Market Overview: The Advent Of Enterprise Carbon And Energy Management Systems

A new liability is coming onto the collective balance sheet of companies around the world: carbon. In the context of increasing awareness of the business and societal risks of climate change, corporate carbon emissions (and the energy consumption that creates them) are being scrutinized as a crucial indicator of business performance. And the spreadsheet data that most companies use to estimate their carbon footprint will not withstand that scrutiny from customers, regulators, and shareholders — enterprises need a new system of record based on verifiable data and automated processes, hence the advent of enterprise carbon and energy management (ECEM) systems. We expect that ECEM will be a mainstream element of corporate software backbones over the next five years. Enterprise IT organizations will come to the fore as the principle buyers of such systems, and, while we expect the big enterprise software suppliers to dominate the market, there will be plenty of opportunity for innovative smaller players.