Report Says Smart Technology Could Reduce Global Emissions by 15 Percent

SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age, a new report published by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSi) and The Climate Group indicates that the technology industry’s unique ability to provide tools to monitor and maximize energy efficiency both inside and outside of its own sector could cut carbon emissions by up to five times the amount generated by its own carbon footprint.

SMART 2020, the world’s first comprehensive global study of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT), shows that information management is key to enabling organizations to reduce emissions. Global management consultants McKinsey & Company independently conducted the report’s supporting analysis

Transforming the way people and businesses use technology could reduce annual man-made global emissions by 15 percent by 2020 and deliver energy efficiency savings to global businesses of more than 500 billion euros (nearly $800 million USD), according to the report. This represents a reduction of 7.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent released into the environment by 2020 – an amount greater than the current annual emissions of either the U.S. or China.

Although tele-working, video-conferencing, e-paper and e-commerce are increasingly commonplace, the report notes that replacing physical products and services with the virtual equivalents is only a small part (approximately 6 percent) of the estimated low-carbon benefits the ICT sector can deliver. Far greater opportunities for emissions savings can be generated when organizations and industries implement a technology infrastructure to address carbon reporting and management.

The report cites four major opportunities where the use of information technology can make further transformational cuts in global emissions. These exist globally within smart building design and use, smart logistics, smart electricity grids and smart industrial motor systems.

I may have said this too many times lately, but it’s still true: we can’t reduce GHG emissions until everyone uses the right platform to measure and monitor them.

1 comment July 1st, 2008

Scott Lockhart Joins the ESS Team!

As a result of ESS’ continued expansion and the growth in global adoption of our sustainability software platforms, ESS has hired Scott Lockhart as Chief Operating Officer. Scott will be responsible for executive oversight of ESS operations, as well as a member of our executive strategy council.

Scott has 15 years of experience in leveraging enterprise software for asset optimization, EHS and compliance with clients representing a variety of vertical industries, including oil and gas, electric utilities, chemicals, aviation, metals and pulp industries.

Scott comes to us from his previous position as Vice President and Executive Board Member of Data Systems & Solutions (DS&S), a division of Rolls Royce. He was focused on enterprise asset management and optimization, equipment health monitoring, process safety and compliance. In addition to business management and growth objectives on DS&S’ executive board, Scott was responsible for the operations, services and software groups. His previous experience also includes key leadership roles at Trinity Consultants and SAIC.

I have known Scott for many years and admired his proactive approach and success in connecting the dots between environmental, health & safety (EHS) and crisis management software and asset management and optimization information systems (EAM) to enhance enterprise-wide business performance and operational excellence. We both strongly believe that by more closely integrating these key information systems, organizations can identify and ensure common data work together to drive improved levels of EHS compliance while increasing reliability and performance of assets. This translates to increased availability of critical assets to improve both compliance and profitability. Reducing complexity and risk that is associated with disparate data silos within EHS and EAM information systems also ensures higher quality data is delivered to the other sources throughout the enterprise that rely on that information.

I am very excited to have Scott on board and look forward to his contribution toward our future growth and success.

Add comment June 9th, 2008

ECHA, US Commerce Department Officials Remind Companies about REACH Registration

Geert Dancet, executive director of European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), is wrapping up a U.S. tour this week. He is here to raise awareness among U.S. exporters to the European Union (EU) about the REACH pre-registration period, which begins June 1 and runs through December 1.

Dancet is here to emphasize to manufacturers the importance of compliance with REACH, the EU law requiring companies to prove that chemicals that are sold and produced in the EU are safe to use or handle. It is designed to collect information on chemical substances (on their own, in mixtures and in articles) used in any of the European Union jurisdictions. Data will be used to evaluate chemicals’ environmental and human health effects; how they can be used safely; and whether a substance considered by regulators as dangerous can be replaced with a safer substance.

