and commoditized. Land remediation and Environment, Health and Safety (EH&S) procedures appear a long way from glamorous state-of-the-art sustainability strategies. Indeed compliance is, and will always remain, the main driver of the US environmental services market: even amidst federal policy deadlocks, the EPA is continuously strengthening the requirements of existing regulations....

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Reflecting overall growth in the market for sustainable technology services and sustainability business consulting , Hitachi Consulting acquired PRIZIM, Inc on April 17, 2012 for an undisclosed sum. PRIZIM bills itself as a provider of environmental and energy management services, is located in Maryland and had 45 employees when it was acquired. PRIZIM offers audit services for energy, facilities, GHG emissions, pollution and sustainability; consulting on environmental management systems, contingent liabilities from environmental impacts, fuel cost savings and compliance assistance....

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On May 1, C3, a provider of enterprise-class energy management software acquired Efficiency 2.0 a provider of web portals and energy efficiency programmes that help utilities to engage their residential and small business customers....

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Traceability in the supply chain is rapidly becoming a hot sustainability topic as global brands realise that tackling their most significant environmental impacts requires digging down several tiers into their supplier base. Puma’s Environmental Profit & Loss account reveals that 57% of the value of its impacts lies with Tier 4, raw material suppliers....

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How do you engage consumers in managing the energy in their homes? This is a question which has increasingly occupied the minds of technology firms, telecoms firms and software start-ups eyeing revenue opportunities for their businesses. Power utilities also see opportunity as home energy management offers the possibility of reducing peak load and thereby removing the need for investment in new generation capacity....

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FirstCarbon Solutions, a publisher of sustainability and GHG management software, recently announced the acquisition of California-based environmental services firm Michael Brandman Associates (MBA). The move may look like it runs counter to a typical environmental software firm’s usual development of sales channels by aligning with third party consulting firms to help sell products to clients (see Verdantix IHS Launches Ecosystem for Sustainability Transformation). But FirstCarbon has a history of bringing such consulting expertise in-house. Faced with a maturing market for its core data aggregation software technologies, FirstCarbon’s move signals its desire to expand its client services by integrating environmental consulting with software services....

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Greenhouse gas (GHG) regulation finally seems within the US federal government’s reach. But with US coal production projected to hold steady over the next decade, the US may end up outsourcing global warming....

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The energy efficiency market consistently reports that the greatest barriers to enabling retrofits of the existing built stock are the split incentive between landlord and tenant, the inability to make a business case because of flawed data and financing. SCIenergy is now tackling two of these, continuing the trend for acquisitions of specialist energy management assets. SCIenergy, the energy management software and services firm, announced on March 13th 2012 the acquisition of retrofit financing specialist Transcend Equity for an undisclosed sum. Transcend Equity’s 7 employees have joined the SCIenergy team where post integration Transcend founder Stephen Gossett Jr. will lead SCIenergy’s new financing team....

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A recent development in the global energy services market saw testing and certification firm DNV acquire a controlling 74.3% stake in energy consultancy Kema to form DNV Kema Energy & Sustainability. The firm gained regulatory approval to operate on 29 February 2012 and is headquartered in Arnhem, the Netherlands. With 500 employees from DNV and 1,800 from Kema, across 30 countries, the new company increases DNV’s former energy and sustainability employee headcount by 460%....

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South Korea’s introduction of a carbon cap-and-trade scheme was derailed at the last minute when, on February 16, 2012, the South Korean Parliament delayed their vote on the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) that proposed to cap emissions of South Korea's largest polluters from early 2015. This vote was the final hurdle for the ETS which has been in the pipeline since 2009, having been passed by South Korea’s National Assembly on climate change on February 8, 2012....

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Large procurers such as BT, McDonalds and Wal-Mart are increasingly requiring evidence of suppliers’ environmental credentials while multinationals such as Apple and Unilever are shifting from a narrow ‘enterprise sustainability’ view to focus on product level sustainability. Both of these developments lead back to thinking about the best use of voluntary environmental product labels....

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On January 11, 2012 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publically revealed the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of over 6,700 US emission-intensive facilities and fossil fuel suppliers. This is the first time the US EPA has released comprehensive GHG data accounting for over 80% of the country’s total emissions. Under the US EPA’s GHG Mandatory Report Rule (MRR) facilities emitting more than 25,000 tCO2 per year (as well as entities supplying fossil fuels) have been mandated to monitor and report emissions since January 2010....

