CloudApps Launches Cloud Offering To Manage Emissions

CloudApps has today launched its cloud-based solutions to help organisations manage their carbon emissions, as the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) shuts down for the general election, and just days after the UK’s CRC laws entered into law on 1 April.

Cloud Apps To Control Carbon Emissions

CloudApps touts itself as Europe’s first enterprise application vendor focused on climate change regulatory compliance and the management of carbon as a business asset. The company essentially develops systems so that businesses can track, monitor and report on their carbon footprints. Now it has officially launched its cloud-based technology.

“The company was formed about six months ago,” explained CloudApps CEO, Simon Wheeldon, speaking to eWEEK Europe UK. “We had noticed at that time that there were two powerful trends, namely climate change and cloud computing, so we brought both of those worlds together to help businesses manage their carbon as an asset.”

Wheeldon told eWEEK Europe UK earlier this month some of the problems the CRC regulations were causing. But speaking at the launch of its solution on Friday, he said that its enterprise class solution is designed to be delivered as ‘software as service’, and can be accessed with any web browser so that companies can measure, manage and reduce their carbon footprint.

“The solution helps them on their carbon journey,” said Wheeldon. “Most businesses at the start, where they have to start measuring their carbon outputs. The second step is to compile this information and supply it to the government department.”

“The third step for organisations is to decided what are you going to do about it, in order to drive down the carbon emissions of your company,” he added. “The next part is to compare the data, as it is really important for organisations to find their hotspots (how one part of their organisation compares to another part, e.g. different geographic locations or one retail outlet to another retail outlet). We also compare the data against industry metrics.”

“We also feel strong participation is needed, which we call the engagement step,” said Wheeldon. “They have to engage employees, customers, and partners, and they can have quite influence on the carbon emissions of a company.”

“All of that leads to the reduce step, which is the goal of what you are getting to, i.e. production programs to drive down your emissions. You have to identify those programs and help prioritise those programs to see which programs have biggest impact and then do them first,” said Wheeldon. “We help them travel the full journey.”

How It Works

“Our application captures information about an organisation’s carbon emissions,” Wheeldon said to eWEEK Europe. “It looks at things like building emissions and people emissions (business travel, freight transport etc). “Our application takes data from a number of different systems, either manually or electronically, and loads it into the system.”

“Unless you measure, you won’t understand your carbon emissions,” he said. “Our application creates visibility at the department levels, right down to the employee level, so businesses can look and measure the impact they are having.”

UK Companies Unaware of CRC

“That is certainly what we are experiencing,” admitted Wheeldon. “It is very much an education exercise for a lot of the companies we are talking to. It is about carbon emissions coming out of the boiler room and coming into the boardroom, as the high costs of energy has raised this issue’s profile, and the boardroom needs to have figure it can work with and understand.”

DECC Closed For Business

The CRC laws came into force on 1 April, and days later Gordon Brown called a general election, which means that many businesses wanting to get clarification of certain issues, are struggling to get through to the department.

“All government departments tend to close down in the lead up to a general election,” said Wheeldon. “The Environment Agency is running the CRC program on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and is simply not in a position to respond to people.”

“I think on the surface the CRC laws seem quite a straight forward contract,” said Wheeldon. “Companies now have to report their energy use to government, but it soon gets quite complex. For example, what do you do about joint ventures? What happens if you sub let a building? Executives can be put in jail for non compliance.”