During the pre-registration period, companies are required to report to EHCA substances that are manufactured in, or imported to the EU in annual quantities of 1 metric ton or more per company.

The U.S. Department of Commerce recently signaled plans to help small and medium-sized companies understand what they need to know about REACH and make executives aware of the time frame for REACH compliance.

“Our objective is to make sure small- and medium-sized exporters can stay in the market,” said Rosemary Gallant, a Commerce representative. That is appropriate, since the EU is a market where many U.S. businesses have a significant customer base, partnerships or supply chain relationships. Not meeting REACH requirements opens exposure to significant business risks, including lack of continued access to the EU market.

Companies affected by REACH are advised to check now with EU suppliers. It is imperative that they ensure that substances they depend on will be pre-registered and subsequently registered by suppliers or further up the supply chain.

Companies also need to ensure that their EU-based importers are taking REACH compliance seriously and are acting accordingly. They are likely to need considerable support from their US suppliers. If a company has a question regarding its REACH-affected supply chain continuity, managers may need to consider identifying alternative sources for materials needed for manufacturing.

While some chemical companies outside of Europe have expressed concern about the potential impact of REACH mandates, it’s likely that their desire to continue doing business in EU jurisdictions will eventually assure compliance with the law. The good news is that some companies see REACH compliance as an opportunity to demonstrate how their products are consumer-friendly and their manufacturing practices represent best practices for environmental stewardship.

Even though there is no existing U.S. mandate that is similar to REACH, many companies are proactively responding to increasing demands for Corporate Sustainability Reporting to investors, NGOs and community organizations. Right now, companies’ CSR disclosures typically include information regarding greenhouse gas emissions, worker health and safety management and fair labor practices. However, REACH could prompt responsible companies to expand their CSR reporting to promote the fact that their use of chemicals meets rigid third-party standards that are deemed safe for consumers.

This is another example of the shift among businesses to use socially-responsible and environmentally-friendly practices as a competitive differentiator.

ESS is making the transition to address REACH more efficient with a roadmap and powerful software tools that help streamline REACH compliance. In addition, we are working on further enhancements to our software solutions to improve companies’ ability to execute efficient REACH compliance. Our upcoming enterprise software release includes new tools that provide the ability to export chemical substance information directly from ESS’ chemical inventory database into IUCLID 5, the international database for efficient REACH registration. This will reduce complexities of REACH compliance and make it easier for our customers to leverage existing information to address emerging REACH requirements.

Add comment May 20th, 2008

Mobile Technology Adds Speed, Efficiency to EHS Applications

ESS is currently building an enhanced mobile framework using the latest Microsoft technology and tools. Joseph Jordan, ESS’ director of Mobile Architecture, is heading up this project for us. This framework will be used to build new and enhanced workflow, data collection, data transfer, and data distribution capabilities.

What are the benefits of utilizing mobile solutions for enterprise EHS management and sustainability? For one, using mobile devices makes data collection and monitoring of critical information faster and easier. This technology also makes workers more productive by giving them the ability to respond to all types of business challenges in real time.

The new framework and architecture we are developing gives organizations real-time access to critical data and information, streamlining compliance activities and improving data integrity. Mobile technology has always made it easier for organizations to collect data from the plant or site level so it can be quickly uploaded into their EHS software databases for analysis and communicated throughout the organization. These new mobile development tools now also make preventative and predictive information including metrics, KPIs and business intelligence reports accessible to the operator’s via mobile “push” technologies to help them better manage their areas of responsibility which were previously only available through the desktop. That’s one big reason why we are excited about our plans to add these new mobile capabilities to our EHS and Crisis Management solutions for air, water, hazardous waste, fugitive emissions, chemical inventory management, auditing, incident management and industrial hygiene. You’ll see more about this in the near future.

