Channelling carbon consciousness

The approaching UK green mandate represents an untapped niche opportunity for IT suppliers, says Duncan Everett

With an annual carbon accounting mandate imposed from April 2013, why is almost no one offering businesses a way to measure their energy consumption with the level of detail required?

Large companies will have to formally report on their carbon emissions – including those in their IT supply chains – next year in their annual company accounts.

While the onus is theoretically on the upper echelons of UK plc, smaller businesses that supply larger companies will be under equal pressure. If they fail, they risk losing contracts to greener competition.

Many will not know where to start. They do not have any means of measuring current carbon consumption, let alone discretely tracking the impact of any steps they have taken to improve energy efficiency.

However, for resellers it may also represent an opportunity to provide a mixture of professional services and specialist offerings to help customers fill this knowledge gap and begin reporting on their emissions.

It is an opportunity to carve a new niche. Carbon measurement and reporting is poorly understood by many, yet the need to get to grips with it is becoming urgent.

As things stand, services offered currently are fragmented and misdirected at best.

Once the rules are tightened and penalties are enforced, businesses will start to wake up to their responsibilities remarkably quickly.

Canny service providers will persuade customers to act sooner rather than later, highlighting the potential savings that better carbon accounting can entail.

Staggeringly large environmental inefficiencies remain common at most businesses.

Duncan Everett is managing director of Optimal Monitoring