by Charlotte Critchley
Business planning software giant, Epicor, surveyed nearly 1000 companies worldwide to determine what they were doing in terms of carbon accounting. The results showed that most companies do not have carbon management at the top of their priorities or even on their radars. Many companies were unaware of the term carbon accounting and even among those that had heard of it, less than 25 percent were actively doing anything related to it.
This bodes well for Epicor given it just launched a new carbon accounting software designed to help organizations better identify, analyze, audit, track, manage, benchmark, and report on their carbon emissions/environmental impact and energy consumption. The software is available with Epicor’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite.
In addition, the survey revealed that many companies are currently required to report various emissions and fail to do so.
“It’s quite worrying to think that a third of all companies don’t know whether they are under legal obligation to report emissions and we want to take this opportunity to urge the industry as a whole to take responsibility and help educate businesses about energy management,” said Chris Purcell, product marketing manager for Epicor.
Some companies are voluntarily entering into green initiatives, although Epicor’s survey showed they are the exception not the rule.
This is likely to change in the very near future, according to Purcell. Australia and California soon will implement regulations intended to get companies to take greater responsibility for their carbon emissions.
“Businesses should prepare now for carbon accounting,” said Purcell. “It is important that businesses don’t see the green agenda as an alternative to operational savings because it’s not.”
