A Verdantix report reviewed data from 15 live product demonstrations including a questionnaire and interviews selecting GCX’s ESP among four other market leaders for offering ‘strong energy management functionality, proven integration with a wide range of meters and controls, deep expertise in energy domains, an impressive customer base, and meaningful implementation partnerships.’ Other vendors, however, were shown to lack the scalable product architecture for global deployment as integrated reporting trends acquire momentum via mandatory or voluntary means, representing a company’s performance in terms of both financial and extra financial results requires solid data foundations.
Tracking and reporting with accuracy however, becomes expensive and increasingly onerous for individuals who train key personnel in finance, procurement and risk. In order to deliver the confidence factors material to corporate decision making, a new kind of business intelligence is required.
ESP streamlines the capture and reporting of all quantitative and qualitative source data. Designed to overcome the accuracy challenge across energy, carbon, environmental and social responsibility portfolios, intuitive dashboards and reports facilitate efficient tracking and managing of key energy and sustainability metrics. Below are some case studies from complex organisations that show how organisational energy, carbon and environmental performance monitoring delivers increased efficiency, reduced costs and sustainable outcomes that transform businesses.
Case Studies
Ramsay Healthcare
The System has been key to facilitating the delivery of financial grade sustainability reporting at Ramsay Healthcare, a listed hospital group in Australia . The listed company’s portfolio of Australian hospitals operates several types of facilities such as large general hospitals, rural medical-surgical hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, rehabilitation and co-located hospitals. In financial year 2010 the company’s operations achieved small positive cuts in its CO2 emissions and energy use per patient day – one of two core metrics Ramsay uses to evaluate its financial and environmental progress. It reduced its energy use by 8 MJ to 420 MJ per patient day and cut its carbon footprint to 80.7 kg CO2 equivalent per patient day.
Combined Motor Holdings
South African vehicle retailer Combined Motor Holdings (CMH) cut more than a third from its annual power bill following successful energy efficiency pilots at its Johannesburg car dealerships. Rising energy prices were a key driver for CMH to assess opportunities to energy cost savings in its business.
Their ClearSkys web-based platform, powered by Carbon Systems, is capable of automating the capture, tracking and analysis of CMH’s energy and water use data across the company’s 60 dealerships. ClearSkys is used to drive and evaluate business sustainability initiatives in more than 25,000 locations around the world.
CHM’s many dealerships include Volvo, Jaguar, Alfa Romeo, Lamborghini and investment cars. Subsidiaries include Bonerts various CMH subsidiaries, and Leisure and Combined Motor Finance who are all utilising the software to insert data that CMH requires for its monitoring and reporting.
Power savings of between 30 to 50 per cent over a five-month period were attained with usage falling by an average 50,000-kilowatt hours (kWh) at three pilot sites, generating average annual saving of ZAR 733,356 per dealership (GBP £61,200; AUD $90,507; USD $96,738).
These large, rapid, energy savings saw CMH achieve paybacks on energy efficiency investments within eight months. Reductions have been generated through new metering, more efficient lighting, automated timing devices and greater awareness of consumption. In the initial phase, consumption at pilot sites fell by up to 50 per cent.
The GPT Group
The GPT Group invests in sustainability because ‘it delivers financial value to investors, customers and stakeholder communities’ and as a result of its consistency with the company’s corporate strategy of “creating and sustaining environments that enrich people’s lives.”
According to GPT’s National Sustainability Manager, Bruce Precious, “We had major headaches because we were using several standalone legacy systems that held irreconcilable data locked inside separate information silos.”
Since 2005, the Group’s extensive commercial and retail property portfolio boasts of environmental metrics:
- 38 % drop in water intensity (litres of H20 use per square metre)
- an improvement in waste diverted from landfill from 29% to 46%
- 28 % drop in energy intensity (kWh energy use per square metre)
- 36 % drop in CO2 intensity (kg of CO2 emitted per square metre)
- $15.9m annual saving on its combined gas and electricity bills in 2011 alone.
The above data place the company with the few lead global Dow Jones Sustainability Index organisations as well as appearing in the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark top ten.
For large, multinational, multi-site, complex organisations Carbon Systems is the solution.