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The central governments of Canada and the US have up to now failed to introduce meaningful greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction legislation, stalling sustainable business spending because of regulatory uncertainty. With Canada officially withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol in December 2011, the renegade continent could seem a hopeless case, unable to provide the necessary legislative incentives for heavy polluters to decrease their GHG emissions. But in the shadows of federal inertia, a pocket of state-level authorities have stepped up to take leadership over GHG reductions....

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The Chinese government continues to send mixed messages over plans for a carbon tax on energy-intensive industries by 2015. The past six months have seen a series of state-backed news agencies suggesting China will introduce a carbon tax....

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Cities rely to varying degrees on their citizens’ efforts when implementing sustainability initiatives. Motivating mass behavioural changes can be a smart way of achieving sustainability targets at low cost, but a lack of individual accountability can lead to communal inertia and result in low project outcomes. To bypass this issue, several organizations are using IT to bring to life the mass of scientific data available today and reach out to wider stakeholder segments....

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The energy management software market is evolving rapidly as new customer requirements trigger the launch of a new generation of enterprise-scale applications. Customers are buying software to find cost savings (87%), track financial data on energy spend (53%) and consolidate consumption data (47%). Customers should focus on "energy domain" expertise and data management scalability....

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Since Green IT burst onto the scene in 2006, IT systems integrators have struggled to understand the best organizational and go-to-market strategies for the confusing "market" for IT services linked to energy management, environmental compliance and sustainability strategies....

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For many firms today, even consolidating their energy consumption and spend data is enough of a headache, let alone actively managing their energy at the organisational level. Avaya uses Hara’s EEM software application, implemented as part of HP’s Energy and Sustainability Management solution, to deliver this organizational view. With the launch of C3 in August 2011 competition in the enterprise energy management software market has reached fever pitch....

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On September 29, 2011, the UK government recalled the launch of its Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme for non-domestic generators, which was due the following day. Announced in March 2011, the £860 million subsidy scheme’s aim is to incentivize the installation of renewable heat technologies, including biomass, solar thermal, and ground source heating, to cut a tentative ten of the 38% of the UK emissions that the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) ascribes to heat . The RHI was delayed as the European Commission expressed concerns about the tariff for biomass being too high, which is currently placed at 2.6 pence per kilowatt-hour for the next twenty years....

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When the International Organization for Standards (ISO) launched its energy management framework, ISO 50001, in June 2011, Verdantix identified several barriers to adoption that needed to be overcome if it was to succeed. But even within the first three months there are signs that certification under ISO 50001 is resonating....

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The real estate industry in the UK, hindered by woefully limited data, continues to discuss sustainability from the side lines. For instance of the 1204 properties in the Investment Property Databank’s UK Commercial Office Sustainability Index sample, only 61 had sufficient data to be considered sustainable (based on 21 questions only). Without a significant data set with which to justify investment in sustainability, the market has, by and large, remained circumspect....

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EU member states are committed to reducing their GHG emissions by 20% compared to 1990 levels, and ensuring 20% of electricity consumption is from renewable energy by 2020. With cities concentrating large amounts of energy consuming assets and transport links, the European Commission launched the Smart Cities and Communities Initiative and the European Energy Efficiency Fund (EEEF) which aim to assist EU member countries in meeting these targets....

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Energy management, until recently an operations backwater is getting a technology injection as tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and a broad range of services firms pile into this emerging space. Historically dominated by tactical applications deployed at a facility level by firms like Entech USB and TEAM, enterprise-class energy management applications have now arrived in force....

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A new front has opened up in the long-running battle between arch-rivals Oracle and SAP in the enterprise application market. Oracle has entered into the sustainable business software market with two new applications developed from its acquisition of Ndevr’s IP in February. These early forays into the fast expanding market are Oracle Environmental Accounting & Reporting and JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Environmental Accounting and Reporting. Can Oracle catch up with SAP?...

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Cloud computing – the virtualization of computing power – is being advanced by IT suppliers such as AT&T, Microsoft and Salesforce.com as a computing service which saves costs and reduces CO2 emissions compared to dedicated computing equipment. Our recent report, conducted on behalf of the Carbon Disclosure Project, reveals that widespread adoption of cloud computing will deliver significant business and environmental benefits over the next ten years....

