ZDNet GreenTech Pastures | Locus adds water module to environment software application portfolio

Water management problems capture more attention from environmental technology player Locus.

Locus Adds Cost Cutting Tool to EIM Software

New EIM tool, LTMO, helps customers reduce groundwater well monitoring

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., November 23, 2009 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental software, announced today the release of its Long Term Monitoring Optimization (LTMO) software that helps customers cut the cost of groundwater remediation projects. LTMO is built-in to EIM, Locus’ web-based application for managing sampling, analytical and geological data associated with environmental projects.

Long term monitoring of contaminated groundwater is one of the biggest costs of many environmental projects, often requiring that hundreds or more wells be sampled at regular intervals, with each sample event costing hundreds of dollars. Over time, changes in site conditions may mean the number of sampled wells or the frequency of sampling can be reduced. A number of analytical tools and approaches exist to identify redundant wells and pinpoint opportunities for sampling and monitoring reductions. MAROS (Monitoring And Remediation Optimization System) software application, developed by the Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment, is one of the most popular of these tools. With the LTMO tool, Locus has incorporated many of the techniques and methodologies of MAROS, including trend analyses and the Delaunay triangulation method.

The Locus EIM LTMO tool offers several distinct advantages over MAROS and other existing stand-alone or spreadsheet-based applications that perform similar analyses. First of all, there is no need to export data in a special format to another application. All analyses are performed under the umbrella of EIM. Secondly, robust integrated Web 2.0 graphical tools and reports provide a wealth of options for examining the results of the analyses, including extensive backup data that can be supplied to regulatory agencies as needed. Finally, the results of any analysis can be saved and easily pulled up for review or modification.

“We expect the incorporation of the LTMO tool into EIM to be extremely beneficial to our large enterprise customers that have thousands of groundwater sites. Instead of the analyses being performed on the desktops of their many consultants, long-term groundwater management data resides in a single, central, web-accessible database. LTMO is a very powerful tool that significantly reduces the cost of long term stewardship of groundwater contaminated sites,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.

“The recent $11 billion bill passed to fix California’s water infrastructure includes a provision for mandatory monitoring of the state’s groundwater, which is often used during times of drought and is most vulnerable to contamination. From the onset of the new bill, Locus’ LTMO tool will be there to help industry and government to optimize groundwater monitoring programs,” added Duplan.

Contact Locus today for a demonstration of this exciting new feature and see how Locus EIM can help you reduce your long-term sampling and analytical costs.

ZDNet GreenTech Pastures | Seeing is believing: Locus Technologies environmental software helps visualize the impact

If seeing is believing, then we could all benefit from more environmental software applications like the one sold by Locus Technologies. You input your data once; it visualizes the impact.

Locus Offers Free GHG Calculator for CA Mandatory Reporting

Industry Leader Takes Action to Help with GHG Reporting

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., November 2, 2009 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental software, announced today the release of its free greenhouse gas (GHG) calculator.

By estimating the Metric Tons of Carbon Dioxide emitted from stationary sources, the calculator helps companies know if they are required to meet the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB’s) mandatory GHG reporting CARB 95101 (b)(8) legislation. This handy tool is located on Locus’ website.

“Carbon management and reporting in various legal jurisdictions in the U.S. and around the world is getting complicated by the rapid introduction of new legislation. Spreadsheets or even specialty databases will not work any more. Locus’ approach of deploying a universal web-based platform where multinational companies can input carbon data once and report many times and in many different formats is exactly the concept the market needs to avoid an accounting nightmare, ” said international carbon trading expert Peter Fusaro, Chairman of New York based Global Change Associates, cofounder of the Energy Hedge Fund Center, and creator of the annual Wall Street Green Trading Summit.

“The U.S. EPA Federal Mandatory Reporting Rule and the Climate Registry’s work to harmonize emissions reporting coupled with tools like Locus’ GHG calculator and ePortal will help industry to streamline their GHG reporting requirements while getting insight into their energy consumption,” added Fusaro.

“Offering industry a free GHG estimator is a part of Locus’ broader strategy to provide a suite of cloud-based carbon management tools in our ePortal where customers input GHG and other sustainability information once and report it many times to meet various requirements,” explained Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.

“Locus’ GHG calculator is useful for quickly estimating reporting eligibility and requirements. Organizations will realize cost-savings by organizing their GHG and other sustainability data with Locus’ ePortal software; they can retain historical information in Locus’ central database on the web and use that information for planning and budgeting,” added Duplan.

In addition, the Final Mandatory Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Rule, recently announced by the EPA, imposed a requirement that will require all facilities that emit 25,000 Metric Tons of Carbon Dioxide Equivalent (mtCO2e) per year to report GHG emissions data to EPA annually. To estimate CO2e for Federal EPA requirements, EPA has provided an equivalency calculator at their website, which is accessible from Locus’ website.

