Haunted by the price of commercial success: using up the planet’s resources
Who you gonna call? These guys aren’t Ghostbusters, but they do believe they’ve discovered how to banish the spectre of industrial wastefulness
The have impressive investment credentials (backed by Kleiner Perkins’ legendary VC John Doerr) and they have impressive green credentials (Al Gore) and they have an idea called ‘Organisational Metabolism’.
It’s all made much clearer in this video (it’s an excellent video in terms of content, but the sound and image quality are less than ideal: don’t worry though, the video below it is more recent and much more professionally produced, but personally I think the first video is actually better).
Here’s another video (posted online 1st of July 2010):
Here’s what the company had to say about itself when it launched its solution in a press release (BusinessWire 1st of June 2009):
Hara Unveils Environmental and Energy Management Solution for the Post-Carbon Economy
Hara, the company dedicated to helping organizations grow and profit without depleting the earth’s resources, today unveiled HaraTM Environmental and Energy Management (Hara EEM), a comprehensive software as a service solution which enables organizations to holistically monitor and manage their natural resource consumption and environmental impact.
Hara EEM gives customers auditable transparency and control over their organizational metabolism (OM) – the collective resources consumed and expended by an organization – including energy, fossil fuels, water, waste, carbon, and other resources.
Funded in 2008 by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Hara is enabling customers to identify millions of dollars in savings from energy, water and waste abatement strategies.
“Effective environmental management requires good insight, good analysis and good data,” said Bryan Jacob, Director of Energy Management and Climate Protection for The Coca-Cola Company.
“We have been pleased to collaborate with Hara in the development of its Energy & Environmental Management solution – an application that combines data collection with mitigation planning and initiative tracking in a comprehensive package that enables us to improve energy efficiency and environmental impact.”
More than a dozen organizations, including The Coca-Cola Company and the City of Palo Alto, are already using Hara EEM to improve their operational efficiency, maximize shareholder value and manage risks while keeping up with changing externalities including pricing for commodities such as energy and pending regulation on a global scale.
Companies with a commitment to sustainability have outperformed their peers by 10 to 15 percent*.
A perfect storm of business imperatives – environmental, economic, and regulatory – is requiring private and public sector organizations to act now.
To date, while the imperatives are clear, most organizations have been without a transparent and auditable way to address these challenges.
Hara provides a comprehensive solution to manage the environmental record, and prioritize and track reduction and cost savings initiatives that are both achievable and auditable under current or future regulations.
“Tracking, analyzing and optimizing energy usage and emission outputs from economic entities is a crucial, additional, new class of enterprise information which will drive future operational and performance excellence.”
About Hara Environmental and Energy Management (Hara EEM)
Hara EEM is a highly-configurable, software as a service (SaaS) application that quickly adapts to customer needs.
Available since January 2009 on a subscription basis and already in use by more than a dozen customers, Hara EEM is comprised of the following application modules:
•Discover – Aggregate environmental record information from relevant data sources in order to provide a comprehensive view of resource consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and environmental impact.
•Plan – Define strategies, optimize planning decisions, forecast reductions, identify objectives and metrics, and calculate timing and benefits for each initiative.
•Act – Manage the execution of environmental and energy programs, track results per initiative, and create an audit trail for any current or future regulatory requirements.
•Innovate – Implement the Hara methodology and leverage best practices for continuous improvements and business transformation.
“Our vision is to enable a post-carbon economy in which organizations can grow and profit without depleting the earth’s resources,” said Amit Chatterjee, CEO and co-founder of Hara.
“Together with our customers, we have the opportunity to write the encyclopedia of environmental efficiency, creating an unprecedented body of knowledge that will influence environmental impact reduction initiatives for years to come.”
About Hara
Hara helps organizations grow and profit while optimizing natural resource consumption and reducing environmental impact.
Hara gives customers auditable transparency and control of their organizational metabolism – the collective resources consumed and expended by an organization – including energy, water, waste, carbon and other resources.
Hara was funded in 2008 by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Its leadership and advisory teams have a strong track record of environmental and enterprise software expertise and hail from companies including Oracle, SAP, TIBCO, and McKinsey and institutions including Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, Stanford University, and the University of California, Berkeley.
Hara is based in Menlo Park, CA.
For more information, please visit www.hara.com.
Technology and environment should be balanced. This software may be the key to making the perfect mix. It’s a good thing some companies still find ways to preserve and protect the environment.
This looks like it could be a really good idea – I’m going to check out the Hara website to see exactly what sort of solutions they offer.
http://www.hara.com/
According to the Site, Hara is helping organizations and companies understand and implement environmental and energy management solutions. Hara helps the organization implement methods that help protect the environment and gain revenues and savings for the organization in the long run.
That would be brilliant as long as the organisations involved actually follow the recommendations. I wonder what will happen if the recommendations on environmental impact lead to higher production costs – would the companies still follow the recommendations. And if they do go ahead and follow the recommendations, would they then pass on the costs to their customers/clients via increased charges?
I think companies will only implement the proposed “environmental feature”, if and when they can gain profit or save money from it, otherwise they will just scrap it or pass it on to the consumers. But the software is more on tracking benefits and advantages of using environmental friendly methods. Either the company will benefit or save money today or in the long run. So its practically a good investment.
It would be interesting to see in the future just how many companies would be willing to increase costs in order to lessen their environmental impact. I wonder if I can look online and find any companies that are already doing this.
I’ve found a report (http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-technology/hara-helps-companies-profit-from-being-green-20090601-bsp4.html) that says that “Hara also tracks natural resources back to sources, so companies can avoid “hot spots” where commodity supplies are unreliable or sales fund nefarious activities” – that looks very interesting.
That is a great feature. By tracking down the source of the natural resources used, companies can look for a better source of materials, saving them time and money.
While I was looking around online to see if any companies have already increased productions costs in order to be more environment-friendly, I kept coming across the term “greenwashing”. When I had a look for more information on this I came across this website:
http://sinsofgreenwashing.org/
This is a platform that can be used by the consumer to gain more information on greenwashing and get an informed idea of whether the products they buy actually live up to any claims of being “green” or whether the product manufacturers are just paying lip service to the whole idea of being environment-friendly.
One question in mind is, will this Hara EEM be successful in the market? I think the government needs to be involved for this product to be successful.
I think you may have a good point there Gerard! It will be interesting to see if any governments do get more involved with this and whether it will actually lead to any legislation that would make this sort of practice a requirement for organisations. If any governments do pass legislation that would require more environment-friendly practice, would we then see organisations moving their operations to countries where the requirements may not be so strict?