CA bolsters ecoSoftware suite with new carbon tracking tools

Business software giant CA has today extended its package of ecoSoftware applications with the unveiling of new tools designed to help firms better manage, measure and report on their environmental and carbon emission reduction initiatives.

The company formally launched CA ecoGovernance 1.5, a new software suite designed to help executives track the performance of environmental initiatives and share the results across the business, as well as a new ecoMeter toolset that allows firms to constantly monitor power use across their datacentres and other facilities.

Speaking to BusinessGreen.com, Colin Bannister, vice president of technical sales at CA, said that the new applications would make it far easier for businesses to collate and analyse the carbon emissions and environmental impact data that they are increasingly required to report on as part of new legislation.

"For many businesses keeping track of environmental data is a massive manual effort where there are constant concerns about the accuracy of the data," he said. "This software can draw that data automatically, either from other business applications that contain energy bill data or from real time building monitoring systems. As a result the process is far more efficient and the final data is far clearer."

He added that businesses can then use the environmental data to inform green investment decisions and prioritise the projects that will deliver the biggest savings, as well as comply with reporting requirements.

The unveiling of the new applications comes just weeks after CA announced that supermarket giant Tesco is to roll out the technology to underpin its efforts to calculate the carbon footprint of all its products.

Bannister said that the company was also seeing strong demand from financial services and retail firms as growing numbers of UK firms prepare to comply with the imminent Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency scheme, which comes into effect from next April and will require around 5,000 firms to report annually on their carbon emissions.

The launch also comes just days after CA announced that its ecoGovernance suite had been accredited by the investor-backed NGO the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), as providing carbon reporting capabilities in line with group's standards. The investor-backed CDP requests carbon data from the world's largest firms and is fast emerging as the main source of corporate emissions data in the world with around 2,500 companies reporting to the organisation each year.