Although California ARB and Federal EPA have similar 25,000 ton reporting requirements, the calculation requirements are different. EPA considered several factors when developing the reporting threshold, including the form of the threshold and emissions-based thresholds used in other GHG emissions programs such as California’s 95101 (b)(8) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) 1605b program. EPA’s 25,000 metric ton CO2e threshold will cover many of the types of facilities and suppliers typically regulated under the Clean Air Act (CAA), while appropriately balancing emission coverage and burden.

Locus’ GHG estimating calculator was developed in collaboration with Ecotek (www.ecotek.com), a Los Angeles based consulting firm specializing in air emission reduction solutions. Ecotek is a Climate Action Leader with the California Climate Action Registry and a founding member of The Climate Registry.

Locus Technologies Joins The Climate Registry and The Global Reporting Initiative

Industry Leader Takes Action on Climate Change

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., September 28, 2009 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in web-based environmental software, announced today that it has joined The Climate Registry and The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) to report its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and GRI Performance Indicators and to assist its clients with doing the same. The Climate Registry is a nonprofit organization established to support organizations in calculating and publicly reporting GHG emissions in a common, accurate and transparent manner consistent across industry sectors and geographical borders. The Global Reporting Initiative has pioneered the development of the world’s most widely used sustainability reporting framework and is committed to its continuous improvement and application worldwide. This framework sets out the principles and indicators that organizations can use to measure and report their economic, environmental, and social performance.

“Locus Technologies has demonstrated exemplary environmental leadership by taking the critical first step toward analyzing its impact on the environment” said Doug Scott, Chair of The Climate Registry and Chair of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. “In order to manage and reduce emissions, it is important to calculate and verify emissions data accurately. By measuring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions according to the most rigorous and comprehensive standards, Locus is holding itself to the highest level of accountability and responsibility.”

Registry Members calculate and verify their GHG emissions according to The Climate Registry’s protocols, which are based on and consistent with international standards such as the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and WRI/WBCSD. By calculating, reporting and verifying their GHG emissions, Members serve as international role models for environmental responsibility and commitment. Because they have experience in managing their emissions, they also serve as valuable resources in developing future policies.

The GRI Guidelines are the world’s most widely-used sustainability reporting framework. The common framework enables like-for-like comparison to be made between companies, and for change to be effected from within a company. GRI’s mission is to create conditions for the transparent and reliable exchange of sustainability information through the development and continuous improvement of the GRI Sustainability Reporting Framework. The GRI vision is that disclosure on economic, environmental, and social performance is as commonplace and comparable as financial reporting, and as important to organizational success.

“Locus is very happy to join these organizations that are leading initiatives to standardize reporting of GHG and Sustainability Indicators for the benefit of the planet and business community. For the last several years Locus has been developing web-based software that incorporates guidance documents from these organizations to help its clients with reporting needs in various jurisdictions around the world. Locus’ goal is to provide its clients with Software as a Service (SaaS) tools where clients need to input GHG and Sustainability information only once and report it many times in accordance with various geographies and standards. This is particularly important because many regions around the world still don’t have a clear set of enterprise GHG reporting standards. With passage of the Federal Greenhouse Gases Rule on 22 September 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will, for the first time, require large emitters to begin reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) data under a new reporting system. This new program covers approximately 85 percent of the U.S. GHG emissions and applies to roughly 10,000 facilities. The owners of these facilities need to be ready to organize and report their data in the most efficient way. Furthermore, by organizing their GHG and Sustainability data in a system like Locus’, companies will not only be able to lower the reporting costs and organize their data better, but also use the very same data to improve their operational efficiency across their organization in a way that could self-fund these important initiatives,” said Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus.

“We hope that Locus will pave the way for many other companies from the US and other regions of the world to recognize the importance of GRI and GHG reporting. Embedding the GRI guidance in ePortal applications through a multi-stakeholder process will help industry to faster adopt a set of standards for sustainability disclosure,” added Dr. Duplan.

Locus Technologies Receives Vendor Rating

Locus Rated by Leading Analyst Firm

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 11 May 2009 — Locus Technologies (Locus) today announced that Gartner, Inc., the leading provider of research and analysis on the global information technology industry, has rated the company “Promising” in a recent report.

“Locus is very pleased to have received a Gartner Vendor Rating. Our current customers already know the value our Cloud Computing solutions bring to their environmental information management challenges” said Locus President and CEO, Neno Duplancic. “We believe Gartner’s coverage of our firm confirms our position in the market and our commitment to providing customers with cost-effective and innovative SaaS software solutions that meet their current and emerging environmental data and information management needs, including addressing upcoming GHG and Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reporting.”

