Executives participating in the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme are divided on the effectiveness of the scheme and the extent to which it should be reformed.

That is the core conclusion of our online survey in conjunction with BusinessGreen and GlobalActionPlan of over 100 executives responsible for their organisation’s compliance with the CRC, which revealed that the scheme:

• has managed to raise executive-level awareness of environmental issues
• has led to improved emissions reporting
• has driven investment in energy efficiency measures that have returned cost savings

Find out how the results of this survey and the insight of the respondents are shaping recommendations for policymakers reforms by downloading the whitepaper: “What next for the Carbon Reduction Commitment”.

CloudApps are excited to be a part of the UK’s largest ever Cloud Computing gathering taking place at the ExCel centre, London on Tuesday May 22nd.

We would like to take this opportunity to invite you to join us, where we will be showcasing Sustainability Suite and SuMo in action on the exhibition floor.

Register now and stop by booth 1C to find out how SuMo is helping enterprise organisations across the globe to engage employees and save 10% of their energy, water, waste and employee business travel costs.

If you cant make it along - take a SuMo tour today and discover for yourself what all the excitement is about!

London, 11 May 2012 – Global Action Plan a UNEP-supported charity for environmental behaviour change, found out that 69% of businesses in the capital believe that the games will cause significant or medium travel disruption, yet fewer businesses have a plan for how to respond. Global Action Plan has published a ten-point plan to help businesses improve efficiency, save money and reduce environmental impact.

Global Action Plan researchers found out that 41% of research respondents do not have a strategic approach to cutting travel costs and emissions. With the games set to impose difficulties in staff getting to and from work, delivering supplies and meeting with clients, the event presents a golden opportunity to change travel behaviour, even after the games.

The capital and businesses will have to deal with unprecedented travel demand: 5.3 million expected visitors will likely create 855,000 games-related trips . Yet businesses face barriers in creating better travel plans, which include inadequate technology and lack of senior leadership. Global Action Plan’s report, the result of nine months of research, shows that through innovative approaches to travel, businesses have the opportunity to change people’s work and travel patterns, improving their bottom line and helping them cut carbon emissions.

The Global Action Plan report reveals that

• 66% of companies are assessing the option of flexible working; however only 25% are looking to ensure IT systems are prepped for this challenge
• Only 17% of companies in London indicated that they would use the games as an opportunity to change employee travel habits
• Very few organisations have tried to actively engage their employees to reduce travel: 76% have never tried using incentives and 80% have never tried carbon budgets
• Among large organisations, only 13% are significantly collaborating with suppliers to reduce travel
• Only 57% of organisations provide time and carbon comparisons to their employees, which would enable them to make informed travel choices

Global Action Plan CEO Trewin Restorick said:

“UK businesses spend £17.5 billion per year on business travel , and that’s escalating all the time. Yet 76% of companies have never tried even simple incentives to reduce travel. Improving travel efficiency will save businesses money and increase competitiveness. The Olympics are a once-in-a-generation opportunity to encourage employees to travel differently.”

Global Action Plan’s Ten Point Plan

Global Action Plan’s extensive research looks at how businesses can minimise disruption during the Olympics and change travel behaviour long term. Based on our findings we have created a ten-point plan to help businesses improve efficiency, save money and reduce environmental impact.

Rule 1 Disruption equals opportunity

Past Olympic events have proved that large-scale events can be an opportunity to challenge the status quo on travel. 12 years ago in Sydney, the Olympic games resulted in 24% of Sydney employees changing their working hours and 22% worked remotely during the games.

Only 17% of companies indicated that they would use the Games as an opportunity to change employee travel habits. Will they be missing out?

Rule 2 Create a different culture

Ask the question: “Do you really need to travel?” Get your employees to “apply for” rather than “book” their travel, and set up a travel decision tree. Never underestimate the power of cultural cues.

82% of our respondents had never tried to use competition as an engagement tool and 76% have never incentivised or rewarded sustainable travel. But these are keys to changing behaviour.

Imaginative organizations can reap benefits The Lake District National Park Authority reduced carbon emissions from travel by 28%, in part by setting team targets, providing quarterly feedback of progress and offering prizes, all of which fostered a sense of collective responsibility.

Rule 3 Time for a logistical re-think?

One key travel challenge will be to get supplies delivered and maintenance done. Is this where your innovation can come from?

Sainsbury’s has developed first response mopeds designed to get engineers to stores rapidly to deal with maintenance problems in their stores. It’s a more efficient and less carbon intensive way to get employees from A to B and if successful, Sainsbury’s will extend the idea to all stores within the M25.

Rule 4 Do you remember the first time?

Whether it is virtual meetings, car-sharing, cycling or using public transport, the first experience counts. Many employees don’t use video conferencing facilities because their first experience of it was poor.

Telefónica O2 have set up a network of collaboration gurus from around the business who act as local champions, telling colleagues what technology is available to them and the benefits it can bring, and providing local support to anybody experiencing problems.

Rule 5 ‘Walk the Walk’

Credible and visible support from senior managers is essential. Yet 77% of respondents had never identified and promoted senior sponsors to “Walk the Walk.”

Sign-off from senior management is insufficient if they if they proceed to openly flout the policy. As one survey respondent said: ‘We had a no domestic flights initiative, which was discredited because senior people within the business were quite visibly ignoring it and flying‘.

To bring senior management on message, you must understand what motivates them. Knowing how fond directors are of their cars, one CSR manager arranged a trip to test-drive electric cars. One director loved the experience so much; he is now pushing for an electric car pool.

Rule 6 Flexibility is not just for gymnasts

Check that your IT is up to it. Our research indicates that the most popular solution being considered by businesses is to allow more flexible working: 65% of companies are assessing this idea. Rather worryingly, only a quarter of them are looking to ensure that IT systems can cope with this significant change.