ESS has been delivering handheld and mobile solutions for over 10 years, beginning with our Waste Management bar code and waste tracking handhelds and Jordan Systems chemical inventory mobile tools. So this technology isn’t new to us. What’s new and better is the higher quality of information available to the users as well as real time and wireless data transfer, improving oversight and decision making while freeing up more time for other important duties.

Another benefit of this new and advanced architecture platform is that it will also enable our customers to standardize on common handheld devices across the entire spectrum of integrated modules within our integrated sustainability platform. In addition to reducing the aggregate cost of hardware for mobile capability this will also result in:

• Easier and more intuitive data entry
• Enhanced data integrity and automation of compliance processes
• Improved productivity. Simpler data collection effort
• Improved field documentation of incident investigations
• Faster identification and implementation of corrective actions by site personnel

These new enhancements will speed up process management and data collection, improve accuracy for all EHS functions and help ensure regulatory compliance, production uptime and injury free workplaces.

Here’s an anecdote that shows the benefits of a mobile device. Mind you, this isn’t even a crisis — just a normal day to day activity in the life of an operator:

A manager of a waste storage facility is currently offsite, but would like to check the status of the overnight preparations for a waste shipment scheduled to take place later that morning:

The Mobile Approach: The manager is offsite and receives an alert on his PDA or smart phone, enabled with mobile technology. With an icon click, information appears on the screen indicating that there may be a problem with a hazardous waste shipment that is incorrectly labeled. The manager makes a quick call to the plant to inquire about the project status and clear up the issue with the overnight supervisor. Upon the manager’s arrival at the facility, waste drums are promptly re-labeled, loaded and ready for shipment.

Typical Desktop Approach: The same manager, without the benefit of mobile technology, drives to the facility, unaware that a problem exists. The manager logs onto a desktop computer, enters the appropriate application, which requires another login and password; uses a navigation tree to drill down to the report menu; uses a pull-down menu to choose the affected facility; and finally clicks the icon to run the report. That’s when the problem is identified.

Because many compliance activities occur away from the desktop, handheld functionality is a critical link in the compliance automation chain. Thanks to innovators like Joseph Jordan and other members of our development and product management team, you’ll see these mobile technology solutions in our offering in the near future.

Add comment May 9th, 2008

CIOs Joining Front Lines of Corporate Greenhouse Gas Management

Corporations have recently enlisted new participants to support their greenhouse gas management programs: Chief Information Officers (CIO). That point was reinforced in a recently-published article in CIO Magazine.

CIOs are now on the front lines of corporate climate change programs. That’s because manual spreadsheet accounting and disparate legacy systems are not able to support organizations’ need for accurate, verifiable carbon data for compliance under market based compliance schemes that are being considered in the U.S. and several other jurisdictions, as well as growing disclosure demands from investors, community stakeholders and activists. In order to meet those new standards, organizations will need to implement information management tools that support efficient and accurate reporting and analysis in order to address changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) management that are just around the corner. CIOs will play a central role in that process.

ESS has just published a white paper entitled, “A CIO’s Guide to Global Climate Change,” which provides a detailed discussion of this issue. It’s now available for download from our web site.

The process of building a program for evaluating, monitoring and measuring GHG emissions should begin with the development of a carbon management strategy. Managing climate risk in the context of corporate objectives starts with understanding the company’s operations. Executives need to identify which practitioners or business units need to use the data and for what purpose. Answers to these questions will provide critical direction for best practices for collection, processing and reporting of GHG information.

It’s a very complicated process, and will likely affect most businesses — including many that previously have not been required to provide GHG emissions reporting.

So GHG management is coming out of the bailiwick of environmental managers, facility managers and even the risk managers. CIOs will soon inherit responsibility for a challenge that has real bottom-line implications. That will eventually require organizations to develop a comprehensive plan for GHG management, supported by an integrated software platform.

2 comments May 7th, 2008

Dow Chemical Wins Top ESS Excellence Award for Campaign that Saves $2 Million

This year’s ESS EXPO was a great event. We had the largest EXPO attendance ever. And our judges had a difficult time choosing among the sustainability initiatives nominated for ESS Excellence Awards.

