Locus Recognized as a Top SaaS Provider in Green Quadrant EH&S Software Report by Independent Analyst Firm Verdantix

Locus’ software recognized for its configurable architecture, flexible implementation, and water and waste water management capabilities

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 17 April 2014 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in cloud-based environmental compliance and information management software, has been recognized as one of the top 13 global environmental health and safety (EH&S) management software suppliers in the report “Green Quadrant® EH&S Software, April 2014.” This report by Verdantix, an independent analyst firm who provide data, analysis and advice in the areas of energy, environment and sustainability, reveals that Locus offers a lower cost, user-configurable Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that meets the needs of multiple industries by allowing for the incorporation of firm-specific functionality.

“The new platform, recently released by Locus Technologies, is designed to put power in the hands of users,” said Jordan Nadian, Verdantix Analyst. “This reflects broader trends in software development, where non-technical business analysts get to design small-scale apps. It also reflects a product strategy designed to side-step the significant costs and risks of developing detailed feature sets for industry-specific processes.”

The Verdantix report also acknowledges Locus for its strengths in data capture, data security, hazardous waste management and water and waste water quality management. Locus’ software reflects its more than 17 years of experience in the market and incorporated feedback from its impressive customer list. A major differentiator for Locus is that the company is a passionate advocate of single instance, multi-tenant architecture. “The supplier has developed an architecture which successfully separates the technology platform (workflow tools, master data management, integration, etc.) from specific EH&S business processes such as air emissions management or chemical inventories,” said Nadian.

The report recognizes a widespread movement toward offering integrated EH&S solutions as hosted software services. It acknowledges significant challenges with the implementation and maintenance of older and disconnected software applications installed on customers’ infrastructures. While there was no separation between true SaaS and traditional on-premises software providers in the report, Locus was identified as one of the top three leading SaaS vendors.

“With new regulations, risks, and business improvement opportunities arising so frequently today, companies’ EH&S management and reporting requirements are constantly expanding,” said Neno Duplan, President & CEO of Locus. “At Locus, we strive to offer our customers a cost-effective, integrated software platform that can mold to fit their business-specific processes now, and evolve along with their changing needs in the future.”

EH&S domain content in the Locus SaaS platform is configurable by business analysts or domain experts with no underlying code change and is not hard-coded for any specific solution. The separation of domain from software framework makes it easy for Locus customers to enjoy the rolling upgrade program without incurring costly upgrades associated with traditional on-premises software installations. Locus’ framework is coded to render and process configuration at runtime, and supports any domain and customer-specific content. The platform is fully wizard-driven via a graphical configuration workbench.

ABOUT VERDANTIX

Verdantix is an independent analyst firm, providing authoritative data, analysis and advice to help clients resolve their energy, environment and sustainability challenges. Through global primary research and deep domain expertise, they provide clients with strategic advice, revenue generating services, best practice frameworks, industry connections and competitive advantage.

For further information, please visit www.verdantix.com.

EPA Takes Cross-Country Road Trips for New Climate Rules Targeting Coal-fired Power Plants

Ms. Gina McCarthy, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator and chief architect and emissary to President Obama’s plan to fight climate change, has recently taken to the road to pitch new climate change regulations.

While these EPA regulations set limits on carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants and are meant to decrease greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., the rules could also be so strict that they result in a large number of plants being shut down and mining jobs lost.

The EPA is set to roll out the two new rules by the end of Mr. Obama’s presidency. This past September the EPA announced the draft of the first rule, which would limit carbon pollution from future power plants, and this upcoming June 2014 the EPA will release the draft of the second rule, which is said to require emission cuts at existing coal-fired power plants. Final versions of both rules are expected by June 2015, and states will have until mid-2016 to submit compliance plans.

While the EPA will establish a federal standard for reducing carbon emissions, individual states will be in charge of carrying out these new rules. This is meant to give each state the flexibility to configure its own plan. However, this creates the possibility that states who oppose these new rules may attempt to refuse or delay them from taking effect.

These trips to various U.S. states are a new ploy for the EPA and Ms. McCarthy, who is well aware of how cutting-edge these set of rules are and the intense scrutiny that they face. The rules will impose additional cost to the coal industry in order to stay in compliance and will require better information management and reporting tools.

