Investing in Energy & Sustainability Software

Watch our free webinar replay about how to select and justify an investment in energy, carbon and sustainability software to top decision-makers in the company.

Speakers include Paul Baier of Groom Energy, share insights from his latest Enterprise Carbon Accounting (ECA) & Sustainability buyer’s guide.

Executives from Buckman and METTLER TOLEDO, two companies that have recently purchased software, talk about how they found the right solutions for their product requirements and business needs. Plus, our speakers offer tips for the vendor selection process.

>> Watch the webinar replay!

Masdar City Chooses SoFi to Monitor Carbon in Buildings

Masdar City has selected PE INTERNATIONAL’s SoFi system to monitor carbon embodied in buildings for its ambitious project to construct one of the world’s most sustainable cities, the two companies announced today.

Masdar City, one of the integrated units of Abu Dhabi’s multi-faceted renewable energy company Masdar, has captured enormous worldwide interest by demonstrating how sustainable cities can be developed. SoFi is PE INTERNATIONAL’s high performance tool which provides a central platform for benchmarking and forecasting sustainability performance and developing sustainability strategies. The system plays a key role in helping Masdar’s supply chain team and contractors to track and monitor the carbon embodiment of building materials, thereby calculating the amount of carbon associated with construction activities.

Having now implemented SoFi, Masdar has the capability for target setting and monitoring the evolving project. The city can also use SoFi for benchmarking against targets and comparing how much CO2 would be involved in producing a building in the city compared to a standard building in, for example, London, Paris or New York.

Draft version of the EU environmental footprinting methodology released

The European Commission has released a draft version of the EU environmental footprinting methodology currently under development.

DG ENV is now working together with the Commission’s JRC IES and other European Commission services towards the development of a harmonised methodology for the calculation of the environmental footprint of products (including carbon footprint).

This methodology will be developed building on the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) Handbook as well as other existing methodological standards and guidance documents (ISO 14040-44, PAS 2050, BP X30, WRI/WBCSD GHG protocol, Sustainability Consortium, ISO 14025, Ecological Footprint, etc).


You can find more information and the draft methodology here

Dole has partnered with PE INTERNATIONAL

Dole Food Company, Inc. will rely on PE´s SoFi software to consolidate the Company’s sustainability data into one software system. The software will assist Dole to calculate key performance indicators and will enhance Dole’s ability to establish, manage and meet program objectives at locations worldwide.

“SoFi will not only contribute to improving our sustainability reporting,” said Roberto Vega, Director of Sustainability at Dole Food Company, Inc. “It will also increase the efficiency of managing the Company’s information related to sustainability and allow us to set and achieve global objectives, instead of focusing on each operation separately.”

PE INTERNATIONAL is working with Dole on the implementation of SoFi, a central sustainability platform that transforms data from corporate activities into meaningful performance information. Dole is in the process of refining its key sustainability indicators, including the company’s carbon footprint, which will then be consolidated into SoFi and reported on a regular basis.

“Dole’s sustainability program is well established,” said Michael Betz, CEO at PE INTERNATIONAL. “With PE’s experience in the food and beverage industry we will assist Dole in bringing all the elements together to integrate sustainability as a key component of their day-to-day business - from enhancing processes and products through to reporting. We look forward to working together to achieve Dole’s sustainability objectives including lowering energy consumption and carbon emissions, benchmarking operations, and mitigating risks.”

For more information please contact Jeff Slye

How will enterprise sustainability solutions evolve?

The leading analyst firm Gartner has recently published a report which provides useful insight into aspects of the rapidly evolving sustainable business software landscape.


The report entitled “PE INTERNATIONAL Emerges as a One‐Stop Enterprise Sustainability Vendor” identifies some key trends in Carbon‐Reporting:

• Supply chain carbon‐reporting trends and client RFPs for sustainability solutions are increasingly looking for organizational and product‐based tools for assessing sustainable performance.

• The number of respondents (U.S. manufacturing companies) required to provide both operational and embedded carbon data has more than doubled from 2008 to 2010.