After a great deal of thought, a panel of judges, including executives from BNP Media’s Pollution Engineering (PE) and Industrial Safety & Hygiene News (ISHN) magazines, EXPO’s official media sponsors, named The Dow Chemical Company winner of the “Best of the Best” 2008 ESS Excellence Award for its outstanding achievements in leveraging information management technology to achieve its enterprise sustainability and operational excellence goals. Dow earned the top honor by showing how they saved $2 million following implementation of an integrated EH&S platform covering about 200 production sites across North America. The system generated productivity enhancements, streamlined Dow’s environmental reporting and enabled company officials to replace hundreds of redundant legacy systems.

Dow was one of 31 public and private organizations that received ESS Excellence Awards this year. Honorees represent a wide range of organizations across industry sectors, including global leaders, mid-market companies, public utilities, military agencies, educational institutions and federal, state and local government agencies.

The remaining 2008 ESS Excellence Award winners included Alcoa, Inc.; Andrews Air Force Base; Beale Air Force Base; Brookhaven National Laboratory; Campbell Soup Company, Napoleon, Ohio; Cardinal Glass Industries; City of Columbus, Ga.; Delta Air Lines, Inc.; Duke Energy; Gilbert Fire Department; HD Supply, Inc.; Illinois Auto Electrics Company; JR Simplot; Kocsis Consulting Group, Inc.; Koppers; Kroy Lyondell Chemical; Maryland State Highway Administration; Metro Nashville Government; New Jersey Natural Gas Company; PetroChina Company Limited; Purdue University; Raleigh Parks & Recreation Department; Kentucky Sanitation District No. 1; Seagate Technology; Sea Ray Boats; St. Petersburg Police Department; Sumner County Government; Tempe Fire Department; The Dow Chemical Company; USDA Forest Service; and Vought Aircraft Industries Building Products.

Additionally, nine organizations were recognized as Honorable Mention recipients: Arcelor Mittal Steel; Boeing Commercial Airplane Business Unit; Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD; Colgate-Palmolive; Good Environment Pty. Ltd.; INVISTA; Momentive Performance Materials, Sistersville, W. Va. Plant; New Brunswick Emergency Measures Organization; and URS Corporation.

Notice that the award winning organizations, as a group, represent a wide cross-section of industry sectors ranging from consumer goods to aircraft manufacturers, chemical companies to federal, state and local government agencies. This indicates the widespread adoption of and support for sustainability initiatives throughout both the private and the public sectors.

Add comment April 23rd, 2008

Leveraging Software for Sustainability is EXPO.08 Keynote Theme

Management in this century requires global orchestration–managing from the outside in. Enterprises are starting to use Web 2.0 to do this — putting application data in a very common user interface, like a browser.

That was the message from Simon Jacobson from AMR, the keynote speaker at ESS EXPO.08. Jacobson was one of several speakers that provided insightful perspectives on key business and IT challenges to a record-setting audience of corporate and government executives and thought leaders who joined us this week in Phoenix for our annual business conference.

This was one of several thought-provoking sessions where industry leaders and thought leaders came together to discuss issues that will have a huge impact on the enterprise in the near future. I’m pleased that this and many other presentations have firmly established ESS EXPO as a forum where industry leaders can meet some of the people who are providing solutions for tomorrow’s issues today.

Emerging issues such as managing greenhouse gases through the supply chain, caps on carbon production and energy consumption are emerging on the list of corporate priorities, Jacobson said.

He talked about how Web 2.0 is being used in the enterprise and architected in a framework called Manufacturing 2.0 that pulls data out of legacy applications into a more modern framework. In the configuration, organizations can maintain legacy data storage, and still have applications talk to one another.