Exxon Mobil to Report on Asset Risks Due to Evolving Climate Policy

Exxon Mobil just became the first oil and gas company to agree to publish information about the risks that stricter limits on carbon emissions would place on their business. According to the New York Times, this decision stems from increasing pressure from shareholder activists to warn investors of the possible consequences. The energy giant has agreed to publish this information by the end of the month.

The agreement comes from an effort by Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmentalists interested in making companies more environmentally responsive. The Ceres campaign started with a letter that was sent to ask 45 of the top fossil fuel companies if they were addressing the risks posed by the changing climate policy. What gave this letter such influence is the fact that it was sent by shareholders representing $3 trillion in assets to these companies.

These risks come from a growing realization that the changing policies on global warming and the value of fossil fuel assets may not by synced with one another. For instance, if carbon emissions are reduced by 80 percent, a goal stated by President Obama, then extracting oil reserves in certain areas where it is more expensive will become uneconomical. The concept that the two goals of extracting reserves and reducing carbon emissions are in direct conflict is undoubtedly coming to light.

Exxon Mobil has also agreed to project how further carbon emission restrictions would affect its future projects, and explain why new fossil fuel reserves that it invests in are not at risk of decreasing in value. Overall Exxon Mobil’s reporting agreement should provide for a better stewardship of sustainability and will help other companies come forward with their reporting.

Accounting for carbon emissions will put more focus on environmental software companies that can scale and provide solid platforms for an integrated approach to not only carbon management but all of their other environmental and sustainability risk management activities such as water quality and air emissions.

2014 State of the Union Address: Obama on Energy

On the night of Tuesday, January 28 the President of the United States took to the podium to deliver the 2014 State of the Union Address. Among the many topics that President Obama covered, one of them was energy.

The president gave praise to his all-of-the-above energy strategy he introduced a few years ago, and stated that America is closer to energy independence than we’ve been in decades. “One of the reasons why is natural gas- if extracted safely, it’s the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change,” he said.

President Obama stressed the importance of this resource being extracted safely, and stated the clear benefits it brings when this occurs. This translates to the old saying “trust but verify”. With today’s real-time monitoring and information management technologies this can easily be accomplished without increasing the extraction cost. He vowed to keep working with the industry to continue job growth while also ensuring the protection of our air, water, and communities. Obama also added in a touch of sustainable promise- “And while we’re at it, I’ll use my authority to protect more of our pristine federal lands for future generations.”

The president then made a clear statement about his intentions. “But the debate is settled. Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s children look us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave them a safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I want us to be able to say yes, we did,” he said.

The Battle Against Ozone-depleting Substances

Substances that contribute to the depletion of our ozone are a serious threat. Because ozone is our first line of defense against harmful UVB ultraviolet light from the sun, its decrease can lead to many serious consequences. These include a possible increase in skin cancer and other health risks, cataracts, and a decrease in plant growth.

Ozone-depleting substances (or certain chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons, hydrochlorofluorocarbons, and halons) come in various forms. These substances are commonly used in refrigerants, which are present in air conditioners and refrigerators. Luckily, authorities took notice of the negative impacts of these substances, and The Montreal Protocol, an international environmental agreement that began the worldwide phaseout of ozone-depleting substances (currently carried out in the U.S. through Title VI of the Clean Air Act) was enacted in 1987. However, the fight against these harmful substances is far from over.

Just last September U.S. grocery store giant, Safeway, allegedly violated the federal Clean Air Act. The company agreed to pay a $600,000 civil penalty, and spent approximately $4 million to reduce its emissions of ozone-depleting substances from refrigeration equipment at 659 of its stores.

Hydrochlorofluorocarbon HCFC-22, the specific substance that was said to be leaking from Safeway’s equipment, is up to 1,800 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of global warming emissions. The allegations Safeway faced include failing to promptly repair leaks of this substance, and failing to keep adequate records of the servicing of its refrigeration equipment. In response to these allegations, the changes Safeway had committed to were expected to prevent over 100,000 pounds of future releases of ozone-depleting refrigerants.

Further plans for the U.S. to continue reducing ozone-depleting refrigerants include a production and import ban on HCFC-22 by 2020.

Is the U.S. Emitting More Methane Than We Thought?

According to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the United States may be emitting 50 percent more methane than the federal government had originally estimated. Methane, a greenhouse gas, is less prevalent in our atmosphere than carbon but is also a more powerful heat-trapping gas- approximately 21 times more potent over a 100 year period.

