With just four months until the government’s CRC Energy Efficient Scheme comes into force, Jon Wilcox speaks with one Cloud company aiming to help affected companies meet the deadline.
April 2010 sees the start of the government’s CRC Energy Efficient Scheme, the core programme aimed to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions. The mandatory cap and trade scheme is currently targeting the 5,000 largest organisations in the country, which use at least 6,000MWh/yr - the equivalent to an annual electricity bill of approximately £500,000. Expectations are that the bar will drop over coming years, so the CRC also has huge ramifications for a further 15,000 organisations sitting just below the threshold.
CloudApps is a new company that aims to help those 5,000 big organisations understand and manage the scheme, changing their view of carbon emissions reduction as potential asset. Simon Wheeldon is CloudApps’ CEO, and the man tasked by Salesforce.com in 2006 to bring the Force.com platform across to EMEA regions. We spoke to him at Salesforce.com’s Cloudforce 2 event in London, where he outlined the role of CloudApps: “Most organisations can’t even measure their carbon emissions, but the top 5,000 consumers of electricity need to be able understand their footprint by April 2010.”
The company’s application, CloudAppsCarbon, sits as another layer on top of the Force.com platform, helps businesses measure their carbon emissions, and then introduce them to the cap and trade marketplace the scheme will operate. “As Force.com sits underneath this, we’ve been able to build it quickly,” says Wheeldon, who is also quick to explain why it was important to integrate the application within Salesforce.com’s Platform as a Service environment. “A lot of the organisations we’re talking about are large, and they wouldn’t buy it without the brand of Salesforce.com behind it. As an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) we benefit from that commercially.”
Once a company has successfully measured its carbon emissions, CloudApps aims to take them through the next steps in perceiving the footprint as an asset: “The next stage is to compare a company with its peers, and from there you can start to understand where the discrepancies are.”
Wheeldon adds: “We can help with the engagement process with employees and customers, and also the supply chain.”
“We’re about carbon footprint reduction. Financially, there’s an impact for this. What the scheme is doing is an introductory phase, so for the first three years it will charge people for their carbon emissions, but recycle the money back based on well how you’re doing in a league table. It has quite a strong CFO agenda, they’re going to have to put money aside to pay the government, and that’s going to have a cash flow impact.”
He compared the scheme to the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading System (EU ETS), implemented in 2005 to decrease the emissions of European utility companies. “Since EU ETS, utility companies across Europe have had to buy credits. British Gas ended up selling some because they didn’t use them all – and so they sold them at a profit.” Wheeldon argues that many of the large organisations working under the CSC scheme could follow suit if suitable energy efficiencies are made.
CloudApps is currently gathering initial clients, and Wheeldon has noticed two very different types of customers attracted to his company’s solution: “At this point, there are two types of customers. There are those focused on legislation coming up in April, and there are others ranging from small to large organisations who see this as a brand differentiator.”
This week’s summit in Copenhagen means it’s an apt time for Wheeldon to begin evangelising about CloudApps, and the opportunities his company provides. Although currently focusing on UK operations, Wheeldon is already looking across the Atlantic and the US market. As attitudes continue to change towards green issues thanks to the Obama White House, he’s expecting a similar climate to the CRC to emerge in the US within the next few years.
Wheeldon points out, “It’s an interesting scenario that things in high-tech strategy usually originate in the US, and then come over here. This is actually the other way round thanks to the British government putting forwards the legislation. As a result, we're four or five years ahead of the US.”
