Based on its various discussions with its customers (Group IDEC, IOISIS Nord, SETEC, VEYER, Le Bon Marché, Communauté d’Agglomération de Sarreguemines-Confluence, Communauté d’Agglomération de Val-et-Forêt (the last two are French local governments) and partners (MEV, CADET, Equinergies, Effet de Levier, Business & Décision, Bossa Verde, SynAIRgis, FTC, FCV Conseil…) Verteego came to the conclusion that project owners, in other word contractors, are progressively including in their specifications clauses regarding low carbon-emitting constructions, not only during the building phase, but first and foremost during the exploitation phase. That basically means that buildings’ carbon emissions are monitored during all their life cycle.

Nevertheless, and that’s how our reflexion started and explains why we came up with Verteego Carbon, the contractors’ expectations in terms of carbon efficiency were, so far, no clearly stated with precise and defined figures, despite the fact that they often demand accurate elements of carbon footprinting.

In order to allow all the actors of the building and public works chain, from architects to exploitants/leaseholders to investors and project management assistance, to realize such quantifications very easily, Verteego Construction:

- contends building-specific inventory methods corresponding to standard measurements.
- integrates C02 conversion databases (compatible with the GHG Protocol)
- enables users to set up their own GHG inventory methods
- enhances collaboration between all the involved third parties, by facilitating the segmentation of the construction works and allows to ask sub-contractors via web forms.
- is secured so as to guarantee maximum confidentiality.

Verteego Construction is mainly aimed at :

- assessing the projected carbon footprint of alternative versions examined before the actual construction phase (ex: corporate headquarters, eco-friendly neighborhood, railroad, low budget housing, shopping mall…)
- the realization of the building site’s carbone footprint
- the quantification of the GHG emissions during the exploitation phase, which allow project owners to take the right investing decisions, asset managers to increase the value of their properties and exploitants to anticipate the costs of primary energy and gray energy.
- communicating your commitment to sustainable building industry, namely an industry that takes energy costs of the operating phase (mirrored in the carbon footprint) into account, to third parties

For further information, please visit our website dedicated to our carbon management application for construction and public works , accessible on http://construction.verteego.com.

We organise webinars on a regular basis to present our Verteego Construction application. To register to one of these webinars and to enjoy a free demo and get information about our pricing and subscription conditions, just call Mr Olivier JOUSSELIN : (+33) 01 47 70 09 90 or +1 (858) 952-0797.

Verteego is pleased to invite you to join our free webinar, “Verteego: Carbon & Energy Management made easy” on September 2, 3pm GMT - 4:15pm GMT3pm and 4:15pm GMT London time (10am - 11:15am EST, US East Coast time).

Through this one-hour+ long interactive presentation, you will get an insight of all the features of our carbon & energy management application. Verteego provides businesses with a cost-effective online solution to enable organizations to manage their GHG emissions. For further information on our carbon management software, please check our website.

Our featured presenter will be Mr Rupert Schiessl, cofounder and general manager of Verteego, who manages our software road maps and product teams, including those working on our carbon & energy management application.

To book your Webinar seat now, please send me an email (miriam (dot) dounas (at) verteego (dot) com) and we will send you a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. Hurry up, only 8 seats left !

Buildings :
The Grenelle 2 aims at improving the energetic performance of buildings, and wants to spur an urbanism that would consumer fewer land and energetic resources.

How ?

- Creation of a mandatory certificate that verifies that all energetic and acoustic norms are respected at the end of construction works . Also the project manager is responsible in case of non compliance.
- Promoting Energetic performance contracts
- Enhance and systematize Energetic Performance Diagnosis and Energetic Audits in big coproprieties .
- Inform the futur inhabitants of a building on its Energetic Performance and display this information on real-estate ads.- A building permit has to accept all the energetic devices and low-GHG materials or materials that help retain rain waters of buildings.

Some concrete actions:
• Low consumption buildings (a.k.a Bâtiments Basse Consommation)
• The « Bâtiment » scheme
• Commitment of engineering companies in favor of the Grenelle

Transportation :

The Grenelle 2 law aims at make both our mentalities and behaviors and our transportation infrastructures evolve towards more eco-responsibility.
What’s at stake here is , among other things, the development of transportation infrastructures that would offer an alternative to driving, the realization of over 1500 kilometers of urban collective transportation lines and the construction of train highways and sea routes. The aim is to insure a consistency within all the transportation networks and to adapt them to the current energetic and ecological challenges.

