Software Startup Introduces Single Metric for Sustainability Accounting

A Boston, Massachusetts-based startup has introduced what it says is the world’s first universal metric for sustainability.

Energy Points says its software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform allows businesses to make quantitative and intuitive project decisions across all environmental domains – including fuel, electricity, transportation and water.

Some organizations choose to measure sustainability by overall cost reduction, while others measure specific impacts such as greenhouse gas reductions. Energy Points provides a single measure of environmental sustainability by converting all domains into a common unit of measurement based on the energy available in one gallon of gasoline.  

The company says it chose a gallon of gasoline as the reference point, because it is the most relevant, intuitive and widely understood unit of energy measurement in the U.S. 

The EnergyPoints platform combines an analytics algorithm with GIS data that normalizes all sustainability information in regards to the natural resources being consumed. These measurements are computed across an entire organization and are based on the local mix of energy resources and resource scarcity (such as water). 

Once the data is normalized, it is presented in a visual-analytics portal that will compare, track and forecast sustainability across an organization. For instance, while LED lighting may be beneficial in a factory located on the east coast, a new water management system may be better suited for a similar factory located on the west coast given the vagaries of power generation and water scarcity. 

EnergyPoints also announced that it secured a $3 million initial round of financing led by Plan B Ventures. 

Bart King is a PR consultant and principal at Cleantech Communications.