Software company EnergyPoints unveiled a new application this week designed to enable businesses to issue a single, integrated sustainability report that conveys both the financial and environmental impact of a company’s energy and resource consumption.
EnergyPoints Integrated Reports is based on the company’s analytics platform which, as described by founder and CEO Ory Zik at the New Metrics of Sustainable Business Conference last fall, converts all resources (water, fuel, waste, electricity and natural gas) into a single, universal unit of measurement. Currently, environmental performance reports often measure sustainability by using domain-specific engineering units, including kWh, mBTU, and tons of carbon. EnergyPoints says the lack of clarity and actionable insight make the reports hard to understand and render them useless as the basis for decision-making.
“Today’s sustainability reports are unintelligible and are not providing the context and insight needed by executives, investors and even insurance companies to make data-driven, informed environmental decisions. The problem is compounded when trying to communicate this to the consumer,” said Zik.
“Much like a CFO would manage different currencies after converted to US dollars, Energy Points converts all natural resource consumption into a universal metric. This provides a single, intuitive view that enables executives to make smarter sustainability and energy management decisions, while allowing the business to transparently and accurately express how they’re impacting the environment,” Zik added.
EnergyPoints says it addresses the key challenges of measuring environmental impact, including confusing units of measurement; removing resource silos from reporting; and comparing energy efficiency with renewable energy. The single unit of measurement also allows for measuring resources in location and time (an important issue on which Zik wrote in depth for Sustainable Brands’ IT Issue in Focus last June). EnergyPoints also claims to bring clarity to carbon as a reporting metric by incorporating it as a factor into its universal metric.
Environmental performance has emerged as a critical driver of shareholder value and customer loyalty, and is increasingly viewed by executives as being intertwined with commercial success. According to a recent report from the Governance & Accountability Institute, 53 percent of the 500 companies indexed by Standard and Poor’s issued sustainability reports in 2011, up from 19 percent the previous year. The study also found companies issuing sustainability reports attracted more investment dollars and offered shareholders better returns than competitors that failed to report.
@Bart_King is a freelance writer and communications consultant.
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Bart King is the founder and principal at New Growth Communications. He specializes in helping sustainability leaders develop thought leadership content and strategy
Published Jan 23, 2013 8am EST / 5am PST / 1pm GMT / 2pm CET