Green Tech

Better Place founder Shai Agassi is ready to show off that he's applying his software industry experience to improve electric vehicles.

At the Frankfurt auto show on Tuesday, the electric car service company will show off in-car software designed to ensure that electric car drivers have enough charge to keep driving.

Code-named AutOS, Better Place's software alerts drivers to a car battery's charge status and points them to battery charging spots and swapping stations in the company's network.

In conjunction with the launch, partner Renault is also expected to debut a concept car called Fluence ZE, a five-seat all-electric passenger car that will be able to operate at Better Place's battery-swapping stations. The two companies have committed to producing 100,000 of the sedans, which have a 100-mile-driving range, for Better Place customers in both Israel and Denmark by 2016.

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Start-up Planet Metrics is developing software that could give consumers a better read on the embedded energy of everyday products.

The San Francisco-based company on Tuesday released the beta test version of its hosted application, which it calls Rapid Carbon Modeling. It also said Method, which makes eco-friendly home-cleaning products, is a customer.

There are a number of companies writing software for calculating how much energy is linked to a business' operations and managing carbon emissions. Planet Metrics' software is geared at manufacturers and makers of consumer packaged goods.

Using Planet Metrics' software, a person could, for example, see how much energy consumption is associated with procuring the components that make up a cell phone. With that information, a company can then look for ways to cut energy consumption, such as reducing waste or finding another supplier.

The carbon footprint picture is built by combining a company's internal data, such as bills for certain materials, with scientific and academic models for calculating embedded energy, according to Planet Metrics.

Method is using the software in product design and sourcing, co-founder Adam Lowry said in a statement. "By better understanding volatile energy and resource prices, we can make better decisions to lessen the overall footprint (of our products) and save money," he said.

Planet Metrics CEO Andy Leventhal said the company does not yet have hard return-on-investment numbers for its software, but companies with sustainability initiatives, such as Wal-Mart Stores, have found significant savings in reducing fuel use and waste.

Verisae, a small Minnesota-based company, has received a patent for a system to track and report greenhouse gas emissions with software, a business attracting a growing field of companies.

The company on Wednesday said that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a patent to Verisae for a method for calculating a corporation's emissions. The patent, filed in May of 2007, describes a business process for gathering corporate emissions data, generating reports, and managing carbon credits.

Verisae is already offering hosted carbon accounting software focused primarily on retail companies, basing its tracking and reporting on the protocols established by the nonprofit Climate Registry, which sets guidelines for emissions reporting.

"This is a shot across the bow to others building this stuff," said Verisae product manager Daniel Stouffer. "This is a big story for those venture capital companies which might be spending money with firms that might be building solutions that might already be covered."

Verisae's hosted software compiles the greenhouse emissions data from a corporation's different assets. For example, a refrigerator in a store has emissions associated with its energy use and the refrigerant which is a powerful greenhouse gas, Stouffer explained.

The company is also working on a way for businesses to monetize incentives to reduce emissions, Stouffer said. Businesses can make money by participating in demand response programs, where the utility reduces the electrical load of the business--such as turning down lights in a supermarket or cooling in a building--during peak times.

Reason for worry?
The patent disclosure comes at a time of heightened interest around carbon emissions-related software. Investors expect that this year will see a lot of activity in software for tracking and reporting greenhouse gases, sometimes called carbon accounting software.

On Monday, start-up Hara Software, backed by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, announced its Web-based software. SAP purchased another carbon accounting company, Clear Standards, earlier this year in a sign of consolidation among providers.

The claims of Verisae's patent appear to describe a fairly general method for managing a business' greenhouse gas emissions. But how broadly it can be enforced is unclear, said patent attorney Eric Lane in the clean-tech practice at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps.

The claims on the patent include a number of different processes, noted Lane, who examined the patent and some related documents. That means that another carbon software company could develop a product that doesn't combine all of Verisae's claims.

