Top Environmental Software Company Seeks Qualified Applicants

June 25th, 2008

Carbonetworks is starting a fairly comprehensive hiring campaign and I'd like to post this in case some of our readers are in the job market - or know quality people who are. We're a Canadian-based software company that helps businesses and governments create effective carbon reduction strategies. We do this by getting our clients' carbon inventories under control, automatically evaluating the many options to reduce, and then taking them into the markets via investments, internal initiatives, verified offsets, partnerships, and much more. We're growing rapidly and are looking to fill several positions. You can learn more about our vacancies on our careers page. We're a well-funded startup, growing rapidly, and currently have hundreds of clients in 23 countries. You can read more about us on our website, or in the media.

We're looking for:

• Enterprise Sales Managers
• Inside Sales Reps
• Business Development Managers
• Java Developers
• QA Engineers

Some of these positions are located in Canada but we also need people in the US and Europe. At Carbonetworks we value our West Coast eco-lifestyle - we are looking for people who share our environmental vision and who are committed to making a difference. In addition to our competitive benefits package, we offer eco-perks such as employee bicycle and ride-share programs, off site work sessions, and more. We are located in Victoria British Columbia, Canada - one of the world's most beautiful and environmentally-friendly cities. If one of our vacancies sounds like a career that fits with your lifestyle - or the one you want to have - we'd like to hear from you!

Carbonetworks to Provide Carbon Management Services for Governments, Consultants and Offset Project Developers

Victoria, BC – February 14, 2008 – Carbonetworks Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise software that helps companies create effective greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions strategies, today announced it will expand its service offerings to governments, consultants and offset project developers. Carbonetworks will offer these sectors simple, comprehensive and cost effective solutions for GHG and carbon emissions management.
Government. Carbonetworks gives governments a way to communicate their GHG reductions and their leadership in reducing carbon emissions. Carbonetworks software lets this public sector consolidate their emissions inventories into one platform, which fosters a better understanding and easier management of their carbon footprint. Carbonetworks also helps governments evaluate options to reduce their footprint by linking them to multiple verified offsets.
Consultants. With Carbonetworks software, consultants now have access to the best tools to help their clients manage their emissions strategies. The platform allows consultants to organize their customers' emissions data more efficiently on one central dashboard, which helps customers better control and understand their GHG emissions strategies. Consultants can lease the Carbonetworks' platform and integrate it into their existing software platform.
Offset project developers. Carbonetworks software gives offset developers control over their projects and insight into how these projects are performing. It lets developers realize their project's benefits via specific metrics and timelines that compare actual and projected performance and also allows for direct access to thousands of companies who need their projects.
"We've built on our core business platform to provide valuable services to all players in the emissions management value chain," said Michael Meehan, CEO of Carbonetworks. "Governments now have a way to communicate their GHG reductions and show true leadership in carbon management with custom calculators, jurisdictional inventories and dashboards. By working with us, consultants and offset project developers can stay ahead of their competition by giving their clients new ways to be more strategic about their GHG emissions."
About Carbonetworks
Carbonetworks is a leading provider of enterprise software that helps over 3,400 organizations around the world create effective greenhouse gas emissions strategies. The company provides executive-level views on emissions inventories and management decisions made anywhere in the organization or supply chain, and links to world markets to provide real-time valuation and GHG scenario planning, bringing bottom-line analysis into GHG decisions. Carbonetworks is based in British Columbia, Canada.

Developing a Carbon Strategy

Business leaders are inundated with conflicting reports on climate change. With so much information and so little historical context, executives have been left to blindly navigate through this new "carbon-constrained" world in hopes of understanding how their own business will be affected. In some cases, the decisions made, or avoided, could be the most significant of their tenure.

Organizations of all sizes are engaged in developing coherent business strategies but are getting caught up in sorting through the science, propaganda, and greenwashing inherent in the climate change problem. Needless to say, this is not the ideal environment for making sound, strategic business decisions.

Many executives in North America have a basic understanding of carbon markets. Implementations of previous cap-and-trade systems have led many businesspeople to believe that a compliance market will be implemented here: It is simply a question of when.

Unfortunately, most companies are limited in both their knowledge and resources for addressing this impending reality. They are further confounded by not knowing who in the organization should do what, or what they should be doing. Many executives say they are waiting to see
what the regulations will look like but in reality, they don't have a coherent strategy in place.

For top executives, all problems are disguised opportunities. In order to steer a company away from the pitfalls of a carbon market, leaders need to develop and implement effective strategies. These five steps can serve as a basis for developing such a strategy:

1. Get Control Over the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventory

Companies must have an accessible and auditable carbon inventory. The good news is that historical emissions data likely exists somewhere in the organization. The bad news is that the data may be old, inaccurate or inaccessible.