How ?
By implementing a series of measures promoting the development of collective means of transporation within and outside the cities :
-Give local governments the ability to organise a service of free bike rental and build secure
parking spots for bikes when a new building or parking is built .
- Developing the idea of auto-sharing and creating a specific label
-Modernizing highway tolls by allowing to adapt the fee considering the environmental performance of vehicles.
-Developing electric vehicles and rechargeable hybrids.
- Allowing cities of more than 300 000 inhabitants to set an urban toll if they want to.

Some concrete actions :
• The ecological bonus-malus
• Research projects for low-carbon vehicles
• National engagement for rail fret
• The convention bringing together all the actors of the French air transport convention sector.

Energy :

To achieve the GHG-emission reduction goal Europe set (which we discussed in a previous article), the Grenelle Environment law reinforces energy-saving measures and develops renewable energies.

How ?
- Obligation for compagnies who employ more than 500 employees and cities of more than 50 000 inhabitants to report their GHG emissions by the end of year 2012.
- Obligation for cities of more than 50 000 inhabitants to adopt a « Climate-Energy » scheme (Plan climat-energie) by the end of year 2012.
- Better supervision of all the experimental CO2-stocking devices to control their safety and promote their appearance if they prove to work out.
- Enhance consumer information by energy distributors on their level of energy consumption and the solutions to reduce it.
- Possibility given to all moral persons to install photovoltaic cells on its roofs and to sell the produced energy at a preferential rate.

Some concrete actions :
•  The “renewable heat” fund
•  The progressive replacement of non-ecological light bulbs
•  Reducing the energy consumption of appliances
• The sustainable development tax credit

REACH was at the core of the biggest lobbying battle of all times. No wonder, knowing what’s at stake. REACh’s raison d’être is to « ensure a high protection level of the human health and the environment, including promoting of alternative methods for the assessment of the dangers related to substances , as well as the free circulation of the substances on the internal market, and in the same time, boost competitivity and innovation » (source: article 1.1, Directive 2006/121/CE).
Basically, REACh will enable to scrap all the cancer-causing , environment-jeopardizing substances from the EU territory, in a mere decade !
This will result in significantly curbing the pression exerted on the Health services, and will consequently allow the member states governments to achieve substantial savings (amounting to several tens of billions euros).

Nevertheless, the investments necessary to carry out REACh are for a very large share made by industrialists (manufacturers and importers on the EU territory).
This is the result of the “reversal of the onus of proof” comprised in the REACh directive: from now on, “the responsibility of proving that the substances can be manufactured, used and destroyed with no harm done to the human health and the environment” (source: Luxembourg REACH Helpdesk ). In other words, risk assessment is now shared by all the components of the industrial fabric.

This , along with dissuasive penalties -to say the least- (that can go as far as closing down an activity in conformity with the “No data, no market” rule at the core of REACh) constitutes a strong incentive to collaboration between all the links of the supply chain.
If the implementation costs of the REACh directive lay on the industrialist, which requires some investments, these very industrialists are also the first to enjoy the direct benefits of the reglementation. This includes :
- A reduction of the “Health at work” related costs, with workers exposed a minima to substances of very high concern. This will lead to a rise of the labor’s longevity and will decrease the hardness - a term at the core of a very French controversy .
Expected income : an enhanced competitivity of Europe and reindustrialization opportunities and relocalisation on the European soil of production units.
- because of the necessary effort to replace SVHC (Substances of Very High Concern), (see the notorious Annex XIV of the directive) research departments will have to serious focus their efforts on the eco-conception topic.

This will impact the whole industrial chain of value (starting with the Production purchases spending category and subsequently the teams of buyers, who will seek new suppliers. ).

With the constant pressure exerted by the ongoing double trend of “responsible consuming” for consumers, and “responsible purchasing” for companies, the implementation of eco-conception via the suppression of cancer-causing, environment-threatening substances is a genuine bonanza for article manufacturers. The latter will indeed in the worst case scenario, strenghthen their positions with their existing customers, and in the best case scenario, reach new markets, craving cleaner products.

As stated in the well-known Article 33 of the REACh directive, particularly aimed at articles manufacturers and importers , the most important element in a successful decision-making process is to have exploitable data.
The question of the traceability of the chemical substances present within articles is at the core of REACh (remember the “No data, no market” credo).

