As the world’s 14th largest emitter of carbon dioxide, South Africa has an urgent responsibility to drive a positive response to climate change by striving for a lower-carbon economy.
This is the word from Francois du Plessis, operations director at EDS Systems, who adds: “With the Carbon Tax Act, if the activities of companies in certain industries result in emissions above the legislative threshold, they are liable to pay carbon tax.
“It is therefore crucial to have access to a tool that assists businesses to monitor and understand their carbon emissions in order to reduce them.”
Essentially the Carbon Solution is a cloud-based system that enables organisations to ‘plug in’ their emissions or process data in order to produce a report that breaks down tax liability into the relevant emissions sources.
This provides visibility into a business’ carbon emissions across the entire organisation. Once the tax liability status has been determined, the tool calculates a carbon tax liability amount, taking into consideration any offset reductions.
Du Plessis adds: “The beauty of the solution is that it is so simple. All it takes is someone to input data, and the rest is calculated and automated. Training is provided to in-house resources if businesses wish to manage the solution themselves. Alternatively, the solution can be offered as a holistic service by 5Inc.”
Intended to reduce the administrative burden of compliance measurement and reporting, the solution is designed for local conditions, developed wholly in South Africa for South African businesses.
“We’re confident that this carbon analytics tool is the perfect solution for companies that realise it’s time to shift to a more carbon-conscious mindset, regardless of industry. Why? Because the cost of ignoring climate change will be far higher than the cost of reducing emissions through legislation such as The Carbon Tax Act,” Du Plessis concludes.