Businesses can only push flexible working if their technology can withstand this change in working habits. In February 2012, in preparation for the potential disruption caused by the Olympics, Telefónica O2 successfully tested its ICT infrastructure by closing down the entire head office in Slough for one day.

Rule 7 Impact counts

Measuring travel impact is only useful if the data is used intelligently. Travel data broken down to a team or even individual level can be a powerful motivational tool. Use it to tell a story, to feed back to employees on progress and to thank them when they have helped the business to improve.

For example, an organisation with 8,000 employees and an annual travel expense of £15M found that by using CloudApps SuMo – an employee engagement technology that embodies social networking, game mechanics and mobility – they were able to drive the following results.

• 9% (£1.35M) reduction in overall annual travel expense costs
• 27,000 hour efficiency gain achieved by finding alternatives to business travel
• 10% reduction in annual carbon footprint

Employees using SuMo showed significant changes in behaviour, generating 25% reduction in taxi use, 15% reduction in mileage claims, and 6% reduction in flights. A control group of employees who were not using CloudApps SuMo saw their travel footprint and costs actually increase by 2.1%.

Rule 8 Hit the target

45% of our survey respondents had never targeted messages at those who travel the most. But it gets results. Aim messages at those who book travel (like PAs) who are frequent travellers or who are known to be the early tech adopters.

One leading consultancy worked with assistants and PAs who did the actual travel booking. By showing them that journey times can be comparable, and that train journeys can be productive, they were able to change behaviour. Consultants didn’t mind as long as they arrived on time.

Rule 9 Get collaborative

Among large organisations, only 6% are significantly collaborating with clients to reduce travel and13% are significantly collaborating with suppliers. Make an agreement with your key clients and suppliers to set boundaries and incentives to reduce travel.

Repeatedly businesses told us that any agreement to reduce project travel by meeting virtually would only be initiated by the client. The financial benefits to both parties are clear and many businesses will have mutual, publically-stated carbon reduction commitments which can begin the conversation.

Rule 10 Plan beyond 2012

There is no magic wand to changing an organisation’s travel culture. What is required are patience, persistence and sound planning. Make sure that whatever you implement before the Olympics has staying power.

Companies rush into buying expensive equipment without understanding the problem. Successful organisations took the time to understand the barriers and remove them. With persistence, travel routines changed and new habits form.

About the Global Action Plan research

The findings in this report are based on a 9 month research project carried out by Global Action Plan bringing together learnings from over 150 organisations, ranging from multinational corporations to local SMEs, local authorities and charities. We combined desk research and discussion groups to help us define the focus of the research and used surveys and telephone interviews to help us understand what does and doesn’t work with sustainable travel. The research is published in the report “Business in Motion: Travelling Less, Travelling Differently”. To find out more about the research, go to

About Global Action Plan

Global Action Plan is the UK’s leading environmental behaviour change organisation and, since 1993, has helped businesses, schools, and communities reduce their carbon footprint to positively impact on the environment and climate change. Global Action Plan consistently achieves significant environmental and financial savings in the UK by empowering people to take action on energy, waste, water and transport and reach their sustainability goals. Global Action Plan is the only charity in the UK to be supported by the United Nations Environment Programme.

LONDON – April 20 2012 – Lush is known for its efforts to campaign on environmental issues with staff and customers and to reduce its environmental impact in product design, manufacturing and selling. Lush has now chosen CloudApps as its sustainable software provider to help organise data collection and improve reporting.

The CloudApps’ Sustainability Suite captures and discloses the company’s complete ‘environmental footprint’, which includes measurements on water and energy use, travel, waste generation and packaging across all 102 stores, 8 main offices and 8 factory sites in the UK.

Lush’s commitment to the environment starts in the innovation and design of its handmade cosmetics, 62% of which are package free. They have turned conventional packaged items ‘naked’ as seen in one of their popular products, the solid shampoo bar. The items that are packaged are done so in 100% recycled material, and customers are able to be part of a closed loop scheme, returning used Lush black pots to their local Lush shops, as well as their plastic bottle tops to be recycled internally.

Lush also works hard to reduce its environmental impact in reducing energy usage in the factory, recycling 85% of waste, retro fitting shops for better efficiency, banning domestic flights, and installing renewable energy systems.

All this hard work needs to be monitored somehow, which is where CloudApps software comes into play. By partnering with CloudApps, Lush is setting the next level in environmental management on the high street and will be able to achieve further carbon savings.

Peter Grant, CEO CloudApps said: “We are delighted that Lush has taken this step, they are once again proving their leadership in the retail industry. As a brand leader and in tight economic times, Lush realises that this is a straightforward way to reduce outgoings and further differentiate its already strong brand.”

Ruth Andrade, Lush Environmental Officer said : “At Lush, we know there is always more to do. With CloudApps’ solution we are to accurately measure, analyse and report our total operational impact in real-time. The solution allows us to manage accurately to the sustainability goals we have signed up to that will both benefit the environment we live in and reduce our operational costs.”

About Lush

Since establishing 17 years ago, Lush Cosmetics has been driven by innovation and its ethics. Creators of pioneering beauty products such as the fizzing bath ballistic, shower jellies, solid shampoo bars and Toothy Tabs solid toothpaste. Lush places emphasis on fresh ingredients like organic fruits and vegetables.  Lush operates a strict policy against animal testing and supports Fair Trade and Community Trade initiatives.  Lush leads the cosmetics industry in combating over-packaging by running public awareness campaigns and developing products that can be sold ‘naked’ to the consumer without any packaging. Lush has been awarded the RSPCA Good Business Award for 2006 and 2007, the 2006 PETA Trailblazer Award for Animal Welfare and the International Fund for Animal Welfare ‘Business of the Year’ award in 2010.

Co-founders Mark and Mo Constantine were awarded OBEs for services to the beauty industry in the new years honours list 2010.

After accounting for 1300 sources from Salesforce’s global portfolio, CloudApps is using social business techniques to engage over 8000 employees. The Sustainability Momentum (SuMo) app is being rolled out to add a “bit of spice and competition” between employees in reducing individual footprints.

