What Is Your Business Carbon Footprint and Why Does It Matter?
The business carbon footprint has been a hot topic globally for the last decade or more, and as story after story is shared across various media platforms, it becomes tougher to ignore. Carbon isn’t bad – in fact, it’s quite literally everywhere and makes up every living thing. The issue that today’s organizations need to be concerned with isn’t the level of carbon on our planet, but instead the increasing levels of carbon dioxide or CO₂ that are being released into the atmosphere and causing damage around the world.
As leaders in the realms of technology, education, utilities, and management, we have an obligation to lead by example and forge the way ahead. After all, business is all about creating value for our end-users, clients, and customers, and by reducing our business carbon footprint, we have the opportunity to provide the highest value overall. This process all begins with answering and understanding a few fundamental questions: what are carbon emissions, what is a business carbon footprint, and why does it matter?
What Are Carbon Emissions?
When we talk about carbon emissions as they relate to business, we’re talking about more than just the CO₂ that we breathe out – that all plants and animals breathe out. While the Earth has a natural way of balancing CO₂ output, the additional amount of carbon emissions we send out into the atmosphere have much more damaging effects. As a business, it’s already easier to account for more CO₂ than individuals and families, but some industries produce significantly more carbon dioxide than others based on their type of operation.
That said, burning fossil fuels to generate viable energy sources isn’t just something that energy companies alone need to be concerned with. Even in a clean, formal office setting, the electricity used to keep lights and HVAC units humming contributes greatly to the problem of carbon emissions and organizations need to be aware of the overall impact they have on the world as a whole. Ultimately, carbon dioxide keeps the heat in, and an increase in carbon emissions means that our planet can’t maintain the natural cooling required to prevent damaging climatic changes.
This is why understanding what our carbon footprints are and how we can work to reduce them is crucial and remains a responsibility that all businesses need to address (rather promptly).
What Is a Business Carbon Footprint and Why Is It Important for You to Know About It?
Measured in tonnage, your business carbon footprint is a calculation of the combined output of CO₂ from all business activities. From energy production and air travel to office lighting and HVAC, each activity has an assigned value that, when combined, total the business carbon footprint of your organization. According to OurWorldinData.org, energy use in industry accounted for 24.2% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2016 with another 6.6% going towards energy used in commercial buildings. There’s a lot of room for improvement there, as well as a few big reasons for your organization to make the necessary changes.
Reason #1: Global Survival
To put it bluntly, organizations need to reduce their business carbon footprint so that we can maintain a healthy planet capable of serving our future generations. Time is the most valuable asset that any business has, and many organizations push issues such as CO₂ production to the back of the line because they have (seemingly) more pressing issues. Unfortunately, these problems are building, and the time for action is now. In order to ensure that your business has a stance in the world of tomorrow, it’s essential to take big steps today.
Reason #2: Increased Profit
As an enterprise, it can be tempting to sweep the concept of your business carbon footprint under the proverbial rug, but this is where education is key. Reducing your business carbon footprint isn’t just good for the environment – it can save your company money, too. Monitoring your organization’s production of CO₂ can help you find ways to cut down on operating costs such as transportation, utilities, and other factors that currently inflict a negative impact on your bottom line.
Reason #3: Customers & Partnerships
This is the digital age, and information spreads faster than ever. As more consumers research and understand the issues our planet is facing, they begin to demand better products and services that have a strong focus on reduced CO₂ strategies. Other businesses aren’t much different. As the topic of carbon emissions and greenhouse gas production circulates within the B2B world, many organizations base partnership decisions on how other companies are responding and want to see them actively taking steps to reduce their business carbon footprint.
The Best Ways to Track Your Business Carbon Emissions and How PowerX Enterprise SaaS Can Help
Understanding what your business carbon footprint is and how you can work to reduce it can provide a lot of value for both you, your employees, and the world as a whole. Today, we have a plethora of new technological advancements that enable us to track carbon dioxide production accurately and develop viable strategies to work towards becoming carbon-neutral. At PowerX, we believe that achieving carbon neutrality within your enterprise is achievable and we have developed our Enterprise SaaS to streamline the process and provide support to your entire organization.
Using cutting-edge AI technology our Enterprise SaaS solution uses sensors to complete thorough CO₂ analysis and build an inventory that is automatically compared with both local and international CO₂ emissions targets in order to track compliance. This means that individual assets such as air conditioning equipment, water heaters, generators, lighting, and more are monitored to ensure that carbon emissions are kept to a minimum, and any problems are reported in real-time. Tracking CO₂ emissions at the highest precision enables our AI engines to provide tailored mitigation options that focus on high efficiency and CO₂ reduction efforts.
For utilities, PowerX uses unparalleled intelligence to manage grid-edge infrastructure. Our Enterprise SaaS offers high-resolution waveform data gathered on a nano-second level as well as AI load forecasting for peak demand management, DER integration, voltage anomaly detection, and Volt/VAR optimization. In addition, PowerX heaters enable grid load balancing by converting into batteries and are projected to add over 10 megawatts of local load balancing capability per year.
With the implementation of PowerX Enterprise SaaS within your business, you can efficiently monitor, track, and take action to reduce your business carbon footprint, save money, and create a better world for tomorrow. Contact us to learn more about our solution and together we’ll change the way you do business.