Locus’ flagship environmental data management system EIM is used worldwide to manage and report environmental data and information and is managing over 100 million environmental data records for some of the world’s largest companies. Locus’ ePortal provides the platform to bring together Locus’ modular applications into a single integrated solution that can be tailored for environmental compliance, greenhouse gas tracking, or environmental health and safety (EHS) tracking depending on a company’s individual need. Locus’ EHS module also provides GRI indicator tracking and reporting capabilities. All of Locus’ solutions are on-demand providing customers with cost-effective and timely implementation options to meet their business requirements.

 

VENDOR RATING DISCLAIMER
The Vendor Rating is copyrighted 21 April 2009 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Vendor Rating is an evaluation of a vendor as a whole and is based on Gartner’s assessment of the vendor’s vision and execution for a product or service, relative to Gartner’s analysis of clients’ requirements. It is not intended as a comparison relative to competitors in the market. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Vendor Rating, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Gartner “Vendor Rating: Locus Technologies” by Dan Miklovic, 21 April 2009
The complete report is available to Gartner clients at www.gartner.com.

For more information, visit www.locustec.com or contact Ms. Marian Carr at (650) 960-1640.

Locus to Present Cloud Computing for EHS Management at EUEC 2009 in Phonenix, AZ

Join Locus at the EUEC 2009 Annual Conference & Expo in Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix, AZ., 1-4 February 2009 |Booth #827 —Locus will present a paper on Cloud Computing solutions for the EHS industry and display our newest cloud computing products (eEHS and eTask) as well as our flagship product EIM.  Please visit us at Booth 827 and see the systems that are changing how environmental professionals manage, analyze, and report environmental data and information.

Is a large portion of your environmental data sitting in spreadsheets and home-built databases?

Robust enterprise databases are standard tools in other industries, but, for whatever reason, the environmental business has failed to fully embrace them. What happens to the sampling and analytical data generated from the investigations, cleanups, air emissions monitoring, or operation and maintenance of a company’s sites? For many, it is entered into spreadsheets, a commercial client/server database, or a home-grown database—with spreadsheets often being the most popular of these alternatives.

Let’s suppose a company has 10-million analytical records stored in spreadsheets and databases dispersed across multiple offices. Our research shows that the average cost to organize, manage, and report this data through independent systems over a 3-year period would be more than $2 million. Stop by Locus’ Booth #827 and let us demonstrate how using our Locus EIM on-demand data management system can drop your number by 85%—or more than a staggering $1.7 million.

 

Locus PresentsCloud Computing Solutions for Global Environmental Sustainability Reporting, by Marian Carr and Robert Albo | Session G5: EMIS and EHS | Tuesday, 3 February 2009 1:40 pm

Locus’ Environmental Software Provides US Virgin Island Refinery with Key Savings

Hovensa Moves to Cloud Computing with Locus’ EIM Software

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., 12 January 2009 — Locus Technologies, the industry leader in web-based environmental compliance and information management software, today announced that the Hovensa Refinery in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands has selected Locus Technologies Environmental Information Management (EIM) system to streamline managing environmental sampling and remedial operations data at the refinery.

Hovensa is a joint venture between subsidiaries of Hess Corporation and Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). This refinery is one of the ten largest in the world and one of the most modern in the United States with a crude oil processing capacity of 500,000 barrels per day (BPD). Hovensa operates its facilities on 2,000 acres on the south shore of St. Croix and receives and processes crude oil from around the world.

After reviewing available options to manage their environmental data, Hovensa opted for EIM to meet their demanding requirements, which include a single data repository accessible by all their vendors, regardless of location. EIM’s cloud computing platform was the ideal system to provide the access desired and the robust data management features to address both sampling and operations data.

“Locus is excited that Hovensa selected EIM and is using the system to its fullest,” said Locus President Neno Duplancic. “It’s very gratifying when a customer fully embraces the system and its potential to not only manage their data but to drive cost savings through data collection and report automation. Using EIM’s flexible interface, Hovensa can streamline sample planning and data validation using mainland contractors and labs and produce automated reports of operations status all from the same system.”

Santa Clara Valley Water District selects Locus Technologies for recycled water study

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., August 25, 2007 — The Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) selected Locus Technologies to perform a study of potential groundwater impacts from expanded use of recycled water for irrigation in the Santa Clara and Llagas Groundwater Sub-basins, California.