The BusinessGreen Awards will be judged by a panel consisting of, amongst others, representatives from Pricewaterhouse Coopers, World Wildlife Fund and Confederation of British Industry. They offer a fantastic opportunity to celebrate trail-blazing firms that are pioneering new and more sustainable ways of doing business.

“The BusinessGreen Leaders Awards received over 200 entries this year and selecting the shortlist was a huge challenge,” said BusinessGreen editor James Murray. “All of the companies and individuals shortlisted have displayed genuine green leadership and are pioneering the kind of innovative sustainable technologies and business models we need to build a successful green economy.”

Peter Grant, CloudApps CEO is looking forward to the event and said “It feels fantastic to be nominated by such an influential publication, not only on the sustainability agenda, but on such an important customer and employee engagement project also. It recognises and adds support to our belief that we are are improving businesses nationally and internationally.”

The event will take place on the 4th July at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington and we hope to see you there.

By bringing the best of the consumer world into every-day business, modern technology trends are shaping employee engagement in corporate sustainability. Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps explains.

Gone are the days of passive employee engagement techniques, such as coffee room poster campaigns, intranet information sites and green teams. These techniques are rapidly being replaced by technology solutions that deliver information directly to every employee, making it compelling for them to remain engaged and at the same time creating real and measurable behavioural change.

• “Why can’t business applications be as easy to use as buying a book on Amazon.com?”
• “The AppExchange marketplace is like the eBay of Business Applications!”
• “Chatter Social Collaboration, the Facebook for the Social Enterprise…”

These are just three examples of how technology company, salesforce.com, has maintained their market leading position, making millions of customers successful, by bringing the best innovation from the consumer world into our every day working lives. Starting back in the late-1990′s salesforce.com, challenged us to ask how, when we were at home, we could log onto the internet and make a relatively complex transaction, like purchasing a book, happen on Amazon with ease. However, when we went to work we needed weeks of training to operate even the most simple of business applications. So was born the cloud-computing revolution that has led to every conceivable application being made available as simple, easy-to-use, low-cost, cloud-based services.

Not content with revolutionising the delivery of business applications, it moved on to disrupt how we purchase & install these applications, creating an online marketplace mirroring eBay, allowing customers to try, buy and install at the click of a button. Most recently it has challenged our thinking about the use of social networking to aid collaboration in the enterprise. Facebook at work, who would have thought it?

Why are these consumer trends shaping our business applications? Lets just take a look at a few facts. The number of Facebook users surpassed the number of email users more than three years ago. Interestingly, by 2015, Atos Origin has decided it will switch off email entirely, viewing it as a legacy technology that is no longer an enabler, but in fact an inhibitor to collaboration in the workplace.

We are living in the “post PC” era. Desktop sales are dwarfed by sales of mobile devices of which tablets now represent a growing proportion; in fact Wall Street says Apple will sell 60 million tablet devices in 2012 alone. Mobile devices have increased in their capabilities; including the ability to capture media that drives even faster ways to share information. The world has truly gone mobile and social. In todays world even traditional news services struggle to keep up with events as they unfold first on social media channels.

These collaboration and mobility trends are easy to understand in terms of their potential benefit to business applications. However, we are now seeing a third trend in “gamification”, a dreadful buzzword for a phenomenon that has relied heavily on the mobility and collaboration revolution. Just ask Zynga - they went from $0 to a $1bn company in no time. How? By allowing people to take part in a virtual world, to take on challenges, to collaborate with others to achieve results that they could not achieve alone. People of all ages connecting together to work together to solve challenges in a virtual world is something that we all clearly enjoy — in fact, we enjoy it so much that last year we collectively played some 3,000 billion hours of games. “Gamification” is the term used to describe the art of bringing the same dynamics of collaborative problem solving into business applications.

The convergence of these three technology trends; social networking, game mechanics and mobility is now supercharging sustainability in the workplace. For the first time employees can become individually connected with corporate sustainability goals; they can participate in “sustainability challenges” and collaborate with others across the enterprise in real-time; they can share best practice and pro-actively contribute their thoughts and ideas – allowing employees to be the agents of change in every organisation, connecting together to build on small achievements that rapidly add-up; powering the achievement of corporate targets to reduce energy & water consumption, reduce reliance on business travel and reduce waste – achievements that also reduce operational cost, increase corporate brand value and generate a shared value culture that creates happy and motivated employees.

For example, an organisation with 8,000 employees and an annual travel expense cost of £15M found that by using CloudApps SuMo – an employee engagement technology that embodies these trends, they were able to drive the following results.

• 9% (£1.35M) reduction in overall annual travel expense costs
• 27,000 hour efficiency gain achieved by finding alternatives to business travel
• 10% reduction in annual carbon footprint

During the same period, a control group of employees who were not using CloudApps SuMo saw their travel footprint and costs actually increase by 2.1%

The employees that were using SuMo challenged their behavioural norms, generating:

• 25% reduction in taxi use
• 15% reduction in mileage claims
• 6% reduction in flights

Playing games looks like a win for all…

Join the debate on the 2degrees network to comment

ComputerWorld covers the freshest CloudApps customer! – Lush Cosmetics – the complete article can be found here.

Cosmetics retail firm Lush, which aims to be as green as possible, is migrating to a cloud data management environment to improve reporting.

Already, 62 percent of Lush’s products are packaging-free and the ones that are packaged use 100% recycled material. The firm also says it recycles 85 percent of its waste and has banned domestic flights for staff.

Lush is now using the CloudApps Sustainability Suite to capture and disclose its complete environmental footprint, which includes measurements on water and energy use, travel, waste generation and packaging across all 102 stores, eight main offices and eight factory sites in the UK.

Data from Lush’s Sage Financials, QAD manufacturing system and QlikView analytics for shop-specific sales data will feed into the CloudApps software, which the retailer said will help it make further carbon savings.