When examining an inventory, ask the following questions:

• Is the inventory recent, accurate and auditable?
• Are there tools in place to analyze the data at the business level?
• Can it be shared and reported to all of the organization's key stakeholders?

The ubiquitous spreadsheet has been employed judiciously for creating emissions inventories and has served its purpose well for organizations that need to simply record air emissions. Using spreadsheets to manage multiple emission points, however, can in many cases lead to the much
larger problem of unmanaged data growth propagating and compounding errors.

Spreadsheets are simply tables of data and require understanding and human knowledge to make them useful -- knowledge that often leaves when employees depart. Today's executives are asking for the business implications of this spreadsheet data, not the data itself. This is an
extremely important distinction that can directly affect corporate mandates around regulatory compliance, best practices, and ultimately, the company's financial health.

2. Understand Your Position

Elite organizations are adept at analyzing and managing the risks and opportunities for their business operations. Very few, however, realize their carbon-related implications. Most executives are quick to recognize the "Stroke of the Pen" risk -- the threat that new
legislation will change their business environment on emissions. Few recognize other equally serious risks or the opportunities posed by emissions reduction plans that may be different even across business units within their own organization.

Taking the lead in a new market can become a significant competitive advantage. The basis of the cap-and-trade system is to make organizations competitively reduce their emissions, yet few are taking the lead.

By acting now companies can realize a significant competitive advantage, enhance their corporate image, increase their perceived company valuation and access to capital, expose new business opportunities, and discover unrealized assets in a trading environment. These are just some ways companies can take problems and turn them into tangible opportunities that can benefit them financially.

3. Establish a Financial Perspective

Emissions trading is based on market mechanisms. As a result, carbon emissions are no longer merely a by-product of production but can have a direct impact on the bottom line of an organization. As such they must be:

• Monitored and accounted for
• Inventoried and forecasted
• Planned and managed
• Valued against some financial baseline

The key to success in this market is not compliance but rather performance, and learning how to leverage emission assets while mitigating liabilities.

Anything that affects a company's revenue and profitability must be reflected on the balance sheet, but until now carbon emissions have been absent. Companies need to put a price tag on their emissions, measure their output versus a cap or target over a time-line that extends into the future, and then use this to develop a strategy.

Familiar tools from other lines of business can be used to do this. Engage the financial experts from within the organization to create a carbon balance sheet and other financial tools to see how a properly managed (and monetized) emissions inventory can influence the company's financial performance.

4. Build a Strategy

The key to developing a carbon strategy is to look forward and move from compliance to performance-based standards. Explore all of the options available to the organization before buying into the first mitigation strategy offered. Compliance-based carbon credits may prove
to be a good financial choice, but will not be a panacea to your company's carbon problems. Search your organization for potential unrealized assets that may mitigate your carbon risk. Both in advance of and following mandated targets, explore the options of pre-compliance offsets, energy efficiency improvements and partnerships. Finally, use the human resources you have in your company to find new ways to lower your carbon footprint and be competitive.

5. Execute and Evaluate

With the multitude of options an organization faces, it can be difficult to avoid 'analysis paralysis' when it comes to acting on an emissions strategy. Executives should ensure that once a strategy has been developed, the company has the resources available to execute and monitor the progress of the strategy. Many companies in North America and around the world have begun to create new positions specifically suited to strategic analysis and execution of an emission strategy.

Companies need to find a better way to track their emissions position. Some Fortune 500 companies have built their own emission monitoring and trading platforms but these can be costly to maintain. When shopping for a solution, look for software that can grow as needs
grow and focus on strategy as well as compliance.

Window of Opportunity

Across all sectors, companies have shown an interest and willingness to participate in the carbon market. Many have put together quality greenhouse gas inventories to meet proposed regulatory
compliance needs. Unfortunately, rather than developing a coherent proactive emissions strategy, executives find themselves being reactive. As with any strategy, leaping before you look can be an expensive and risky proposition, and too often these organizations will jump straight into the carbon credit market, buy an unverified offset, or implement a well-meaning but ill-advised reduction project without fully understanding their own position.

It is important to examine a corporate carbon footprint the way an institutional investor would manage a stock portfolio – by understanding what they have, their risks, and what makes the best
financial sense now and into the future. Remember, there is presently a window of opportunity where the competition views the emission market as a mandatory compliance game rather than a strategic opportunity.

There is a clear competitive advantage available to companies that realize this opportunity -- the key will be to act while the window is still open.