ENXSuite Blog

This week has witnessed a sea change in our field. On Tuesday, September 22, the EPA issued a mandate for greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting. For the first time, large emitters of heat-trapping emissions must collect GHG data under a new reporting system.

The EPA Rule affects suppliers of fossil fuels or industrial greenhouse gases; manufacturers of vehicles and engines; and facilities that emit 25,000 metric tons or more per year of GHG emissions. For comparison, this threshold is equivalent to the amount of GHG emissions from the annual energy use of 2,200 homes or 4,600 passenger vehicles. Enterprises and facilities in the affected categories will be required to submit annual reports to EPA. The gases covered by the rule include carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), perfluorocarbons (PFC), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), and other fluorinated gases, including nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) and hydrofluorinated ethers (HFE).

Participating enterprises and facilities must collect data beginning January 1, 2010 — that’s less than 100 days from now. The first annual report must be submitted to the EPA by March 31, 2011. This mandate affects nearly 10,000 facilities in the United States, representing approximately 85% of U.S. GHG emissions.

The EPA reporting mandate brings significant challenges: How to implement a systematic process that produces consistent, auditable, and accurate GHG information? How to effectively collect data from disparate systems in geographically dispersed facilities? How to assure your senior management that you meet EPA requirements with marginal risk and cost? The short timeline makes these challenges that much more difficult.

To help you address these challenges, we’ve created Carbonetworks™ GHG Jumpstart: software and services to consolidate and report GHG emissions data quickly, effectively, and economically. Our Carbonetworks™ Information Manager (CIM) product consolidates your GHG data for EPA reporting, and provides a scorecard for measuring EPA GHG compliance at the corporate, business unit, and facility levels. Our integration module, Carbonetworks Extensions, facilities interoperability with a variety of other systems, from spreadsheets to legacy EMIS/EHS, ERP and in-house software, ensuring that you can continue to leverage existing systems. CIM is a fully managed SaaS web application that requires no on-premise software, can be accessed via any modern web browser, and offers robust yet easy to use functionality. (Of course, we do much more than EPA compliance; click here to learn more about the Carbonetworks Performance Management Platform.)

So, what should you do to get started? Here’s a checklist:

1. Familiarize yourself with the materials that the EPA has provided on the mandate, in particular their FAQ, fact sheet, and overview presentation.
2. Review the EPA’s screening tool to better understand how your facilities are likely to be affected.
3. If you think you’ll need to report emissions data to the EPA, register for a free 30 day trial of GHG JumpStart. To learn more, email epa.solutions@carbonetworks.com or call toll free (800) 571-0694.

With over a decade of experience and 6,000 sites implemented to date, Carbonetworks has helped hundreds of customers to manage their GHG data. Our global customers include some of the leading firms in oil & gas, utilities, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, technology, financial services, and consumer products. We look forward to helping you meet the challenges posed by the new EPA GHG emissions reporting mandate.

September 25th, 2009 by Michael Meehan - President & CEO