Ruth Andrade, Lush environmental officer, said: “With CloudApps we can accurately measure, analyse and report our total operational impact in real-time.”

“The system allows us to move towards the sustainability goals we have signed up to that will both benefit the environment and reduce our operational costs.”

CloudApps is a desktop application that allows staff to see their own environmental impact and that of their team in doing their jobs. It also allows them to suggest actions to reduce that impact. CloudApps is delivered by the the Force.com cloud platform run by Salesforce.com.

The complete article can be found here

CloudApps and Global Action Plan need YOUR input as a CRC participant in a survey aimed at understanding the impact the CRC has had on your business.

Hot on the heels of the policy fiasco of feed-in-tariffs, the government has announced a consultation on another major piece of green policy the Carbon Reduction Commitment putting the future of this scheme into question. How has this happened?

When the CRC was devised ‘Cap and Trade’ was the pin-up model for some of the most vocal parts of the green movement which definitely helped get the concept onto policy-makers radars.

Civil servants soon found that the relatively simple idea was a complex nightmare to deliver. The solution they created pleased few and felt cumbersome in the extreme.Many of the mechanisms they put in place were made redundant before the scheme even went live when the Treasury decided to commandeer all the money generated thus effectively turning the CRC into a costly, randomly targeted tax attached to a reputational league table.

Ironically, the decision by the Treasury has saved the government from some PR own goals.If the transfer of money from poor to good performers had still been in place it is possible that funding from the poorly ranked Winchester and Eastleigh Health Care Trust would have ended up in the coffers of highly ranked British American Tobacco.You can only imagine what headline writers would have made of that.

The current government consultation is focusing largely on easing the operational cost and administrative burden of the scheme which clearly shows where their focus is during these times of austerity. But Global Action Plan, with support from CloudApps, is interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the impact of the CRC as we feel that this will help create better informed policy in the future.

Our interest is around questions such as: Have the reputational league tables had any impact on generating carbon savings?What actions have the CRC encouraged organisations to take already and what are they currently planning to do in the future?Would other policy activities – such as mandatory carbon reporting – be more or less likely to generate change within the business?

To answer these deeper issues we are encouraging organisations who are directly impacted by the CRC to spend a few moments to complete a questionnaire.We will analyse the results and share them openly with organisations, media and the government.We will be holding a webinar with 2degrees where interested companies can discuss and refine the findings so that the true impact of the Carbon Reduction Commitment is really understood.

We feel that it is important to take a dispassionate, independent and informed view of the impact of the CRC.Without this we will be destined to continue on a treadmill of policy interventions that start off with all the best intentions but end up in some very odd places.

If you’re part of a CRC participating organisation, have your say in our survey: CRC Research 2012. 

Tapping into social, mobile and gaming trends could help businesses respond to Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) scheme

Great article by Sophie Curtis @ Techworld, following an interview with CloudApps CEO, Peter Grant – the full article can be found here.

Gamification could be the key to driving sustainability strategies within organisations, by encouraging employees to engage in social competition with each other, rather than seeing corporate environmental initiatives as a chore.

Speaking at the Digital London conference this week, Gerd Leonhard, futurist and CEO of The Futures Agency, said that over the next decade, society needs to make the shift “from Ego to Eco”.

“Global warming constitutes the biggest market failure in the history of capitalism,” said Leonhard. “The world is over-heated, over-spending and over-crowded, and a continued focus on growth alone may well kill us.”

He said that we are now moving from the “age of the network” to the “age of the networked”, where the concerns of the masses overtake the concerns of the one percent at the top of the economic pyramid. Leonhard identifies this as a major trend in business, energy and in politics.

“Our entire system of economics and energy used to be based on systems that you had to invest in to build – and those were based on a closed system,” he said. “Now, because of the internet, systems are opening up and we can be decentralised. It’s no longer important that you own the power plant, because if you have a distributed network of three million wind turbines you can do the same thing.”

Building on these ideas, software company CloudApps has created a business application called SuMo (Sustainability Momentum) which leverages the “networked” generation’s fascination with gaming and social media to drive enterprise sustainability. This is particularly aimed at businesses that have committed to the the government’s CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme.

According to CloudApps CEO Peter Grant, most companies’ sustainability strategies consist of creating informative posters and sticking them around the office. However, this has very little impact and no longevity, according to Grant.

SuMo is a mobile application that sits on the Salesforce.com platform, and aims to appeal to four main categories of gamers – achievers, explorers, socialisers and killers. Developed in collaboration with Global Action Plan, it works on the basis that employees in a company can earn points and rewards by being more eco-friendly.

Employees are provided with real-time progress updates on their phones or tablets, via scores that indicate if an employee will meet their targets. These might include reducing their carbon footprint, energy consumption, waste, or by inputting the number of hours they have committed to volunteering.

Gamers move up through the levels and gain badges for their virtual trophy cabinet. They can also compare their progress with that of friends and see where they are on a leader board. Organisations can choose how to reward employees that hit their targets – for example, they might offer a bonus, an extra day off, or name them employee of the month.

“For the first time, a consumer-led revolution is leading the business world,” said Grant. “What we’re doing at CloudApps, effectively, is bringing together social networking, mobility and gamification to solve sustainability issues.”

Employees can also get tips on how to meet goals from Global Action Plan and add their own suggestions, on which colleagues can vote. These include steps such as using video conferencing rather than travel, car-pooling schemes or reminding workers to switch off computers overnight.

the full article can be found here

Peters session is titled: Sustainability Success through Innovation & Technology

Peter will be discussing

1) Stating the business case for sustainability
2) Technology – The sustainable driver to business change

Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.

by Peter Grant, CEO CloudApps

LONDON – Feb 22, 2012– CloudApps, the enterprise application leader in sustainability and award-winning charity, Global Action Plan, today announced an innovative service designed to accelerate employee engagement in the sustainability programmes in place today at thousands of companies worldwide.