For this project, Locus will be using several investigative techniques to assess the potential impact to groundwater from use of recycled water. In addition to fate and transport evaluation of recycled water chemicals of concern, such as NDMA, HAA5, and trace metals, Locus will perform soil core bench tests and conduct a full-scale pilot test to monitor chemical concentrations as recycled water percolates through the vadose zone. From these tests, Locus will assess the soil aquifer treatment capacity, evaluate the potential of recharged recycled water to degrade the groundwater quality, and develop water quality standards for the recycled water to be used in the Llagas and Santa Clara Groundwater Sub-basins. To help the stakeholders in their practice, Locus will identify best management practices for irrigating with recycled water and identify necessary ongoing monitoring requirements to protect groundwater resources.

This award cements Locus’s reputation as a company on the forefront of the high-end environmental consulting business on complex groundwater problems.

“This is an important win for us at the time when companies and government are under pressure to achieve sustainability goals,” said Mr. Elie Haddad, Vice President of Locus’s Environmental Services Division. “On one hand, there is a push to reuse recycled water, and, on the other hand, this reuse should not degrade our precious groundwater resources. Our study will bring the balance between what seems to be competing goals. We are very pleased to be selected through a competitive bidding process by SCVWD for this important groundwater study. We look forward to continue partnering with industry and local governmental agencies to protect the precious Silicon Valley groundwater resources and provide long term stewardship for this most important resource.” added Haddad.

Project execution will come primarily from Locus’s office in Mountain View, California.

Locus to promote seminar on carbon trading and finance in San Francisco

Greening of America Through On-Demand Software

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., July 2, 2007 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based environmental data and information management services, will join Global Change Associates and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP to promote a seminar on carbon trading and finance. The seminar will be held on July 17, 2007, at Pillsbury’s San Francisco office at 50 Fremont Street.

Led by carbon markets experts Peter C. Fusaro and Jay Gould, partner and co-leader of Pillsbury’s Investment Funds & Investment Management Team, the seminar, “Carbon Trading is the Missing Link in Clean Tech Investment,” will explore what role carbon trading plays in clean technology investment and how to establish a successful carbon hedge fund.

“This is the second in a series of clean technology investment seminars we are hosting with Pillsbury, which launched one of the first multidisciplinary climate change practices in the nation. We are very excited that Locus Technologies, the leader in environmental information management, will promote the seminar, as the information management component of carbon trading is an important factor to consider in implementing sound carbon strategy,” said Fusaro. “Our last seminar attracted more than 150 people as California continues to be the center of carbon market activity for the foreseeable future.”

“We see carbon emissions management as the next logical expansion of our highly successful LocusFocus environmental portal. Many of our Fortune 100 customers using LocusFocus for environmental data and information management will find it easy to expand in our on-demand portal to include management of greenhouse gases (GHG). Many of Locus’s customers are actively looking for the tools and advice to move forward and formulate real carbon strategies in advance of upcoming regulations. Once regulations are promulgated, companies could lose substantial dollars by not planning ahead for this change. Locus’s customers that are already engaged in this highly topical discussion and are prepared to adopt carbon management strategy at this time can leverage the LocusFocus environmental portal for GHG data management with minimal additional investment and provide their shareholders with transparency on this issue. This seminar is perfect forum to get up to speed and educated on this important matter, particularly for the companies with operations in California that will be subject to California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, Assembly Bill No. 32 (AB32) relating to air pollution,” said Dr. Neno Duplancic, President and CEO of Locus Technologies.

The seminar will cover the basics of environmental trading, carbon trading and finance, some clean tech solutions, information management, how to implement a carbon reduction under the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and the basics of how to build a carbon fund.

GHG management will impose additional burden for environmental information management. Establishing a comprehensive GHG inventory is the foundation for future GHG management and compliance strategy. However, performing the GHG inventory can be a challenging process for many organizations, particularly for data acquisition, validation, and real time reporting. To make intelligent decisions about GHG management, clean energy, and other factors affecting the quality and sustainability of life, businesses and government entities must have better tools to manage and interpret this information in real time. Robust environmental information management systems are needed to store and analyze this data, and the LocusFocus environmental portal is a solution.

“Carbon trading is a new asset class for hedge fund finance and investment,” said Gould. “Indeed a recent report by the National Venture Capital Association showed that while U.S. venture capital investments, as a whole, were down by 33 percent in 2006, compared to five years ago, investments in American clean tech companies were up 243 percent in that time–more than two and a half times the growth rate of the next strongest industry over that period.”

 

ABOUT GLOBAL CHANGE ASSOCIATES INC.
Global Change Associates Inc. is a leading edge consultancy on energy and environmental financial markets based in New York lead by Peter C. Fusaro. Peter is the best selling author of “What Went Wrong at Enron” and a leading proponent of market-based solutions for environmental remediation. He created the annual Wall Street Green Trading Summit in New York each spring, and is recognized as an international leader in clean technology and emissions trading. He co-founded the Energy Hedge Fund Center in 2004.