Still, Lane said that the patent is worth noting for the growing number of carbon accounting software companies.

"Whether other companies ought to be worried is hard to say. Should they be aware of this? Yes," Lane said. "They have a nice package."

Growing field
Patents around different forms of carbon accounting have seen a surge in the past year, according to a recent study. In programs designed for trading carbon permits, there were six patent familes in 2000, nine in 2002, and 15 in 2006.

A significant case likely to affect carbon software is a decision by the federal appeals court that made it harder to claim business process patents often implemented in software applications, Lane said.

Part of the reason for the uptick in carbon accounting software is the expectation that heavy polluters in the U.S. will be need to comply with looming regulations to cap greenhouse emissions.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 bill calls for the creation of a cap-and-trade program to limit emissions. But the earliest a bill would pass is next year and caps on carbon emissions would be phased in over many years.

Even before a national U.S. mandate, companies are investing carbon-tracking software as part of corporate sustainability programs or to administer energy efficiency initiatives.

Start-up Hara Software is betting that businesses need to get smarter about managing natural resources and carbon emissions even before regulations force them into it.

The Silicon Valley start-up on Monday is scheduled to come out of stealth mode after 18 months to announce the details of its software service which it designed for what its founder calls a "post-carbon economy era."

The 25-person company received $6 million in venture capital from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where partner Al Gore played a role in getting Hara funded. It's the second software-focused investment after PC power management company Verdiem that KPCB has funded as part of a green tech push first launched in 2006.

Hara has developed a hosted software application called Hara Environmental and Energy Management, which is meant to give large organizations a way to monitor their water and fuel consumption and to lessen their environmental impact by planning ways to cut greenhouse gases and waste.

The software also has a content database to share information on effective efficiency programs and green technology products that a company can use, explained CEO Amit Chatterjee, who left SAP to start Hara. Its product is now being used by about 12 organizations, including Coca-Cola and the city of Palo Alto, Calif.

Chatterjee argues that metrics related to the environment, such as energy consumption, water use, and waste, are often indicators of how well a corporation performs financially. Companies with sustainability programs tend to run efficiently, have a positive brand, and have minimized the risk from things such as environmental fines, he said.

"Businesses are now becoming unprofitable because of the way they manage natural resources," he said. "Now (managing) natural resources is a core element of a business' processes."

City planners at Palo Alto, for example, were able to cut out $2.2 million in expenses related to waste and energy use.

Niche business?
Once caps on greenhouse gases are in place, which will affect large corporations, then Chatterjee predicts there will be a "tidal wave" of attention in tools to mitigate carbon emissions. Statements from President Obama on the importance of climate change regulation drove some businesses seeking better tools to Hara, he said.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, a bill making its way through the House, would impose a nation-wide cap on greenhouse gases and force heavy polluters, such as utilities, to report and lower their own emissions. The bill has a long way to go before becoming law, which would be next year at the earliest, and caps will be phased in over many years.

But even with the absence of a national carbon regulations, there is a growing number of software companies developing programs focused on helping businesses improve their environmental profile.

In a sign of consolidation among providers, SAP last month purchased Clear Standards, one of several companies young software companies with tools for tracking carbon emissions. Some focus on giving a very accurate picture of emissions and the impact of energy-efficiency programs, while others are designed for purchasing carbon offsets in voluntary or regulated markets.

The basic idea behind carbon regulations is to put a price on putting pollutants in the atmosphere. Within businesses, analysts expect that carbon will be treated as a commodity which financial planners will have to account for and track the price of.

Hara plans to sell its software to financial planners as well as business people responsible for purchasing energy and sustainability officers. Chatterjee said the company seeks to differentiate itself from others by tracking a number of environmental attributes, not just greenhouse gases and energy use.

There are already many programs, called Environmental, Health and Safety software, to help companies comply with environmental regulations. What remains to be seen is whether the latest generation of software focused on climate change abatement will be used for a relatively narrow function, such as energy procurement, or for more strategic initiatives.