The new study argues that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) underestimated methane emissions because it calculated from the bottom-up, whereas the new study took a different approach. The PNAS study, conducted by Scot M. Miller, a doctoral student in Earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University, along with researchers from seven other institutions, took measurements of methane actually released into the atmosphere. More specifically, it analyzed almost 5,000 air samples collected from tall towers around the U.S. in 2007 and 2008, and more than 7,700 samples taken over this same period by research aircrafts.

Based on their research, the following are a few conclusions that were reached:

  • Methane from Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas was 2.7 times higher than previously recorded (these three states alone account for nearly one-quarter of U.S. methane emissions)
  • Methane emissions from livestock are nearly two times as high as earlier measurements
  • Current atmospheric concentrations of methane are nearly triple the levels found in the preindustrial era; human activity being responsible for 50 to 65 percent of global methane emissions

These findings will no doubt impact the debate about how both regulators and industry should handle reducing methane emissions.

As if this isn’t enough of a reason for concern, new research published in Nature Geoscience finds that significant amounts of methane are currently escaping the East Siberian Shelf. This methane is stored on the floor of the Arctic Ocean, being held down by permafrost. However, it has been escaping recently due to both powerful storms stirring up the ocean that bring the methane to the surface faster, and global warming thawing the permafrost; creating a perpetual cycle.

This new research and press may be able to put the spotlight on a greenhouse gas other than carbon, and also on how important it is to reduce these methane emissions.

Locus Announces Railroad Industry Specific Incident Management Module

Companies can comply with FRA and other health and safety regulations through the use of Locus’ Incident software

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 12 November 2013—October 28, 2013 —Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in cloud-based environmental compliance and information management software, has added a railroad-specific health and safety (H&S) incident management module to its software offerings.

The Incident module enables users to report and manage railroad accidents and incidents in compliance with Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) regulations. Other features of the Incident module include easy-to-use data entry forms for incidents and near misses; the ability to associate multiple injuries/illnesses to an incident; customizable dashboards to view incident trends and other key metrics; automated incident notifications with configurable workflows; and push-button generation of report-ready FRA and OSHA 300, 300A, and 301 forms.

“When it comes to incident management, company managers should be able to have an easily accessible, all-encompassing view of what’s occurring across all of their different facilities, sites, and incident locations,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “Locus’ H&S Incident module represents a single repository in the cloud, that offers railroad-specific functionality and ease of use for managing incident investigations, and analyzing key safety metrics aimed at reducing accidents and mitigating risks.”

This module represents Locus’ continuous commitment to the enhancement and expansion of its software offerings. The railroad-specific Incident module is available for use immediately.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Extends Contract with Locus Technologies for Four More Years

Locus to continue managing environmental data and information for the nation’s largest laboratory

SAN FRANCISCO, California and LOS ALAMOS, New Mexico, October 28, 2013 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based environmental software, announced today that Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has chosen to extend its contract with Locus for four more years.

LANL is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security (LANS), located in Los Alamos, N.M. LANL conducts multidisciplinary research in national security, outer space, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and supercomputing. LANL is one of three laboratories in the United States at which the government conducts classified work to care for the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.

Modifications that accompany the extended contract include additional functionality for air data management and reporting that involves better flexibility for increased data transparency. LANL also will put more focus on field and mobile devices, and significant enhancements will be made to Intellus New Mexico, the public-facing website that Locus created for LANL’s data.

The original contract between LANL and Locus began in 2011, with the option of extending the contract for four additional years. LANL will continue to use Locus’ Environmental Information Management software (EIM) to address legacy site contamination and to take a better aggregate view of its operations for environmental stewardship.

“We are very proud that LANL trusts our EIM software to continue assisting it with its environmental data management requirements,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “We look forward to continuing to work with the team of talented professionals at LANL, and also continuing to assist DOE sites with their environmental data management challenges.”

“High-quality data is a crucial component in environmental stewardship and our commitment to transparency with the public,” said Chris Echohawk, office leader of the Laboratory’s Operations Improvement Office.

 

ABOUT LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, the Babcock & Wilcox Company, and URS for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.

LANL news media contact: Fred deSousa, (505) 665-3430, fdesousa@lanl.gov

Locus Introduces New Platform for Environmental Enterprise Resource Planning

The new Locus platform offers a highly configurable, user-friendly interface to fully meet individual organizations’ environmental management needs

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 21 October 2013 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the leader in cloud-based environmental and sustainability management software, introduces its newest platform to redefine how companies organize, manage, visualize, and report their environmental, sustainability, and compliance information.