Easier said than done, when a product can involve up to hundreds of thousands of sub-contractors and suppliers.
That’s where the web comes : the web revolution consisted in annihilating the notion of geographical distance(”The World is Flat”) between people and information(Yahoo!, Google,…), between people and other people (Skype, Gmail, Hotmail, Facebook, MySpace,…), between people and companies (e-trade, institutional websites,…), between administrations and economic actors (dematerialized declarations), between companies and other companies (emails, webinars, EDI, XML,…).
The strength of the web is to facilitate relations, data collection, collaboration and information organization.
If doubts were once voiced concerning the fiability of web connexion and the safety of stored data, these doubts are now history in all industrialized countries thanks to the quality of the Internet infrastructures, and with the advent of cloud computing (tens of thousands of companies storing their most valuable data - their customers’ data- using the online CRM applications publisher Salesforce.com), even in highly sensitive industries (Banking or Defence industries).
Based on this observation, Verteego has developed, with its partner Messier-Dowty, world-leading manufacturer of undercarriages and a subsidiary of the SAFRAN Group, a unique web-based software solution to track down chemical substances within the industrial supply chain (for articles manufacturers) or within articles suppliers(for distributors).
The benefits of this solution is to optimize for our customers the time spent by purchasers and REACh dedicated teams (QHSE, Supplier Performance or Purchases Quality,…) by automating data collection campaigns, and to offer our customers a genuine competitiveness advantage compared to their competitors, still stuck with their spreadsheets sent by emails, or worse via call centers that annoy suppliers (when it’s not via plain old paper-based mail).
On top of this, it also guarantees a complete auditability of the collected data and does not require much time from suppliers.
So, back to our initial question. Is REACH that daunting a puzzle? Well, thanks to Verteego, that leverages all the possibilities of the Internet (collaboration, simplicity, traceability), REACh is obviously much easier to cope with.
Like all systematized procedures, this one requires some investment. The latter :
1) will be made profitable within 18 months at most;
2) are not significant when compared to the costs of a less systematized (one would even daresay less professional) procedure moins professionnelle);
3) are not significant when compared to the non-compliance costs.

To know a bit more about these non-compliance costs, the VERTEEGO team has just written a white paper on the legal risks linked to the non-compliance of articles manufacturers and distributors to the REACh directive.
Needless to say, this white paper is available for free upon simple phone call or email (reach at verteego point com), only in French at the moment.

This crisis and the economic turmoil downturn that the world and Europe faced should be seen as an opportunity to take a new orientation in our model of economic development. What we face now is a crisis of capitalism, as Braudel described it . In order to preserve itself, it has to make room for change. Greenness, sustainability embody this change. They allow to mitigate the risks linked to the volatility of all fossil fuels’prices not to mention the threats of an instable climate and the potential disasters it may lead to.
We are here at a watershed of the EU’s economic development, and we have this great opportunity to seize : strenghten our economic recovery, secure our energetic needs and fight climate change. All this can be achieved through the promotion of low-carbon energetic fields and the exploitation of new employment and export sources .

Europe is not the only one to embrace this challenge of a greener, more sustainable economy : many of its economic competitors are already taking bold steps in this direction. Will Euope be up to the challenge ? Will it be a leader in the area of low-emissions growth, or a mere follower ?
For us, there is no room for doubt that Europe can be a leader. Still, there is still a lack of incentives to spur the development of new investment models.
Paradoxically, the EU’s current reduction target - a 20% cut of GHG emissions levels by 2020 compared to the 1990 level - is what prevents it from getting farther. This objective appears now to be far too insufficient to allow the transition to a low carbon consuming model. The GHG emissions of the EU’s trading sector are already down by 11% compared to the period before the crisis. This results in carbon prices being much too low to incite significant investments in green jobs and technologies.

We fear that if we stick to that 20% target, Europe will lose the race for a low-emissions model to countries such as China, Japan or the US.

These countries are indeed trying hard to create an environment that would attract investments, notably by adopting policies promoting low-emissions models and by focusing the financial resources of their plans de relance on investing in low-emissions sectors.

That is why we are truly convinced of the necessity for the EU to adopt a GHG emissions reduction target that would genuinely push innovatioan and action on an international context : a reduction of 30% by 2020.
That would represent a genuine attempt a limitating the temperature rise at 2 degrees - namely the critical threshold beyond which climate hazard would be important-, would reinforce the will of those that already advocate for an ambitious action and would incite more less involved countries to catch up with the others in the green area.
That would also constitute a very wise economic choice.

By setting such an ambitious goal, not only would the EU directly influence the evolution of the price of carbon until 2020 but it would also send a strong signal regarding its willingness to set a political frame favoring the emergence of a low-GHG emissions model.
Thus, we must not forget that the private sector will account for the overwhelming majority of the required investments to set this model. The 30% goal will then insure investors more certainty and more previsbility.

European companies are already leveraging these new opportunities. Their international market share accounts for 22% of the low-carbon goods & services sector, thanks to the early leading position of Europe in the fight against climate change. But the rest of the world is catching up.
The engagements taken at the Copenhaguen Summit, however Small and less ambitious, have lead to a generalized effort , especially for China, India and Japan.