Under the terms of the new partnership, corporate sustainability managers will benefit from the experience of two organisations both dealing daily with the most intractable issue facing most sustainability professionals; employee engagement. The rapid analysis programme links a fast-start situation review with a three month pilot programme of execution driven by SuMo, the advanced employee engagement application developed by UK start-up CloudApps to bring social business ease-of-use to the frontline of sustainability.

The initial two-day assessment comprises a complete review of current employee engagement, benchmarking against best practices and an action plan for just £2,500. On completion of this no-commitment assessment, customers will be equipped to move to practical implementation of a full-blown SuMo pilot project for up to 100 of their employees. Costing just £13,500, the enterprise-ready solution has been discounted as an incentive for companies, looking to kick-start or re-invigorate, their employee engagement programmes.

Widely regarded as a thought leader around climate change, Global Action Plan was founded 18 years ago. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) endorses it, its leadership team are consulted by the UK Government and leading global environmental campaigner, Al Gore. GAP customers include MTV, Standard Chartered bank, Aviva and British Gas. Adding Global Action Plan’s practical know-how with CloudApps award-winning employee engagement technology provides both a sound academic framework and the ability to measure, monitor and reduce unsustainable business processes and waste.

Trewin Restorick, CEO, of Global Action Plan, said: ”Our employee engagement practices have been created over years of experience across a wide range of sectors. We know how to achieve the benefits of culture change, but recognise that driving such real-world change is hard. An initial assessment, backed by proven CloudApps technology makes change quickly visible at the organisation, department, team and individual level. This level of transparency creates employee engagement in one financial quarter.”

Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps, said: “Employee engagement is at the heart of everything Global Action Plan does – as it is forCloudApps. Our partnership with Global Action Plan serves as proof that without deep linkage between the desired outcome and a proven means of measurement, employee engagement will remain a hope, rather than a reality for many businesses. We are already engaged on several joint opportunities and the signs are that This new innovative service offering will bring employee engagement using CloudApps to a much wider audience.”

About Global Action Plan
The UK’s leading environmental behaviour change organisation with over 18 years’ experience in sustainability communications, staff engagement and training. Global Action Plan uses its practical experience, knowledge and credibility to help thousands of people and organisations make environmental and financial savings using a supportive, structured approach tailors projects to the priorities and cultures of individual communities. Our programmes have social and environmental benefits, are proven to work, and are United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) endorsed.

CloudApps & Global Action Plan employee engagement service offering covered by BusinessGreen. Read the full article here

New service shares environmental indicators to help whole company manage their carbon footprint

ExxonMobil has received a stark reminder of the need to comply with green regulations, after it was fined €3m for failing to report 30,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from a Scottish chemical plant.

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) last week published its 2010-2011 enforcement report, revealing it had slapped a €3,296,600 penalty on Exxon after the company failed to report nearly 33,000 tonnes of carbon emissions from the Fife Ethylene Plant.

SEPA said Exxon had highlighted the error, but was still liable for the fine, which is charged at €100 per tonne of unreported emissions under the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

An Exxon spokesman toldBusinessGreen the under-reported emissions accounted for just under five per cent of the site’s total and that the error had been caused by “incorrect mapping of routings”.

He added that the mistake was immediately reported when it was spotted and that the company has now fully reviewed and improved its procedures to avoid a repeat of the mistake.

According to WWF Scotland, the fine is by far the highest financial penalty for any environmental offence in British history, and serves as a warning to businesses of the need to understand and comply with environmental regulations.

“It is very embarrassing for a company as well resourced as ExxonMobil to have to admit that they can’t fill in forms properly, let alone to get fined nearly £3m for their mistake,” said WWF Scotland director Richard Dixon.

“This is the biggest, but there have been other examples of companies under-reporting their contribution to climate change. The whole point of the European trading scheme is to limit the total climate pollution coming from industry, so it is quite right that fines should be high for those who fail to comply,” Dixon added.

read the full BusinessGreen article here

BONUSES have been on and off the news agenda since the economic crash, add to that bankers’ bonuses causing distrust within the financial sector and it is clear a reassessment of how we reward within an organisation is needed. The recent news that Fred Goodwin, former CEO at Royal Bank of Scotland, has had his knighthood stripped takes the concern over bonuses out of the corporate world and onto the national agenda.

At the moment it seems unclear what bonuses are being judged on? It is this lack of transparency which causes such a public backlash. The ‘old school’ bonus method within larger corporations needs an overhaul which appeals to a generation who place job security, sustainability and ability to grow internally above titles and grandiosity.

The government recently praised John Lewis for its performance during a troubled economy. Nick Clegg stated “Britain should develop more of a John Lewis economy” in a recent speech. The retailer is a company without shareholders, its value is vested in a trust that can only be shared between the company’s employees. This corporate structure has resulted in a higher sense of connectivity and led to high street success while other retailers suffered. This achievement proves having an engaged workforce doesn’t justmake them a happy one but, also a profitable one.

By rewarding employees for their environmental actions through bonuses, public recognition, and through starting employee-inspired and supporter initiatives, companies are more in tune with the backbone of their workforce. By having the ability to truly measure an employee’s impact in an organisation bonuses can be fairly benchmarked while generating significant cost savings.

For example by aligning and engaging with its employees one of our customers, an organisation with 6,000 staff managed to reduce its travel costs, expenses and its carbon footprint. It had an annual travel cost of $24m (£15m); saw a 25% reduction in taxi use; 15% reduction in mileage claims; and a 7% reduction in flights. This in turn led to 10% reduction in its annual carbon footprint; a 9% reduction in annual expense costs; and a total of 27,000 hours spent working rather than travelling. This directly created cost savings and could be traced down to individual employees. Each team, or floor, was encouraged to provide information on how much waste they recycled, whether they switched off lights and computers or if they had participated in video conferencing as opposed to hopping on a train.