Today, environmental, sustainability, and energy managers for organizations of all sizes face myriad options from software suppliers offering various single-domain applications. Challenged with an ever-evolving regulatory landscape, these managers must select a software provider that can adapt to new compliance constraints and the constant changes of existing regulations, often with multijurisdictional requirements; unfortunately, most software suppliers have rigid platforms or applications that fail to keep up with constantly changing needs, are hard to integrate, and are often obsolete before they are even implemented.

To address this industry challenge, the company designed the new Locus platform to provide rich functionality in a simple way so that it would be easy for customers to make the most of their data management and reporting requirements. In addition, the new platform helps companies avoid many of the costs generally associated with implementing traditional software systems thanks to its simple setup, navigation, and configuration options, thereby eliminating the need for expensive implementations, user training, and customizations.

Locus addressed common barriers to using environmental management software when designing the new Locus platform. Specifically, Locus conducted a gap analysis of current software offerings. It identified challenges through feedback from its end users and other industry professionals, and through customer surveys conducted by several industry research analysts’ firms over the last two years. Specifically, users were wary of complex and expensive systems and implementations; a rigid regulatory environment for businesses that made adapting to new systems costly and complicated; and integration of a new platform with legacy systems.

The resulting Locus platform offers an intuitive interface with the immense flexibility to incorporate features such as drag-and-drop forms creation, visual business-process modeling, Excel import/export integration, and a rich and configurable user dashboards and reporting interface. Locus created every feature with the end user in mind to promote quick and easy data capture and task management. Finally, customers should see significant savings over traditional software offerings both at the time of implementation and over the long term. Because the Locus platform’s system, upgrades, and maintenance are cloud-based rather than configured on individual user workstations, while users can configure the way they use the software, they do not need to pay for customization at the individual level.

“We listened to industry users and created configurable dashboards that are clean, dynamically driven, easy to read, and easy to access. This platform will improve companies’ data collection, analysis, and most importantly, reporting capabilities,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “The new Locus platform will make the required compliance and EH&S reporting expected of most companies more streamlined. The end result is the mitigation of regulatory risks and fines.”

The launch of the latest Locus platform follows the same guidelines and goals that the company established during the original inception of ePortal in 2000. This version is the latest embodiment of Locus’ industry differentiation: to offer an integrated solution so that companies can manage all of their environmental, energy, water, waste, carbon, air, health and safety, and compliance information in one place.

“We’ve updated the platform based on industry wants and needs,” remarked Duplan. “This isn’t a product of different solutions pieced together to look like one; it is the ‘whole solution.’ We have always created our products in this same vein because it means less time to configure, less time to implement, and far fewer support requirements. And it means a dramatically lower cost than customers have seen in the past with the ERP providers or point solutions from different vendors. Budget has long been a barrier to implementation and we are stepping up to the plate to solve that problem.”

Locus will conduct the first live demonstrations of the new platform at the Locus booth at the National Association for Environmental Management 2013 EHS Management Forum from October 23-25 in Montreal.

California’s Cap-and-Trade Program Gains Confidence

At last month’s carbon allowance auction, the fourth ever held, the California cap-and-trade program reached an important milestone. The auction of “current year allowances”, or permits that companies can use for this year’s carbon pollution, have sold out at every auction thus far- but this was the first time the auction completely sold out of its permits for future carbon pollution, for the year 2016 to be exact.

California sold almost 10 million future year permits at a clearing price of $11.10 per allowance, and almost 14 million current year permits at a clearing price of $12.22 per allowance. Never before has there been this great of a demand for future permits. Most believe this surge in interest reflects a growing confidence in California’s cap-and-trade program, and increasing recognition by state businesses that this program is here to stay.

The cap-and-trade program, that took effect in 2012, was enacted to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions produced in California that cause climate change. The programs intention is to aid California in meeting its goal of reducing GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and overall accomplishing an 80 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2050.

The recent carbon auction is a small achievement toward reaching this long-term goal. Locus fully supports these efforts; we were one of the first accredited verification bodies for greenhouse gas emissions, and our staff have also been certified as carbon offset verifiers under the California Air Resources Board. From our years of experience reporting greenhouse gases, Locus knows that participants in the cap-and-trade program have many options available to them in how they calculate and report their GHG data, and it is our personal goal to help them choose the best methods, through our technical experts or by using Locus’ cloud-based GHG software.