IBM develops software to measure drop in greenhouse gases

Green Cert, an automated software to measure greenhouse gas reductions, has been developed by IBM, Enterprise Information Management (EIM) and Evergreen Energy.

According to a statement by the software major, the tool will help tap the full potential of investment and growth of the $ 30 billion global carbon credit market.

The software developed on the IBM Websphere Portal, would help extend the global greenhouse gas reduction trading market to sectors, including agriculture, government and financial services.

It can be deployed in power plants, cement factories, steel plants and commercial buildings. According to Bruce Lyman of EIM, this would be of particular benefit to emerging economies such as India and China.

"Countries with growing greenhouse emission rates such as India and China need to manage greenhouse risks and liabilities," he said.

Green Cert offers a standard, repeatable methodology for efficiently collecting large volumes of information and documenting emission reductions, the statement said.

Earlier, organisations had to rely upon customised approaches to measure emissions before trading carbon credits.

The 2006 World Bank report on Carbon Market, had estimated that the overall value of the global aggregated carbon markets had a potential to grow to $ 30 billion.

But, the market needed a strong compliance system, more transparent and credible processes to assess emission data to tap the potential, the report had said.

Green Cert would be available in the international market by the first half of 2008, the release said.