Evaluating Green Ratings reveals areas for improvement

Green/sustainability is a hot topic and there are now bunches of company that will rate your enterprise for being green/sustainable.  Given this is all relatively new, how good are these companies?

Here is a report prepared that rates the raters.

Rate the Raters, Phase Three

Uncovering Best Practices

22 Feb 2011 – Report

Corporate sustainability ratings are going mainstream, but how they work in practice remains somewhat of a mystery. For phase three of Rate the Raterswe conducted in-depth evaluations of 21 ratings, in an attempt to shed light on this important area. The 21 ratings we focused on were a representative sample of the 100+ ratings that we inventoried in phase two.

Our phase three work revealed numerous examples of good practice, which are detailed in our report. We are starting to see efforts to reduce the survey fatigue that companies face. A greater number of raters are soliciting feedback and direction from external experts, many through formal advisory panels. And we observe a few raters opening up their black boxes to let us in on their methodologies. Yet we found many areas in need of improvement as well, and offer a number of recommendations to raters for the future.

The above is phase three.  Here the other phases.

See phase one and phase two for further background and context.

CNET news also covers this report.

Green rating agencies fall short, report says

by Candace Lombardi

• When it comes to grading companies on their sustainability, some leading organizations fall short as far as transparency and methodology. That's according to a white paper released this week by SustainAbility.com, an organization that is both a think tank and a consulting firm for corporations looking to improve green standings and sustainability practices.

(Credit: SustainAbility.com)

SustainAbility.com issued a video Tuesday along with its report discussing how 21 of the leading eco-ratings organizations it investigated based on 13 criteria (see chart) appeared to be insufficiently evaluating the companies they target. Its partners include the United Nations Environment Programme and the Global Reporting Initiative , while its clients include Starbucks, Coca-Cola, and Shell.

C3 Energy Resource Management looks closer to announcing, job postings for sales, finance and HR

I was talking to some environmental friends at The Green Grid and one of the companies we chatted briefly about is www.c3-e.com

Energy Resource Management

C3 Mission

C3 enables organizations to maximize profitability and
cash flow by optimizing their enterprise energy strategy
and carbon footprint.

Curious I went to their site and saw they have positions open for sales, finance and HR which means they should be closer to announcing.

• Sales
  • Account Executives
• Services
  • Account Managers
• Marketing
  • Director of Marketing
• Finance
  • Senior Accountant
• Human Resources
  • Human Resources Director

Hara would seem like the natural competitor to Hara.  Here is Hara's engineering positions open.

Engineering

Flex Developer
San Mateo, CA

Java Developer
San Mateo, CA

Java Developer
San Mateo, CA

Software Development Manager
San Mateo, CA

Here is C3-E.

Software Engineering

• Data Design Engineer
• Release Engineer
• Data Modeling Engineers
• Analytics Engineers
• Server Software Engineers
• Client Software Engineers
• Software Developers

I am much more impressed with C3-E than Hara.  I can't find anyone I know who knows what the Hara technology is.  But, Hara is in the cloud.

Hara EEM: Cloud Infrastructure

Rich customer experience and lower cost of operations

Hara™ Environmental and Energy Management (Hara EEM) is powered by a state of the art cloud infrastructure that brings together analytics, integration services and standardized content to provide a rich customer experience and reduce total cost of operations. With this cloud-based delivery model, there is no software to install, no hardware to buy and users can start getting value out of the application in days instead of weeks and months.

For customers interested in alternate deployment and delivery models, Hara EEM is also architected to be location-independent from a deployment perspective.

Analytics

Hara EEM provides a rich set of reports and dashboards to slice and dice your environmental and energy information from various perspectives. Our easy to use user interface allows users to get to the information quickly and focus on decision making, instead of data entry and learning the application.

Integration

Hara EEM supports multiple multi-mode data gathering using automated and manual means. Customers can leverage a comprehensive set of web services to integrate Hara EEM with existing systems within their enterprise.

Content

Customers need outside content such as emission factors, best practices, incentives and rebates in order to make decisions related to various sustainability efforts in their organizations. Hara EEM provides pre-packaged content and a seamless user experience that combines customer specific data with standardized outside content.

When you get to the resource center for more information you need to provide information for a sales rep.

I think GreenM3 escaped being labeled a Content Farm

After blogging about the web site getting labeled by Google as a content farm I was wondering how the Green Data Center Blog (GreenM3) would be affected.

I was a bit concerned because I reference a lot of other people's content and take a few parts then comment. Always referencing the original source and to not take too much from the other site.

Why do I think I escaped?

Here is my traffic for last 3 weeks.

Here is traffic from search engines.

Compare this to what happened to the guy who got labeled as a content farm.

And, in the last 24 hours here are robot hits to my site.

One thing that SquareSpace has helped me a lot vs. TypePad is I am getting way more robot hits.

Knock on wood, I think the Green Data Center blog escaped being labeled as a content farm.  Also, what may have saved me is the others sites that do copy my work and don't credit me.  One site stopped copying me a month ago when I sent a cease and desist letter for copyright infringement.