Carbon manager CADmeleon launches online software spin-off

CARBON management firm CADmeleon has launched a company to commercialise its online software product as it prepares to sign a deal with Scottish and Southern Energy.

Bernard McKeown, managing director of CADmeleon, said the joint venture deal due to be agreed with SSE will give it a platform to target institutional property managers and utilities firms in Europe and eventually the US.

CADmeleon has launched Environmental Building Index and recruited a chief executive from the United States to run the business. Fred Seigele, formerly of Austin, Texas, is a legal expert with experience of running growing technology firms and joined EBI as chief executive last week.

"Fred has come on board. He led stock-market flotation in 1999 and he is successful on the legal side for software," said McKeown.

The software product, Carbon Estates, uses a unique database of details on thousands of large buildings which allows users to benchmark their carbon emissions in order to meet legislation that came into force in April. The Carbon Reduction Commitment (which was recently renamed the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme) is a mandatory carbon-emissions trading scheme to cover all organisations spending more than 500,000 on gas or electricity a year.

The scheme, a method of evaluating and driving down energy usage, is estimated to affect 5,000 large public and private-sector firms while a further 15,000 will be required to produce carbon reduction reports.

"We are working closely with SSE, we are in discussion with SSE Ventures at the moment to taking a stake in a company. It is closely linked to their policy on energy efficiency," said McKeown.

He has been developing the software with Scottish local authorities, including Highland Council, Inverclyde, North Lanarkshire and Edinburgh City councils, which have been testing the CRC scheme since 2008.

Other clients involved with the development of the software include investment funds with property portfolios such as Pruprim.

"Property investors use it because there is a tangible link between sustainability and investment performance. When that link is realised there is an opportunity to increase the yield on the properties they run," said McKeown.

He also envisages the firm expanding its product to include Europe, as well as residential property which is not subject to legislation to control carbon emissions from energy use at present.

A shareholder in both, McKeown said the two companies would continue to work together.

"A software company needs a completely different strategy and allows us to bring in investors," said McKeown. "If EBI is a successful as we are all planning it will be, CADmeleon will inherit services off the back of it.

The company also has an office in Hazel Park, Michigan.

SSE declined to comment on the joint venture but Nigel Ellis, the company's technology development manager, said: "We are delighted to be involved in the development of this concept which we believe to have tremendous potential."