With an annual carbon accounting mandate due to be imposed in April 2013, why is it that almost no one is offering businesses a means of understanding and reducing their energy consumption at the level of detail required?
Large companies will have to formally report on their carbon emissions – including those in their supply chains – from next year as part of their annual company accounts. Therefore, while the onus is theoretically on the upper echelons of UK plc, in fact smaller businesses who supply these larger companies are under equal pressure to give more thought to how they measure and reduce their own carbon footprint so that they don’t lose contracts to greener competition.
From specialist software and service resellers even to the accountants who must report on the carbon emissions, the channel has an unprecedented opportunity to carve itself a niche, while carbon measurement and reporting is still a little understood discipline, and while the need to get to grips with it is becoming increasingly urgent.
As things stand, services offered are at best fragmented and misdirected, which means there is everything to play for. Remember, carbon accounting and the reduction of emissions is not a luxury, but a necessity. Once the rules are tightened and penalties are being enforced, businesses will start to wake up to their responsibilities remarkably quickly.
The canny service providers will be those that persuade them to act sooner rather than later, highlighting the potential cost savings that come when organisations suddenly have a greater insight into the staggering inefficiencies that are still commonplace in most buildings and places of work.
Within our latest e-Book, The Business Partner Proposition: Partnering with Optimal Monitoring – The Why, How and Who, we provide a background to the annual carbon accounting mandate. The e-book also highlights some of the potential for those businesses who are involved in the sector or who want to become involved in the audit, management, advisory and consulting services involved in the commercial usage of electricity, gas and water, together with the corresponding emissions of carbon and waste.