Employee engagement is all too often a ‘management by poster slogan’ but the financial case for a driven workforce speaks volumes. Rewarding ‘green bonuses’ to high performing staff is already gaining ground as companies turn their back on the traditional approach of linking bonuses to profits. For example, TNT has rolled out a sustainability-linked scheme. While all 600 executives at AkzoNobel, a Dutch company, will only receive bonuses based on how much they have contributed towards reducing injuries among staff and cutting carbon, energy, water and waste. As usual the UK seems to be lagging behind the rest of Europe but with big brand companies such as John Lewis showing that an engaged workforce is key to success, a bottom up approach makes financial sense.

–Peter Grant, CEO, CloudApps

Read the complete article here

LONDON – Feb 9th, 2012– CloudApps, the enterprise application leader in sustainability, today announced its first FTSE 100-listed customer, international engineering and project management company, AMEC (LSE:AMEC).

CloudApps Sustainability Suite and its advanced employee engagement solution, SuMo, will combine to drive some of the most aggressive sustainability targets on the planet. The company is aiming for a 2013 reduction of 15% in carbon emissions against a 2008 baseline, followed by falls of 40% by 2020 and a 60% reduction by 2030.

AMEC is a global employer of some 27,000 and widely acknowledged as a global sustainability champion. Its worldwide operations have seen it recognised every year this decade as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) industry leader for oil equipment and services. Customers such as BP, Shell, the US Navy and EDF rely on AMEC services ranging from environmental and front end engineering design at the start of a project to decommissioning assets at the end.

Reviewing its on-going commitment to Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) reporting, AMEC’s senior management team searched for an advanced solution which could engage employees across the business, ran sustainably and was capable of meeting not only carbon and environmental metrics but could cater for social and economic measures also.

The CloudApps solution, built on the world’s most sustainable cloud computing platform, delivered by market leader salesforce.com, adds no additional footprint as AMEC rolls it out to 40 international operations globally. In addition to carbon and energy reporting, CloudApps customers measure water, waste and corporate social and economic metrics, making it ideal for future wide scale projects.

Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps said: “AMEC’s management vision on sustainability and its stewardship of precious natural resources has led the oil industry since the turn of the decade. We are incredibly proud to help them deliver world-leading sustainability outcomes. AMEC typifies the sort of environmentally-aware leaders which has fired up the CloudApps team since our inception.”

We are delighted to announce that Chris Turner at Veolia Environmental Services UK was today drawn out of the hat of survey respondents and is therefore declared the winner of the iPad2 gift prize. Many congratulations Chris, we hope you enjoy your new toy which is on its way to you now!

The feedback from our survey was overwhelmingly positive, thanks to one-and-all for your insight and helpful comments – some great advice received that we shall certainly be acting upon during the coming months.

We are grateful for everyone who took the time and trouble to respond to the survey. It is our intention to keep listening to both our existing and prospective customers, allowing us to better understand how we can put ourselves in the best position to assist. We will re-visit the survey again in a few months time and hope to offer another tempting morsel to persuade you to participate!

Warm regards,

The CloudApps Team

Read the full article here

The 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Durban, South Africa at the end of last year may have been eclipsed by the Euro Crisis, but in the UK the large public and private sector organisations responsible for around 10% of carbon emissions are being held to account for their energy management strategies.

Approximately 5,000 organisations in the UK are required to report their carbon emissions under the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme. You may be working for one of them. You may also be working for an organisation that is looking to re-address its image, either because you work in an unpopular sector, or because key figures are embroiled in a scandal over pay-scales or unethical policies or because the organisation is accused of not paying a fair amount of corporate tax. Even if your organisation is not one of these, it is a fair bet that as fuel costs rise, you have been asked to look at ways to cut electricity consumption. So, in many ways 2012 looks like it may be a good year for corporate sustainability initiatives.

If your organisational management team is promoting the use of local produce, sustainable sourcing and ethical pay, how do you go about helping them track and manage all this? We know that many organisations are looking to create their own reporting tools using existing back office applications to collect and disseminate information. That is all well and good but there are SaaS solutions available that can offer more in the way of industry benchmarking and provide services that are fun for staff to use. And it is important to remember that employee engagement is a big part of the battle to become a more sustainable organisation.

For example, Peter Grant is CEO of CloudApps a UK software vendor providing a sustainability management and monitoring solution via the salesforce.com SaaS platform. CloudApps takes data from energy, transport and CSR initiatives to create baselines and can then put a service in place for you that aligns with best practice in your industry, sector and geography. The service helps your organisation set the carbon budget and measure activity against it – the information gathered can then be used to differentiate your organisation in the market.

In terms of data capture, if you can get the data out of your existing systems, CloudApps can get it into its salesforce.com engine using APIs or flat files, or by sending requests via workflow. The information is then sent back via dashboards. The service also has an interesting employee engagement capability, SuMo, based on a gamification engine that sets challenges to reduce carbon footprints, which are linked into rewards systems within the organisation.

Last year (to March 2011) was the first CRC reporting year. Due to effectively moving to a tax, the government decided to waive the process of purchasing and surrendering of carbon allowances in the first year. However for the year (to March 12) carbon allowances will need to be purchased and surrendered. The Environmental Agency (EA) has a prescribed process for this. This process will take some time and effort to initially set up and then execute against.

At a high level, named and certified individuals (Account Representatives) will need to be approved and registered on the CRC Registry. They, and only they, will be empowered to first purchase and then surrender allowances on behalf of the participating organisation. Please do not leave the certification and registration to the last minute. It will take a number of weeks to complete the process, and we suspect the EA and the certifying agencies will be overwhelmed immediately prior to the reporting deadlines.