What is the visibility of environmental performance across extended supply networks? How do organizations get a consistent view of performance across the enterprise? Fragmented and manual systems make it difficult for corporate managers to get answers. These systems have to be consolidated into a single instance that will give you a way to automate work flow and build assumptions.

Environmental software, Jacobson said, should be web-based, and all EHS data should be consolidated in a common database that takes collective intelligence, ties it together, and shows it back to the user. Adoption of Web services is on the rise in the enterprise. Applications such as wikis, blogs and podcasts are also on the rise to help companies get around the latency of data in a crisis situation.

How do companies integrate EHS with typical GRC systems? They must be integrated with the rest of the business applications, such as he ERP, the supply chain and product focused applications into a controls management system that enables development of processes and procedures for risk remediation — and all of those show as intelligence on a management dashboard.

Jacobson predicts that REACH will impact all manufacturing processes, and thus financial compliance, IT compliance, and environmental compliance will have to be integrated.

Of course, the technology that Jacobson described is available today. ESS is deploying integrated EHS platforms for major organizations around the world including global leaders like PetroChina.

Add comment April 17th, 2008

Respected EHS Analyst Predicts GRC Solutions Market to Reach $52 Billion

If you’re still deciding whether to attend EXPO.08, let me refer you to Michael Rasmussen’s new research, in which he says GRC is gathering momentum among organizations as a philosophy of business. In fact, he predicts a $52 billion market for GRC solutions in 2008.

As a business philosophy, GRC is collaborative, requiring contributions from throughout the enterprise. The philosophy is composed of sustainability, consistency, transparency, and especially efficiency — which happen when organizations leverage information and processes across the enterprise.

ESS EXPO.08, which starts Sunday, will feature several industry experts who will share perspectives on their corporate governance issues or initiatives, and how their organizations are using information technology to address those concerns.

Rasmussen points out, “good governance is built upon diligent risk and compliance management processes. In today’s business environment, ignoring a federated view of GRC results in business processes, partners, employees and systems that behave like leaves blowing in the wind.”
In the past few years, ESS, like Rasmussen, has found that there are several common drivers of GRC in the enterprise:

• Growth of Corporate Social Responsibility.
• Increasing governance demands.
• Rating agencies focused on enterprise risk management.
• Increasing risk profile in a distributed world.
• Connecting performance management to risk management.
• Increasing regulatory compliance profile.
• Impact of the extended enterprise.
• Inefficient, manual and siloed risk and compliance initiatives are ineffective.

Quite a while ago, we realized that silos of information increase, rather than mitigate risk, and we moved to architect our solution as an integrated platform. For that, I have to thank our product development teams and their depth of industry experience. You can almost say they “felt” the wave coming, and like good surfers, they were in position to ride it properly.

Other analysts are noticing how ESS has positioned itself to address market trends. At the recent Gartner GRC conference in Chicago, lead analyst Dan Miklovic provided an EHS industry overview, where he reported, “ESS is one of the few providers to offer a suite of EH&S solutions that closely align with Gartner’s market definition and to offer both hosted and licensed delivery models.” I highly recommend it if you are a Gartner subscriber.

With their leadership, our development teams have brought to market a solution that allows managers to see the big picture, use their resources effectively, reduce unnecessary complexity, and stay nimble and flexible. We operate in such a dynamic business environment (witness how quickly Bear Stearns ceased to exist – in just one weekend!) that simplicity and transparency of information are needed to ensure that businesses meet their corporate governance objectives.

Add comment April 10th, 2008

Organizations Becoming Wary of EHS Data Security and Legal Exposure from Multi Tenant Shared Environments

Data security has always been a major concern for organizations. Companies spend large sums to make sure that their data cannot be accessed by outside parties. However some organizations are expressing concern that their data may be subject to an unwanted third-party review during legal proceedings – even if that organization is not a target of the lawsuit.