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The UK government has just proposed the biggest shake up in the electricity market in two decades in the Electricity Market Reform White Paper published on July 12, 2011. Regulatory changes will come into effect in 2013. These include the replacement of the Renewable Obligation with a contracts for difference (CfD) feed-in tariff for low-carbon generation, an emissions performance target for new fossil fuel power stations and a capacity mechanism to improve energy supply security....

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The media is awash with pledges from blue-chip firms to cut their CO2 emissions. Despite the backwards slide in carbon regulations around the world, even US firms continue to make voluntary commitments without any prospect of mandatory reduction targets. The fact that global CO2 emissions increased to 30.6 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2010 compared to 29.3 Gt in 2008 adds fuel to the fire....

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Carbon leakage has been debated ad infinitum in the context of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. The concept refers to the risk that by imposing additional costs on CO2 emissions within the boundaries of a country or region, business activity will be displaced to other regions and CO2 emissions will continue as before. Now the broader issue of “sustainability leakage” looms on the horizon....

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The decision by California's Air Resources Board (ARB) to delay the implementation of California's cap-and-trade programme by a year is symptomatic of carbon policy delays around the world. Even the flagship EU Emissions Trading System has seen constant delays and dilutions since its launch in 2005. What does California's delay mean for US carbon policy?...

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Only in the last decade have customers been sufficiently interested in the environmental benefits of telecoms services to be receptive to marketing messages that go beyond speed, reliability and convenience. Verdantix telecoms sector benchmarks have tracked sustainable telecoms marketing since 2009. Recently we have seen a step-change in sustainability marketing....

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According to the June 2011 World Bank report ‘State And Trends Of The Carbon Market’, between 2005 and 2010 the value of trade in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) grew from $7.9 bn to $119.8 bn; a CAGR of 72%. By contrast the primary CDM market, representing trade in Certified Emission Reductions from Kyoto projects, has fallen from $2.6bn in 2005 to $1.5bn in 2010; a CAGR of -10%. Back in December 2008 our analysis of the CDM project developers flagged up the risks of a market meltdown. And it happened. Between 2008 and 2010 the primary CDM market fell from $6.5bn to $1.5bn; a 77% fall in traded value....

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Will power utilities in the United States move beyond smart meter programmes to wider smart grid implementation? Through the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, the Obama administration directed $4.5 billion to fund smart grid projects, matched by $5.5 billion in private funding. Almost all of this was channelled into smart meter projects which are considered the first step to implementing a smart grid. In reality, to maximise the grid’s efficiency, reliability and flexibility, they have to form part of a wider smart grid programme including smarter distribution and substation automation systems, grid sensors and controls....

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Since the failure of the UN Copenhagen negotiations in December 2009 the prospects for pure-play carbon management software have tanked. Technology providers like EnerNOC, Enviance and Infosys have responded through innovation meeting the needs of firms in specific market segments that do face mandatory GHG regimes and the bulk of firms that now focus their attention on slashing energy consumption....

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One of the criticisms frequently levelled at electric vehicles is that they merely shift emissions from the tailpipe to the power station by increasing demand for electricity which is generated from fossil fuel burning power stations. Better Place, the global EV infrastructure firm, aims to directly answer this criticism head on. It has recently signed a $60m deal with ActewAGL, an Australian utility, to supply renewable energy to its electric car charging network in Canberra, Australia for the next 10 years....

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Smart cities use technology to create more sustainable urban developments. Great in theory, but creating a solid business case is challenging because of critical uncertainties about which technology will be adopted by the population. The city of Amsterdam is finding this out through its program of 18 pilots (see Verdantix Defining The Sustainable Urban Development Market). It is in this context that on May 26 2011 Fujisawa City announced a partnership with a consortium of nine firms to redevelop a 19 hectare brownfield site located 50 kilometres from Tokyo....

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Will Australia ever implement a carbon price? The debate on the Australian emissions trading scheme continued to rage, following the release of ‘The Garnaut Review 2011’on 31 May. Ross Garnaut, the Australian Government's top climate change adviser, proposed a starting price of A$26 per tonne of carbon for the carbon pricing system starting in July 2012....

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