Feature Story

By Lisa DiCarlo

September 24, 2007 -- It's a safe bet to say that most organizations, if presented with hard data on the impact their operations have on the environment, would have two initial reactions: first, they'd want to know how their organization compares to others, and then they'd want to know what they can do to reduce that impact.

Sun Microsystems' OpenEco.org is the first global online community to help participants assess, compare, and manage corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Sun formally debuts OpenEco.org today at an event headlined by former President Bill Clinton and co-sponsored by the Carbon Disclosure Project.

OpenEco.org, a community that is free and open to all organizations, offers tools to help participants set more realistic improvement goals and track progress on projects to meet those goals. Through collaboration and transparency, OpenEco.org users can share GHG data, as well as ideas and best practices for reducing the environmental impact their companies have on the Earth.

OpenEco.org is the first free online community to provide a carbon accounting tool to more easily monitor, compare and report carbon emissions data and report GHG usage to organizations like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Leaders program and the Carbon Disclosure Project.

The accounting tool is a big step forward in assessing GHG emissions. That's because GHG analysis is frequently conducted with proprietary tools and often requires significant internal resources or outside consultants. Provided all the relevant utility data is available, OpenEco.org members can assess their carbon emissions in a matter of minutes.

Save the Earth and your Budget

OpenEco.org will provide members the ability to:

• Calculate greenhouse gas emissions based on standard carbon accounting practices
• Compare building energy efficiency and GHG emissions data with other organizations
• Track progress of GHG reduction goals
• Share ideas and information with other members via community forums
• Leverage open APIs for extensions and mashups

OpenEco.org will enable community members to share best practices for reducing energy use in office buildings and campuses worldwide, increasing the use of renewable energy and improving fuel efficiency in corporate airplane fleets.

The OpenEco.org online community builds on Sun's longstanding commitment to eco responsibility, including the ongoing "greening" of its own business and developing high performance yet eco-friendly products that help preserve the environment, as well as customer's IT budgets.

Indeed, the cost of just powering and cooling a datacenter has been rising steadily. Future plans for OpenEco.org include developing tools to track IT-specific energy usage, and GHG emissions from work-related travel.

Collaboration is Key

Many multinational organizations are already looking at ways to reduce their carbon footprint but unfortunately, these changes tend to be incremental. To accelerate change and make a true and lasting impact on reducing GHG emission requires "group think."

"Businesses, NGOs or non-profit organizations might assess their carbon footprint and take steps to reduce it, but that information generally stays within the walls of the organization," says Lori Duvall, Sun's Eco Responsibility program manager. "An open community for sharing this information simply did not exist before today."

Climate change is an environmental challenge too big for any one organization to conquer. Think of it this way: Even if the largest company in the world somehow suddenly eliminated all of their GHG emissions, the global environmental impact would be minimal.

"Nobody benefits but that one company," says Duvall. "Collaboration is critical to solving a problem this big."

Participating in OpenEco.org is free and open to all, but member organizations must be willing to share their energy and carbon, either anonymously or transparently.

Calculate, Compare, Reduce

OpenEco.org leverages Sun's expertise in developing thriving online communities. Dynamic communities enable participants to work together, sharing knowledge and developing solutions to common problems. OpenEco.org inaugural members, demonstrating their commitment to corporate, social and environmental responsibility, include Natural Logic and Ceres, in addition to Sun.

These organizations have committed to sharing their environmental data because they believe that sharing enables participants to benchmark against other OpenEco.org's members, which ultimately leads companies to set realistic goals to manage and minimize their environmental impact.

Within a year, Sun plans to fund development of additonal tools for tracking CO2 emissions from such things as vehicle fleets and renewable energy technology. Community members will be encouraged to provide feedback about future site features and tools and influence their development.

Since OpenEco.org is based on open source technologies, members can write APIs for it, and also exchange information between Web sites, build extensions and mashups.

OpenEco.org is a great example of the potential of today's Web which, at its essence, is about breaking down silos and fostering open collaboration. The more companies who join OpenEco.org, the more valuable the resource will become--to members and the environment.

Says Duvall, "Progress gets made when people share."

Learn more open OpenEco.org and join the community today.