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It Pays to Know Individual Assets Energy Consumption Across Your Enterprise
Industrial and commercial enterprises are not being pressured to find means to cut down energy consumption and reduce carbon emissions. Decision-makers in companies are now finding solutions but are overwhelmed by the different areas that need to be solved first to address the main problem of greenhouse gas emissions.
The government is now aggressively imposing legislation with corresponding monetary penalties for any enterprise that does not comply. Suppliers are expecting adoption of “green” policies, strategies and procedures while consumers are now better educated on the environmental threat of greenhouse gas emissions.
Any business faces the challenge of measuring its individual asset efficiency which has been historically poor at its best. To extend any asset’s life, proper maintenance is necessary, and any business would need to be be very particular in preventive maintenance as procuring assets entails high costs. This will be translated as operational costs and return of investment in the balance sheet.
Federal Enterprise Architecture Explained
Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) is, in the simplest terms, the enterprise architecture which describes a federal government. Enterprise architectures (EAs) are essentially systems of management practice that strive to align resources so that business performance can be improved and core strategic functions can be better executed.
In the case of government, an EA helps an agency or department carry out their core missions by describing their current state and their likely or desired future state – and lays out a plan for transitioning from the former to the latter. In practical terms though, FEA generally refers to the enterprise architecture of a specific federal government; the US Federal government, which developed FEA to provide a common methodology for the acquisition, use and disposal of Information Technology (IT) assets and infrastructure.
The ultimate goal behind the design of the FEA initiative is to make the sharing of information across federal agencies as easy as possible by establishing a common, inter-operable standard for data storage and access, thereby reducing costs and improving the service to the citizens of the United States. In part, it was created due to the 1996 Clinger-Cohen Act – passed by congress to reform and improve the way Federal agencies deal with IT resources. In effect, Clinger-Cohen provides that government IT acquisition and management should be just as efficient and profitable as the operations of a successful private business.
Enterprise Carbon and Energy Management Systems Promote an Inclusive Approach
Fewer than 50% of organizations have plans to completely embrace the concept of sustainability, even as legislation looms and the media continues to allocates considerable airtime and column inches to the problem. On the other end of the spectrum, innovators within their respective fields have long since grasped the opportunity to achieve efficiencies through the use of enterprise carbon and energy management systems to get them on the right track.
An enterprise carbon and energy management system comprises a raft of important tools and software solutions, designed to help the organization achieve total transparency and to really understand its cost of doing business. Prior to the adoption of these systems, diverse software tools would often not focus attention on pure energy efficiency and the need to reduce the carbon footprint.
In an effort to truly understand what it takes to become sustainable and also to investigate the true costs of doing business, organizations are adopting inclusive systems designed to track carbon emissions and manage energy use.