“The disclosure, reporting and management of sustainability data is evolving rapidly.” writes Gartner analyst Stephen Stokes who is a research vice president in the Supply Chain Leaders group and coordinates sustainability and green technology research. “Emissions data (or embodied energy or environmental data) has potentially significant utility for product innovation and process improvement”.

The report recommends companies ensure the full spectrum of emissions and sustainability is considered when scoping products and services for sustainability. And also consider the extent to which vendors are able to provide sustainability consulting to support software tools. According to Gartner real domain expertise in sustainable production, sustainable design and sustainable business remain rare commodities in the marketplace. 

Read the full Gartner report here

CO2 - the new currency

1.2 tons of carbon dioxide have been caused by Andreas Große Habuer, Tobias Bayer and Joachim Zepelin through their research for the story „CO2- the new currency“, published in the november edition of the business magazine Capital. PE INTERNATIONAL calculated a carbon footprint of about 1.2 tons as the result of every journey, telephone call and piece of paper, which the journalists needed for their research.

Among others, they communicated with Deutsche Post, one of our SoFi software customers. „Years ago, as we were experimenting with carbon- accounting, we were even sneered“, says Michael Lohmeier, CO2 manager of Deutsche Post. Nowadays, nobody laughs. „Because of the extensive system of numbers we now exactly know how to save CO2 and therefore money“.

The big problem in accounting CO2 is, that Deutsche Post is just able to detect and have an effect on 20 percent of their emissions. The big rest arises from the suppliers, who have to make up the balance for the emission of CO2 for themselves to enable Deutsche Post to provide significant data. „We just started to ask our business partners for their emissions of CO2“, says Lohmeier.

Factoring primary products and supply chains which provoke emissions of CO2 into the own accounting of C02 gains immensely in importance. In the future, the huge trading company Wal-Mart claims C02 data of its 100.000 suppliers, for instance. Therefore, selecting a supplier will become a question of C02 emissions.

„Now, questionnaires are sent back and forth around the world“, says Michael Spielmann, Coordinator Carbon Management at PE INTERNATIONAL. „It will not take much longer and  the smallest companies will have to expose their C02 emissions“, mentions Spielmann. „Soon each company will be affected by the topic of C02 – in effect, carbon dioxide is developing itself into a currency. The sooner companies adapt themselves to it, the better“.

read the full article (german)

SoFi confirmed to be leading enterprise carbon accounting software

On 11 May 2009, a group of North American consultancies published the most extensive and up-to-date study on corporate carbon footprint software solutions. A total of 51 software products have been assessed, based on software presentations and client interviews. This led to a shortlist of 7 emerging ECA (Enterprise Carbon Accounting) leaders, with SoFi Software of PE INTERNATIONAL in a leading position: Next to being in this shortlist, SoFi Software has the highest number of confirmed implementations of all products in this market analysis, including clients such as Kraft Foods, Carnival Corporation or ThyssenKrupp Elevator

www.groomresearch.com

CDM Projects - Creating value through climate protection

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an element in the Kyoto Protocol that generates credits – Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) – from emission abatement projects in developing countries. CERs can be used to achieve compliance with the EU ETS and other national schemes, such as those in Europe, Canada and Japan. By working across a number of sectors, such as renewable energy, waste to energy, energy efficiency, reforestation and the avoidance of methane, Carbon Solutions allows project owners to identify project opportunities, finance the projects, create the credits and bring them to market.

"Die Bilanz des Klopapiers" - Artikel bei Süddeutsche.de

Heute ist ein interessanter Artikel in der Süddeutschen Zeitung zum Thema Product Carbon Footprint erschienen. Bei der Erstellung der CO2 Bilanzen war unter anderem auch PE INTERNATIONAL beteiligt.

Hier geht es zum Artikel bei süddeutsche.de

Practitioner-Workshop: Using GaBi 4 software and databases for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and carbon foot-printing

Nowadays environmental aspects have high importance for strategic, short and mid-term business decisions on a daily basis in all industries. A variety of industries are faced with global discussion on Global Warming Potential, carbon footprinting and upcoming questions about the sustainability of processes and products. The environmental effects of transport systems are also high on the agenda. Your industry too?

Then sign up here for our workshop!