Carrying out early actions is all the more necessary that it also allows to cut costs. The recession-caused emissions reduction led to the annual cost of the 20% reduction target réalisation decreasing from 70 to 78 billion euro. The estimated costs of a 30% reduction is higher by 11 billion , a mere 0.1% of the UE’s economy.
Furthermore, postponing EU’s engagement would only result on further costs : according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the cost of a single year of delaying the investment in low-carbon energy sources is somewhere between 300 and 400 billion euros on a global scale.

Moreover, these costs are calculated based on a very prudent hypothesis of an oil barrel price set at 88 dollars in 2020. But, given the constraints on the supply-oriented investments, the rapid growth of the Asian consumption and the fallouts of the Mexican Gulf oil spill, the petrol prices could flare up. According to a scenario designed by the IEA, it could even reach 130 USD. The rising oil prices would lead to a lower réalisation cost of the GHG emissions reduction target, which would even end up having positive economic fallouts.

Some energy-intensive sectors will have to face higher costs. We are already trying to protect those sectors through the free allocation of emission quotas when considered useful, but alternative measures could be necessay to avoid carbon evasion. Still, the real threat these sectors are facing is not the carbon price but the collapse of the demand in the from the european building industry. The best way to boost demand from this sector would be to set investment incentives in high scale, low-carbone infrastructures - steel, cement , aluminium and chemicals -guzzlers . Our ministries in charge with industry work closely with these sectors so as to insure they handle thie transition with efficiency, and we try really hard to preserve the chances of the European industry. We must give our compagnies the possibility to develop on the national scale and in the same time be able to face international competition.

Avoiding the necessary talk on the 30% reduction target would impede our progress in the race towards cutting GHG emissions. Our compagnies would gain a precious first-mover advantage if we could take necessary decisions quickly.
This is why we strongly believe that setting a 30% reduction goal is the right thing to do for Europe.
This policy will boost job creation and economic growth, help achieve energetic safety and fight climate change.
In a nutshell, it is a policy that will help the future of the EU.,

It began in America, and is now spreading among the environmentally conscious,well-educated and generally well-off European consumers : “it” is the locavore trend. Locavore was the 2007 Oxford’s word of the year, but here is a quick definition in case you missed it :a locavore is someone who exclusively (or at least primarily) eats foods from their local or regional foodshed or a determined radius from their home (commonly either 100 or 250 miles, depending on location). By eating locally, most locavores hope to create a greater connection between themselves and their food sources, resist industrialized and processed foods, and support their local economy. Still, the key purpose of locavores is to achieve a reduction of global carbon emissions. At first, it seems to make perfect sense: global food trade, because it involves long-distance shipping,conditionning and other processes, is supposed to have a very heavy carbon output. By consuming locally grown food, the locavores reduce shipping distances and consequently, carbon emissions.

On a closer look though , things seem to be a bit more complicated: emissions per unit of  food actually depend heavily on how the food is shipped : if eating locally reduces how tightly packed shipping containers are, or if it changes shipping mode- say from rail to truck-then the local option may actually be more intensive in carbon.

It is simplistic to think that local food does not rely on the consumption of fossil fuels :Local tomatoes are grown in northern climes in gas-heated greenhouses. And local doesn’t necessarily mean “natural”: local apples can be stored for months-in storage sheds filled with nitrogen…

What locavores fail to take into account is that two-thirds of the social costs of the food distribution system have nothing directly to do with the environment at all: They are attributable to accidents and congestion. More than half of those costs are caused by driving to the shops. TIM HARFORD, Undercover Economist and author of a column about locavores in Forbes adds :”My socially responsible advice to you, then, is not to worry about from how far away your food came, but to walk-not drive-to the supermarket”

Caring about one’s carbon impact on the planet should not be reserved to a happy few, nor should it be a mere trendy “attitude” : it may be more glamorous to drive 50 miles to go pick strawberries in an organic farm, but much more costly -as far as carbon emissions are concerned- than to go to the local grocery store, even if those strawberries are grown in another continent. Hence the importance for food retailers and producers to calculate and display the carbon footprint of their products on their tags, as a duty towards their consumers . By doing so, they help people actually make an eco-responsible choice.

The concerns brought about by phenomena such as global warming and depletion of natural resources are starting to be genuinely taken into account by governments. This results in the adoption of various regulations and so called green legislations aiming at achieving GHG emissions cuts.  Recently, public pressure has prompted more companies to register and disclose the results in their annual reports or to specifically created organs such as the Carbon Disclosure Project.

