Banking on Carbon

If a company can save $5,000 a year by swapping out all the incandescent light bulbs in its offices, it's gonna happen. The era of corporate environmentalism is on, if only because it makes good business sense to lower energy costs, not to mention image points gained with conscientious consumers. With the green sector rapidly expanding because of policy and government incentives, carbon tracking is on the cusp of explosive growth.

To meet the coming demand, Australian environmental software firm, Village Green Globalhas just announced SMARTweb, a carbon emissions accounting tool that tracks water consumption, electricity use, natural gas use, transportation, and waste in order to discover ways to save energy. The tool “offers reporting and recommendations based on analysis of captured data.”

To date, Daimler Chrysler, Westfield and CISCO are just a few global brands that have reduced their environmental impacts and improved their bottom lines with Village Green solutions. Through its partnership with Microsoft, Village Green will be able to offer the SMARTweb technology to public sector clients so they can track both their own performance as well as provide a reporting tool to businesses who must meet regulatory requirements.

"As budgets tighten and carbon regulations increase, the public sector is challenged with showing how its investments in programs and policies are paying off," said Village Green founder and CEO, Doug Smith. "SMARTweb addresses this challenge, streamlining the reporting process and producing a verifiable baseline any entity can use to address climate change."

With the coming U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen this December, the carbon tracking and environmental auditing industry could potentially break wide open. With all the stimulus money poring into the public sector, this is a huge development, and Village Green intends to snatch up that wide-open U.S. market. Meaning, if you're an investor, now's the time to pounce. Think of it as a short-term, huge-gain Christmas Club account. Ho, ho, ho.

Photo courtesy Jeff Kubina via flickr.