Chatterjee said Hara's software is designed to be flexible so that companies can manage relatively straight-forward initiatives, such as fuel reduction, and make plans for deeper changes with the company, such as adopting on-site renewable energy or developing new products.

"This is not another ERP package. Because the business is changing, you want something that is flexible, not something institutionalized," he said.

Having mastered ways to automate manufacturing and dozens of other business processes, SAP is now acquiring expertise in managing carbon emissions.

The enterprise software giant said on Monday it has acquired 2-year-old, privately held Clear Standards, a Sterling, Va.-based software company with tools for tracking and reporting a corporation's environmental impact. No financial terms were disclosed.

Clear Standards' Web-based hosted applications are designed to help a company develop a strategy for managing carbon emissions and reducing its environmental impact. The software can create an inventory of a company's emissions and then give an environmental regulations manager, for example, a way to track efforts to reduce energy and waste.

There are no mandatory restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., although both the House and the Senate are working on bills that would affect heavy polluters, such as utilities and large manufacturers.

SAP said that the carbon management software is designed for companies that are regulated, such as heavy polluters in Europe, as well companies that are doing voluntary sustainability programs. The Clear Standards software will be integrated with SAP application financial data and its Environment, Health, and Safety Management application.

"It is essential that organizations gain actionable insight into their carbon emissions, water consumption, energy use and other environmental factors so they can lower their environmental impact," said SAP co-CEO Leo Apotheker, in a statement. "Having this ability also correlates to an organization's efficiency and competitiveness."

Anticipating broader demand for carbon management software, a few companies have developed carbon management software for tracking and reporting emissions. Planet Metrics, for example, has a tool for managing internal emissions and deciding on the most effective way to meet voluntary or mandatory goals.

OpSource is hosting a very timely conference in San Francisco this week on software-as-a-service. What with the meltdown in the economy and continuing concern about the cost and environmental impact of energy use, there's interest in how cloud computing will impact the IT world.

And what better way to cut through the hype over the so-called green aspects of SaaS than to assemble veteran technologists who might share their experiences with the uninitiated? That's the usual format: People ready to impart knowledge to people eager to receive knowledge.

Good idea but, well, maybe another day.

As I sat in a cavernous ballroom in San Francisco's Westin St. Francis Hotel scribbling down notes, it dawned on me that I was one of, literally, a handful of people listening to the lecturer. At most, there were 10 or 15 of us--a pity because as he faced a sea of mostly empty seats, Randy Bias, a technology strategist for GoGrid, a supplier of cloud computing infrastructure, offered up a convincing brief on the energy-saving advantages of virtualization and why it makes sense to offload server functions to the cloud.

He was followed on stage by Adrian Bowles, a director at Datamonitor, who was equally eloquent about why there are compelling business reasons to rip up the procedures of hardware provisioning that IT followed until the recession (some call it a depression) hit. "The old days of 'buy it, plug it in, and run it' are probably gone forever," Bowles said, proceeding to lay out a hard-headed case on behalf of going green.

By then, I counted eight people--eight--in the ballroom (not including the speaker). Most of the folks attending this two-day kaffeeklatsch couldn't be bothered with a topic that obviously bored them silly. No matter that green tech at its most basic is technology done with a low environmental impact. For some reason, a discussion of low-energy technologies, virtualization, and improved cooling techniques weren't enough to hook them.

As they used to say back in my Brooklyn neighborhood, whaddya gonna do? But truth be told, I was puzzled by all the no-shows. It wasn't as if the other sessions being held at the same time--"SaaS marketing in a downturn" and "Architecting and delivery for SaaS success"--were so much more thrilling.

Could it be that "green" remains too squishy a concept for most of these red-blooded show-me-the-money types? I buttonholed one attendee in a hallway, who agreed as he was munching down a free ice cream provided by the show's sponsors. But the proverbial man on the street interview doesn't suffice.

