Carbon Emissions Management Software (CEMS): A New Global Industry

Pressures And Risks In The Business World

While many countries have been moving slowly along the road to international agreement, at the corporate level there is increasing responsibility, as highlighted by many discussions (e.g. Murugesan, 2007). The pressure on business to take unilateral action has grown significantly. An increasingly active environmental movement, extreme weather events, and international conferences and agreements have all helped bring the issue of climate change to a broader section of the general public and to the attention of corporate stakeholders. At the same time, economic factors have added another dimension by putting the spotlight on the cost of the energy responsible for generating greenhouse gases (Unhelkar and Dickens, 2008). As a result, there is increasing pressure on corporations from a number of areas:

Clearly, there is growing pressure from a variety of directions for organizations to assess their carbon emissions, report them publicly and set targets for their reduction. Those looking to address pressures and stakeholder expectations should prepare a formal assessment of the risks and opportunities of climate change, what needs to be achieved and how to get there. Since environmental issues can have an impact across an organization, it requires a fairly broad assessment to encompass knock-on impacts that combine, as discussed by Unhelkar and Trivedi (2009), both technology and business perspectives. Note that the assessment is not just about the risks of not doing anything, but also the market opportunities of taking positive action.