Key dates are:

• CRC Reporting Year 11/12 ends – 31 March ‘12
• CRC Annual Report submission – 31 July’12
• CRC Registry – will start validating Account Representatives from – 1 April ‘12
• CRC Registry – the window for first purchasing and then surrendering allowances – opens 1 June, closes 31 July ‘12

Please note the deadline for the completion of the allowances process is the same as the Annual Report submission date. Hence you need to either; complete your reporting well in advance so that you know precisely how many allowances to purchase, or you need to purchase based on an estimate. Note that within a CRC phase excess allowances can be carried forward from one year to the next. If excess allowances are purchased re 11/12 they can be surrendered against your 12/13 liabilities.

Factored in these steps when determining timing:

1. Each Account Representative will require a digital certificate in a format acceptable for the CRC Registry. These can take 2 weeks to obtain, assuming all relevant information (name, dob, address etc) is provided right first time. I would suggest that this step starts in March so that it is completed for when the CRC Registry opens for Account Representative registration in April ’12.
2. Your finance team may need a number of weeks to process your purchasing request. An invoice will not be issued prior to the allowance purchase, so your Finance team need to have the necessary approvals to make a payment without an invoice.
3. The EA are likely to require a week between receipt of the funds, and making the allowances available for surrender. (This is an estimate as the process has not been completed yet, but in the first year at least there is likely to be delay, particularly immediately prior to the submission deadline)

Other items to consider:

You can have more than one Account Representative – but each has to go through the same certification process, which results in incremental fees.

Acceptable digital certificates can be obtained from Chamber Simply Sign and cost about £40 per annum. http://www.simplysign.co.uk/. Allow some time to work with your IT department to ensure these certificates work within your internal IT protocols. 

Suggested Timetable:

• March – obtain digital certificates for Account Representative(s)
• April – register Account Representative on CRC Registry
• May – complete data capture for CRC Annual Report. Estimate number of allowances required.
• June – notify internal finance re the estimated number CRC allowances required to be purchased at £12 per tonne Co2e
• July – early – make payment to CRC Registry to purchase allowances
• July – mid – submit Annual Report
• July – late – surrender the necessary number of allowances.

Find out more about how CloudApps is helping companies with their CRC Reporting.

Simon Corley – CloudApps CFO 

An annual supporter of the Corporate Leaders Network for Climate Action, CloudApps once again lent our support to the 2C Challenge Communiqué.  As such we are encouraged by the late-breaking news from the Durban Summit. There is however, clearly a long way to go and a need to flesh out the precise details in order to deliver against this “commitment to sign a legally binding treaty”, but significant progress has without doubt been made.

BusinessGreen covered the breaking events, stating:

Businesses hail ‘great result’ at Durban Summit

Business leaders have broadly welcomed the last-gasp international deal agreed in the early hours of the Durban Summit yesterday morning, which for the first time commits all countries to signing on to a new legally binding climate change treaty.

In dramatic scenes, ministers reached an agreement on a new text almost 36 hours after the scheduled close of the two-week summit.

The text, known as the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, will see the EU and a handful of other countries extend the Kyoto Protocol into a second commitment period, allowing for the continuation of emission reduction initiatives enabled by the treaty such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

In return all countries agreed to deliver a new protocol, another legal instrument, or an “agreed outcome with legal force” by 2015 that will then be enacted by 2020. The wording paves the way for large economies such as the US, China, India and Brazil to be subjected to legally binding climate change obligations for the first time.

The summit also agreed the structure for a new international Green Climate Fund with talks set to start next year on how to funnel $100bn a year of finance to the fund each year from 2020.

Click here to read the full article from BusinessGreen:

UK’s Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) also covered the news with this press release:

Road open to new global legal climate treaty

11 December 2011

• Global agreement achieved on a roadmap to a legally binding deal
• Second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol to be agreed next year
• Green Climate Fund to be set up

Negotiators in the early hours of Sunday morning. European Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard (centre) with the UK’s Head of International Climate Change, Pete Betts (to the left, seated)The UN climate talks in South Africa have been heralded a success after a climate change deal was struck in the early hours of Sunday morning.194 parties have spent the past two weeks in Durban discussing how to cut emissions to limit global temperature rise to below two degrees to avoid dangerous climate change.

In a major realignment of support, well over 120 countries formed a coalition behind the EU’s high ambition proposal of a roadmap to a global legally binding deal to curb emissions. African states together with the least developed countries such as Bangladesh and Gambia, and small island states vulnerable to rising sea levels, like the Maldives, joined with the EU to put forward a timetable which would see the world negotiate a new agreement by 2015 at the latest.

The talks resulted in a decision to adopt the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol next year in return for a roadmap to a global legal agreement covering all parties for the first time. Negotiations will begin on the agreement early next year.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne said:

“This is a significant step forward in curbing emissions to tackle global climate change. For the first time we’ve seen major economies, normally cautious, commit to take the action demanded by the science.

“The EU’s proposal for the roadmap was at the core of the negotiations and the UK played a central role in galvanising support. This outcome shows the UNFCCC system really works and can produce results. It also shows how a united EU can achieve results on the world stage and deliver in the UK’s best interests.

“There are still many details to be hammered out, but we now need to start negotiating the new legal agreement as soon as possible and there are still many details to be hammered out.”

Also the conference agreed to get the Green Climate Fund up and running, this will help deliver financial support to developing countries to reduce emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change.

Click here to read the full DECC release 

On the 7th December, the CloudApps team participated with the salesforce.com Foundation at the Heathrow Special Needs Farm, helping to setup and run an Xmas Party for their many guests. Marquees were erected to house face painting, lucky dip, duck fishing, a puppet coconut shy, a very welcome hot drinks stall and a stunning catering tent. A visit from Santa and a local dancing / choral group made the day memorable for all participants.

Mark Mathias, the worthy winner of the recent CloudApps & Global Action Plan eco-driving simulator competition, kindly donated his winnings to the Farm. Simon Wheeldon, from CloudApps, presented the cheque during the event on Mark’s behalf (many thanks for your kind gesture Mark!).

