ARMONK, NY /Marketwire/ -- IBM, Enterprise Information Management, Inc. (EIM), and Evergreen Energy Inc. announced a greenhouse-gas meter called GreenCert, developed on IBM Websphere Portal-based software, which can calculate carbon reductions across multiple industries and devices. The absence of such compliance tools is cited as inhibiting the investment in and growth of the potentially $30 billion global carbon market, according to a World Bank report.
GreenCert provides an automated software tool to gauge and document greenhouse-gas management efforts and can transform the data into Certified Carbon Emissions Reduction Credits (CCERC). This greenhouse-gas meter is a collaborative project among IBM business partner EIM, Evergreen Energy Inc., and its subsidiary, C-Lock Technology Inc. (C-Lock).
The technology extends the global greenhouse-gas reduction trading market to numerous sectors, including power, agriculture, government, and financial services. It can easily be deployed throughout power plants, cement factories, steel factories, and commercial buildings, measuring outputs of greenhouse gases from florescent lights, printers, and other sources of energy output.
GreenCert offers a standard, repeatable methodology for efficiently collecting and manipulating large volumes of information and calculating and documenting emissions reductions, a process that has typically relied on highly specialized labor- and transaction-intensive methods. Previously, organizations had to rely on customized approaches to measuring emission reductions before a credit could be monetized and traded.
Private and public organizations around the world are facing a growing need to acquire new, cost-effective tools to manage, quantify, analyze, and report on their greenhouse gas footprint. At the same time, investors and stakeholders are increasingly demanding full accounting of greenhouse gas-related liabilities and assets. Energy use (as measured by kilowatt-hours or kWh) is a critical piece of data for the calculation of emissions. Converting emission reduction to Certified Carbon Emission Reduction Credits (CCERC) opens a previously untapped revenue source. CCERCs are valued between $3.00 and $8.00 per metric ton, the measurement used to quantify greenhouse gases (1 ton equals 1000 kilograms, or 2205 lb).
The overall value of the global aggregated carbon markets was over $10 billion in 2005, the last full year for which data is available, with the potential to grow as high as $30 billion for 2006, according to the World Bank report: "State and Trends of the Carbon Market 2006."
"Reducing climate-change risk and promoting investment in clean energy systems is a long-term venture requiring billions of dollars of annual investment...," the report states. "In order for the (carbon) market to generate sustainable long-term capital at the scale required, the market needs a strong compliance system, more transparent and credible processes about formulating and releasing emissions data, and clear signals about future policy direction."
To meet this growing business opportunity, companies have spent billions trying to come up with custom solutions that are expensive and still fall short of the scale demanded by the climate-change challenge. With the joint software effort, companies will have a global and high-volume tool for stepped-up greenhouse-gas measurement. GreenCert aims to reliably quantify what is being traded, allows important information to be shared among multiple organizations and authorized users, and supports emerging ecological-impact standards and legislation. To learn more about the specific capabilities of this tool, visit C-Lock Technology's Web site (C-Lock).
GreenCert has specific industry models, as in agriculture, that can use base data from the farmers who manage the land and compute the amount of carbon sequestered in the soil over time and be used for carbon emission–reduction credits. Energy companies can use sensor data from power plants and other facilities to compute and verify carbon emission reductions.
The GreenCert infrastructure was designed and built by EIM and is based on a services-oriented architecture that uses 100% IBM software. The IBM technologies that make up the system include Websphere Portal, Lotus Forms, DB2 Universal Database, Content Manager, Records Manager, WebSphere Process Server, and WebSphere Business Process Management software. IBM's software and database capabilities enable the development of a robust business-process application that ensures the security, traceability, and integrity of the raw data and the resulting CCERCs.
"Because of IBM's extensive global reach and market-leading technologies that can integrate seamlessly with third-party applications, we were able to take the opportunity to help our partner EIM build on the patent-pending technology of C-Lock and the unique vision of Evergreen to track, monitor, quantify, document, and enable efficient verification of greenhouse-gas emissions," said Larry Bowden, Vice President of Portals and Interaction Services.
"Countries with growing greenhouse-emission rates, such as India and China, need to manage greenhouse gas risks and liabilities," said Bruce Lyman of EIM. "Thanks to IBM, we're able to be a part of the global solution by helping to pave the path toward a cleaner environment."
"Evergreen is pleased to join with EIM to offer a leading-edge solution built on industry-leading IBM technology that addresses a critical concern of all our domestic and international interested parties: providing an efficient, transparent methodology to document and verify greenhouse gas–emissions reductions associated with the introduction of more efficient, lower GHG emitting technologies," said Kevin R. Collins, President and CEO of Evergreen Energy, "and through this, accelerating the speed to market of these technologies for meeting our energy needs."
Powering GreenCert is an engine designed by C-Lock, based on patent-pending process technology, designed to ingest many kinds of data available from a wide variety of sensors and tools, and use them to quantify the greenhouse gases emitted and changes in emissions.
"The combination of the C-Lock engine with IBM software will radically change the way greenhouse gas–emission reductions are quantified and certified," said Ted Venners, Chairman of C-Lock. "Every market participant concerned with greenhouse gas emissions will benefit from the dramatic improvement of transparency and certainty of analysis this solution offers. Only by working with IBM and its business partner EIM were we able to accomplish this vision."
Pricing and Availability
GreenCert will be available from C-Lock in the first half of 2008. Pricing will be made public at availability. The GreenCert application is available now as a trial beta from C-Lock.
C-Lock is a subsidiary of Evergreen Energy Inc.
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