We recently encountered a situation where this came up as a major concern from one of our new clients, a major western electric utility company. During their due diligence evaluation of software systems including ESS, their internal legal counsel was concerned about their data being mixed with other clients in a multi tenant environment and potential risks of exposure. Here’s why:

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a delivery method that is popular among companies that want to purchase an EHS software platform, but prefer to avoid the challenges that come with installation and maintenance. However, some organizations are taking a second look at SaaS environments where data are housed in multi-tenant applications. These are arrangements where customers’ data are stored in a common environment: in other words a SaaS provider stores data in an environment where all client information is located in a single database.

Multi tenant applications are efficient and offer sufficient safeguards against accidental and malicious access, however some organizations have recently been evaluating if multi tenant data storage does expose clients to risks of having their data accessed if another customer that has data in that same environment is targeted in a lawsuit and its data are subpoenaed. In other words if one client’s data goes to court, could all clients’ data goes to court?

While ESS does not make legal interpretations of these kind of questions, we do architect our software to provide maximum data protection and in this particular area, our “zero” security risk influenced their decision to choose an ESS “SaaS” solution over a competitor’s offering.

ESS offers a superior SaaS data storage arrangement that is architected and designed to be more secure than other systems. Our SaaS client data is stored by using “virtual” technologies for one thing, where each customer’s information is stored in a separate and distinct database that is isolated from information that belongs to all other clients. More importantly, in our environment, customers’ data would be completely safe from a subpoena targeting another organization in the situation described by our new utility client in the case above.

Our 820 years of experience developing software allows us to carefully think about customers’ real world concerns when designing our software. This is an example of applying that experience to address clients’ security concerns.

We are not sure what outcome this will ultimately result in as this predicament becomes more widely discussed, I’m sure that we’ll see some quick market adjustments as organizations react to the need to secure their data from this form of risk exposure. Regardless, clients can rest assured that with ESS solutions their data is secure in the safest, surest environment choice.

Add comment April 4th, 2008

ESS China Expands EHS Software Market

I am in Asia, because this week we are opening ESS China, our Beijing-based office that will offer the industry-leading software platform to organizations in Greater China and throughout the Asia Pacific region. To celebrate our new office, we will host a grand opening event, featuring local executives and civic leaders, Wednesday, March 26 at the Beijing American Club.

ESS has established its first office in Asia in order to grow its marketing and support operations in a region where it already has a strong client base, including global energy giants PetroChina and China National Petroleum Company (CNPC).

Businesses throughout Asia and, in particular, Greater China, are positioning themselves to increase their market share through expanded global presence. Those decision makers understand that their organizations must implement standards that are aligned with international protocols such as ISO 14000, Global Reporting Initiative, OHSAS 18000, REACH and others in order to compete in markets where EHS is recognized as an important benchmark for enterprise sustainability.

ESS China will continue our nearly two-decade long tradition of helping organizations reach their sustainability and operational excellence goals by offering the company’s integrated software platform–enabling organizations to efficiently address urgent business concerns such as greenhouse gas management, Corporate Social Responsibility reporting, worker health and safety, compliance reporting and emergency response.

Organizations throughout China have experienced tremendous growth over the past 10 years, and now they are facing daunting environmental, health, safety and crisis management challenges. ESS is uniquely positioned to help those organizations manage their EHS issues more effectively. ESS’ integrated software platform enables users to efficiently collect and communicate critical EHS and Crisis data at all levels of an organization and across the enterprise.

Our collaboration with PetroChina and its EHS software platform implementation represented a major landmark as the first enterprise-wide compliance and risk management software deployment of its kind in China. Our software platform enabled PetroChina, the world’s largest company by market capitalization, to increase productivity by driving process improvements that generated time and cost savings while also improving management decision making.

CNPC then selected ESS, based on the success of the PetroChina implementation. We’re honored to be involved in such an important initiative in Asia, and that’s why I’ve spent so much time there in the past few years.

1 comment March 24th, 2008