Two Simon’s and an Elf Helper

Directing Proceedings!

The party in full swing!

Mark Mathias donation (by Simon Wheeldon!)

Enjoy !

The CloudApps Team

LONDON – December 1st, 2011– CloudApps, the enterprise application leader in sustainability, today announced the latest version of its award-winning Sustainability Suite and a new not-for-profit online educational resource to share best practices from the sustainability community.

The new version of CloudApps Sustainability Suite unites economic, social and environmental measures of sustainability sources in a single easy-to-use enterprise application. For the first time, executives responsible for managing spiralling energy costs and meeting overall corporate sustainability goals can share ownership of those goals with the wider workforce. They can also project the impact of sustainability measures forwards so that they can accurately and in real-time see their overall ‘sustainability-performance’.

In addition, CloudApps announced its role as founder and funder of Sustainability-Space, an online collaborative ideas exchange which launches with over 100 free sustainability ideas – which will be reviewed, added-to and voted for by its community of users. Sustainability-Space, designed specifically to foster a dialogue within the sustainability community, is free-to-use and built on the salesforce.com Ideas platform.

The combination of the latest ideas from experts in sustainability and world-leading technology, brings three clear benefits:

Stop [resource wastage] – Account for every source of sustainability information right across the organisation, for the first time bringing environmental, social and economic data together in one place.

Collaborate – Manage achievement against your corporate sustainability goals in real-time. Bring employees from different work groups, geographies, departments and job roles together on one platform. Engage and collaborate using social media techniques such as Force.com Chatter.

Listen – Use the power of ‘crowd-sourcing’ to encourage sustainability ideas from employees and business partners or even from competing organisations. Bring these ideas together with suggestions from sustainability-space to accelerate cost savings.

Jon Elikington, founder of leading think tank and consultancy, Sustainability, commented: “’CloudApps, which produces my favourite sustainability dashboard, now brings us the sustainability-space website — a place to meet, greet, learn and share.’

Peter Grant, CEO of CloudApps said: “Our customers are innovators and they expect their suppliers to be leaders. The new CloudApps Winter ’12 release is a massive step forward in sustainability, covering more sources, more accurately than ever. Combined with access to the very latest in sustainability thinking available for free via Sustainability-Space, it provides the ‘How?’ to Sustainability’s ‘What?’. With these advantages there simply is no excuse for organisations to miss out on the cost and brand advantages early adopters are clearly experiencing from sustainability.”

Sustainability Suite Winter ‘12 – NEW FEATURES INCLUDE:

Manage any source of sustainability data (Environmental, Social & Economic)
For example

• Any carbon-emitting source (fuels, electricity, fugitive emissions etc.)
• Water supply & treatment
• Waste disposal
• CSR sources (such as volunteering hours, charity donations etc.)
• EHS sources (such as workplace incidents, human rights violations etc.)

Sustainability Goal Management
Including

• Goal base-line calculations
• Allocation of budget to goals & targets across the organization
• Goal tracking & performance projection

Source Inventory Management
Including

• Comprehensive posting agreements & inventory rules
• Inventories for any measure for any type of Sustainability information
• Tracking of costs for all inventories, cumulative, monthly & annual

Performance Centre Management
Including

• Assignment & alignment of inventories to an organizations performance centres
• Allocation of goals and inventories into performance indicators
• Projection of achievement for any performance indicator
• Roll up of performance indicators within organizational hierarchies

Certified by Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and GHG Management Institute

• Includes support for DEFRA, US EPA, IEA, IPCC, DCCEE, Environment Canada Source Conversion keys.
• Delivered on the worlds’ most energy efficient and secure (SAS70 Type II certified) Cloud Platform

LONDON – November 25th, 2011– CloudApps, the enterprise application leader in sustainability, today announced it has won the Greenbang 2011 Efficiency Award in the Cloud Computing category.

The Greenbang awards celebrate the most forward thinking, innovative businesses whose projects are designed to create a sustainable business future. It wanted to find the superstars in delivering energy efficiency who are the true innovators in driving sustainable values into business. The awards recognize the top efficiency-building technologies, projects, people and companies. Previous winners read like a ‘Who’s Who’ of advanced thinkers in sustainability and include SAP, TelecityGroup, L’Oreal and Sony Ericsson.

Accepting the award, CloudApps CEO, Peter Grant, said: “To be recognised by the leading global publication and authority in our space is an amazing accomplishment for the team just three years after start-up. We believe the true value of sustainability is felt by those organisations who go beyond talking to really engaging their people in the business benefits of sustainability. It is a matter of great pride to have that recognised just one week before we announce yet more innovation within our product suite.”

CloudApps delivers its sustainability software on the Cloud which means it is able to roll out across an organisation, no matter where they are based and can scale up or down taking in as many varied data points as its customer needs across data sources as diverse as HR, travel, expense systems, waste disposal service providers, or even smart meters. This allows its customer the ability to realise the impact of sustainability on their business and put in place effective, cost saving, carbon cutting schemes and create positive change.

This year’s judging Greenbang panel saw the business and environmental impact that CloudApps was able to achieve for customers such as Ashridge Business School, LA Fitness, Veolia Environmental Services UK and salesforce,com.

“CloudApps proves that it’s possible to achieve impressive gains in efficiency today, rather than at some distant point in the future,” said Shirley Siluk, Managing Editor, Greenbang. “Achieving that is more important than ever as organisations try to deal with both rising energy expenses and constrained finances.”

“CloudApps offers a solution that not only reports on all sources of complex sustainability data but also drives business success across departments, geographical teams and even individual employees. It is this level of collaboration and innovation that will drive the behavioural change required for sustainable success.”

One of our fantastic partners – Global Action Plan was kind enough to bring their eco-driving simulator to the party, which served to introduce a fun competitive element to the evening (all in a good cause to raise money for christmas presents for a childrens charity!)

We really hope our guests enjoyed it as much as we did !!

– The CloudApps Team