Difference between SAP Carbon Impact and SAP EHS - Environment Compliance

Question

I am confused between the functionality offered by SAP Carbon Impact and how different it is from SAP EHS Management - Environment Compliance. I understand that both of them are different technical products from SAP with Carbon Impact being an on-demand solution which was acquired from Clear Standards earlier this year.
However they seem to have an overlap in their functionality. Even the websites seem to talk about addressing similar issues.
[SAP EHS Management - Environment Complaince|http://www12.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/erp/corporate_services/ehs/features-functions/environmental-compliance-software/index.epx]
[SAP Carbon Impact|http://www12.sap.com/solutions/sustainability/offerings/carbon-impact/index.epx]
Has anyone used both the solutions and can tell what the difference is between the two in terms of their business functionality?

Answer 1

Hi Girish. While these two solutions both help manage environmental emissions, the specific pain points each address are distinctly different. Hopefully I can help explain. <p>
Environmental Compliance (EC) is a solution designed to help manage the heavy regulatory burdens associated with emission related compliance. EC helps you measure and monitor your direct emissions irrespective of medium (i.e. air, water, or solid waste) and manage these emissions against regulatory requirements. As an example, Title V air permits are typically hundreds of pages long and filled with numerous requirements and conditions. In order to meet the demands of the permit, thousands of tasks must be managed throughout the plantu2014be it calibrating a piece of machinery or measuring the sulfur content of fuel oil. EC provides a framework to break the permit down into its respective pieces and establish workflows to ensure compliance by managing the required tasks against the associated emissions. You can also set emission limit alerts in EC to trigger specified actions to help you proactively address your emissions as opposed to a more reactive approach taken after a permit requirement has been broken. EC also helps with the regulatory reporting of your emissions and compliance efforts by enabling you to create templatized versions of commonly required reportsu2014all available at the push of a button, or they can even be automated. <p>
Carbon Impact (CI) also helps you measure and monitor your emissions, but the real focus of this solution is on gathering enterprise-wide greenhouse gas emissions across geographies and scopes. For example, CI allows you to capture your direct emissions (Scope 1), your electricity emissions (Scope 2), and your indirect emissions (Scope 3). Scope 3 emissions are also sometimes referred to as supply chain emissions (both upstream and downstream) and can be the most difficult emissions category to capture when creating your enterpriseu2019s carbon inventory. For example, letu2019s say you own a steel mill. The ore that comes into your plant has an associated upstream greenhouse gas emission arising from the mining process and when you ship your final product there are emissions associated with the transport of your product to your customer. Beyond the plant, employee travel is another type of Scope 3 emission. If your company already runs SAP, you will benefit from CIu2019s integration into our Suite that allows you to quickly access your different sources of emissionsu2014be they Scope 1, 2, or 3. One of the advantages of CIu2019s on demand delivery model is that SAP maintains updated emission factors for various materials and activities from various authoritative sources including the EPA and GHG Protocol; with this prepackaged content you no longer need to do the work of tracking down the correct emission factor and making sure it is up to date. In addition to calculating your enterprise carbon footprint, CI also gives you the tools to evaluate different abatement projects to reduce your overall environmental impact. CI also provides reporting capabilities to help with the voluntary reporting processes associated with, for example, the Global Reporting Initiative or the Carbon Disclosure Project.<p>
Often times a helpful way to understand the difference between the two solutions is to think about how they work together. If you implemented both of them, EC would be the solution that would help you collect direct emissions data and manage the associated regulatory requirements. The EC emission data would then feed into Carbon Impact to represent your direct emissions. Carbon Impact would then gather your remaining emissions as described above to give you your entire emission footprint and then help identify the best way to reduce it.