In Britain for example , the Carbon Reduction Commitment will come into effect this year. Among other things it requires firms that use more than 6000 megawatt hours of electricity a year to measure and report the energy they use.

But apart from these exogenous factors of change, endogenous forces are also at work in the area of GHG emissions management. Even while governments are still arguing over the amounts of emissions cuts, many firms already carry out hands on policies to curb their emissions. Many have tracked energy consumption for some time in an effort to save money. Obviously, the issue of tracking down carbon emissions in order to detect potential losses – and subsequently cut them and save both money and the planet- has become a key component of a company’s competitiveness.

But up to recently, most of these firms have used very basic tools such as Excel spreadsheets and databases. This is changing : despite the recession, higher energy costs and green branding are all pushing more firms to enhance the management of their emissions.

This is where Verteego intervenes: a program from Verteego will make a tedious job much easier: gathering data about each store’s energy consumption, be it from lights, air conditioning, transportation or refrigeration. Companies can easily calculate the carbon footprint of their activity, and exactly assess the part of each process in the global carbon weight, thus being able to target the most energy-consuming steps and work on make them more carbon-efficient.

Evidence of how important an issue this is is to be found in British supermarket-chain Tesco’s ambitious plan to halve emissions of GEG from existing stores and distribution centers by 2020.

All this interest gives a sense of how big the business of tracking environmental performance is expected to become. Léo Apotheker, SAP’s former CEO (a software powerhouse) recently suggested that in time, it could even be “on an equal footing with financial accounting”.

At least for now, the needs of most firms are simple: making sure that data is collected regularly and can be audited. But in the years to come, this too will change. Firms will need software that collect data automatically, help them find the best way to manage other resources such as water and waste.

These changes implemented by companies themselves show that companies are, driven by the market shifts, willing to switch to greener processes. A good policy framework should then include some regulation in areas where the market does not work well, such as the energy-efficiency of buildings and applicances. But it would rely largely on by far the most efficient tool in the policymaker’s kit:  a price for carbon.

According to Keenan Hahn from Verteego Carbon, the inventory, measurement, management, analysis, reduction and reporting of green house gas (GHG) emissions is an increasingly important business issue in the United States, even though adopters of software solutions still belong to a club of happy fews that will drive tomorrow’s economy. Corporates and large public sector organizations increasingly invest in GHG footprints to assess their climate change impacts. Keenan believes demand for carbon management software will take off seriously in 2010 as soon as the Environmental Protection Agency will have officially passed its GHG Inventory law at Congress right before the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009. The payback for early adopters will then be massive since income statements will be hit by the regulation.

Keenan goes on by stating that companies can justify investing in Verteego Carbon due to the growing financial costs of environmental compliance, operational risks associated with the need to prepare a potential surge of oil and energy prices once the economic crisis will be behind us, reduced costs compared to manual processes and a desire to demonstrate industry leadership on climate change and foster a long term competitive advantage. Keenan Hahn thinks Verteego Carbon also helps businesses streamline their operations and become more efficient, resources-wise.

In a nutshell, Verteego Carbon is about creating value for their customers by enhancing carbon management capabilities with a fully-fledged carbon management software solution.

Sustainability and reducing our impact is in our blood here at Verteego, and the results of our carbon assessment were low, as expected. Highlights of our report include:

1) Extremely low home-work travel emissions of 208 kg carbon equivalent due to the fact that all employees take the subway to work.

2) Very low emissions from electricity consumed on-site (544 kg carbon equivalent) due to minimal use of heating and lighting.

3) Exceptionally low emissions from business travel by car (47 kg carbon equivalent) due to the use of lower-emission options, such as rail travel.

Because we are conscious of our impact in the VerteegOffice, we have picked all the low-hanging fruit in terms of reducing our impact. We are very conscious of making use of natural light, minimizing heating, reducing the waste we generate, and choosing low-impact transportation. Nevertheless, calculating our carbon footprint with Verteego Carbon has helped us identify some areas where we can reduce our impact further.

For instance, depreciation of the office, hardware, and furniture accounted for over 60% of our total footprint, and business travel by air accounted for over 80% of our total business travel emissions. It is clear that these are areas where we should focus our reduction efforts in the coming year.

Actions we are looking into for 2009 include better insulating the windows of our office to reduce heating needs, extending the life of our electronics to decrease amortized emissions from depreciation, using more tele- and video-conferencing to reduce business travel, and replacing air travel with train travel, which will save both emissions and costs.

To learn more about Verteego’s carbon management software and carbon consulting options, visit us at Verteego Carbon.