I heard it said at one of the sessions how IT compensation plans now hinge on how successful you are doing projects faster and doing them more inexpensively. That's why SaaS advocates believe their timing couldn't be any better. Maybe that's misplaced optimism; we'll see as the year progresses.

But this much is clear: telling the boss that you're saving the environment in the process is not likely to be the clincher. Ever.

The first step for a businesses and household to reduce energy use is getting a handle on the data.

Microsoft on Monday will make available an add-on to its Dynamics AX business applications that allows midsize companies to collect and analyze their energy usage and translate that into the environmental impact.

It's part of a broader effort around environmental sustainability at the company, headed by Robert Bernard, Microsoft's chief environmental strategist, who started at that position about a year ago.

With the Environmental Dashboard, people input utility bill information and the software generates a read-out of historical trends and a calculation of how much greenhouse gases a company produces.

"The impetus behind this is that we continue to see a greater intersection between energy efficiency and environmental stewardship," said Bernard. "We're creating software tools and services that help customers save resources--energy, money--and to reduce their greenhouse gases."

The Dynamics AX applications are designed for midsize companies which typically can't afford to have an audit of their environmental profile. Customers who have the 2009 version of the application can download the energy and environment add-on for free on Monday.

In this version, people need to manually enter usage information. In the next edition, Microsoft expects it can get that data automatically from so-called advanced meters and, in the future, directly from utilities.

There's a budding business to bring more clarity to energy usage and carbon emissions, for both businesses and consumers. A handful of start-ups, too, are developing applications specific to carbon emissions, either through managing carbon offset programs or business energy-efficiency efforts.

Microsoft gets its green on
Bernard said that the energy and environment snap-on to the Dynamics applications is one facet of the programs he's been tapped to run.

The environmental sustainability group works within Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing division. That organizational structure was deliberate because, like security and privacy, Microsoft intends to prioritize energy efficiency across its products, Bernard said.

"There are literally hundreds of people working on this issue," he said, when you include engineers in different software groups and Microsoft's work with utilities. "It's not a marketing campaign, it's not a product. It's embedded in everything we do."

It doesn't appear that Microsoft will be getting directly into the clean-energy generation business, as some of its rivals have done. IBM is looking to license solar energy-related technologies. Google's philanthropic arm has invested in a few renewable energy start-ups. Intel, meanwhile, spun out solar manufacturer SpectraWatt last year.

Instead, Bernard's responsibility covers corporate environmental sustainability; software to enhance energy efficiency; and partnering with outside organizations like The Clinton Foundation's Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) to provide cities software to track greenhouse gases.

On the software, Bernard said that Microsoft is automating data gathering on data center equipment to show energy usage and carbon impact. Microsoft engineers are also looking at ways to make different software platforms--for mobile devices, PCs, and servers--more energy efficient.

Software plays a potentially big role in modernizing the electricity grid to run more efficiently. There are dozens of smart-grid companies which collect and present energy usage data in real time so consumers can see what appliances consume the most energy. Energy-efficiency programs, run by demand-response software, allow utilities to do things like turn down thermostats selectively during times of peak demand.

"There's going to be massive amounts of software optimization developed over the next decade," Bernard predicts. "Start with the consumer or the building manager. What's going to be the breakthrough in user interface so that it becomes very simple to manage the energy in your home? It'll be like going from your old VCR versus Tivo."

Outside of software, Bernard's group played a role in reducing waste at Microsoft's main Redmond, Washington campus. By switching to compostable dishware in its dining facilities, Microsoft has cut its waste in half in the last twelve months.

If Daniel Yates, founder and CEO of Positive Energy, hits his goal this year, he'll unplug the equivalent of 75,000 homes.

The Arlington, Va.-based company late last month revealed that it has raised $14 million from New Enterprise Associates to build up its software service designed to cut home electricity use.

Because of the recession and a growing interest on cutting wasted energy, efficiency is expected to be one of the most active areas in clean tech. Already there are dozens of smart-grid outfits that make Internet-connected meters, networked appliances, or in-home displays.

Positive Energy is taking a somewhat more traditional tack to the same goal, relying on software-based data analysis and plain-old direct marketing campaigns led by utilities.

The premise behind the company is that people would change their behavior--and lower their energy usage--if they simply had more and better information, according to Yates.

"Everyone knows how efficient their car is. But even at the broadest brush stroke, people don't have the ability to talk about their home energy use, and that's a big problem," he said.

The company has developed a hosted software application that takes in utilities' customer data and generates quarterly or monthly reports for consumers on how their energy use compares to people in the same area.

Utilities use the data to offer more targeted efficiency programs. For example, it could offer a wealthy homeowner an incentive to set up zoned air conditioning.

Its first trial in Sacramento, Calif., was effective enough to cut the equivalent of 700 homes' electricity use. That's only a 2 percent energy efficiency improvement, but compared to most typical utility programs, it's very effective, said Yates.

Utilities are notoriously conservative about adopting new technologies. But the hosted software application means they don't need to spend a lot of money upfront or launch a long installation process.

With the $14 million, which follows a seed round from angel investors, Positive Energy plans to enhance its software to crunch data from so-called advanced meters, which give utilities regular updates on energy demand. It will also give consumers more data online, said Yates.

Yates was inspired to get into the energy efficiency business after being struck at how pervasive environmental degradation was during a 10-month trip from Alaska to the tip of South America. He decided to pursue efficiency at utilities through software because it was an area that would have a big environmental impact while playing to his strengths in software.

The company has 10 customers and is seeing strong demand. In the coming year, federal government incentives could boost the growing number of state-level mandates for utility efficiencies.

"The same week that Google put solar panels on their roofs (in 2007), I read another article about how New York had installed 8,000 (efficient) refrigerators in low-income housing, saving five times as much energy at two-thirds the cost of Google's solar panels. That was my 'Ah ha' moment," he said.

Updated January 10 at 6:50 A.M. PT with corrected name of New Enterprise Associates.

Planet Metrics on Tuesday joined the ranks of carbon-software specialists with the launch of its emissions modeling software and the announcement of $2.3 million in funding.

The San Francisco-based start-up said that it completed its series A round with participation from venture-capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and angel investors.

It also said that the Consumer Electronics Show will use Planet Metrics' hosted software service to track carbon emissions for CES' upcoming conference in January.

Planet Metrics is one of a growing number of software companies that have developed tools for getting a grip on corporations' carbon emissions.

Some global companies are already regulated and need to report their carbon emissions. But Planet Metrics CEO Andrew Leventhal said that even without mandates, corporations are feeling pressure from consumers and non-governmental organizations to report and reduce their carbon footprint.

"I will argue that no one's got a gun to their head, but it's becoming more and more risky not to do things like this," said Leventhal. "In the electronics industry, there has been a fair amount of industry backlash about toxins in products and the big carbon footprint...Sustainability is a hot topic for the industry association."

Planet Metrics' software uses scientific and industry data to create a picture of the carbon footprint from different activities. With very accurate data, company executives can make decisions on the best way to reduce emissions, Leventhal explained.

Buying solar panels, for example, may be a visible way to reduce fossil fuel energy use. But with the proper tools, a company may find that upgrading to more efficient heating and cooling has a much quicker return, in terms of carbon reduction and financial savings.

Levanthal said that the most under-appreciated portion of a company's carbon footprint lies in understanding the contribution of its supply chain, which typically contributes far more than a single company's facilities.

Other carbon-related software companies include CarbonFlow, which last week completed its series A round of $2.9 million, and Carbonetworks. Products from both of those companies are designed for managing carbon offset projects within a company.