The U.K.-based research firm Verdantix has created a new guide to help companies navigate what it calls a "new era" of sustainable business software. The company surveyed 65 software vendors and found a landscape crowded with 126 sustainable business applications, a 406 percent increase between 2005 and 2010. They can be broken down along four broad categories, with carbon management software applications being the most prevalent among vendors, followed by CSR/sustainability reporting, energy management, and compliance-based applications. Leading software vendors have moved to integrate the various sustainability processes into a single platform, said Verdantix Director David Metcalfe in a statement. "A new era of sustainable business software has arrived, driven by a boom in supply side activity which anticipates the increasingly strategic nature of sustainability,” Metcalfe said. “But our analysis suggests that software providers in this space must cross the chasm. During the next 18 months suppliers need to expand their customer base from visionary buyers like News Corp. and Tesco to early majority buyers."

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Newly detected rising sea levels in parts of the Indian Ocean, including the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra and Java, appear to be at least partly a result of human-induced increases of atmospheric greenhouse gases, says a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. The study, which combined sea surface measurements going back to the 1960s and satellite observations, indicates anthropogenic climate warming likely is amplifying regional sea rise changes in parts of the Indian Ocean, threatening inhabitants of some coastal areas and islands, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Weiqing Han, lead study author. The sea level rise -- which may aggravate monsoon flooding in Bangladesh and India -- could have far-reaching impacts on both future regional and global climate.

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The U.K., Germany and France Thursday launched a new push for the European Union to commit to a larger reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 in a bid to aid economic recovery and shore up energy security, in a move that is likely to stir debate in the EU. In articles published simultaneously in newspapers in the three countries, U.K. Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne, Jean-Louis Borloo and Norbert Roettgen--his counterparts in France and Germany respectively--said cutting emissions 30% by 2020 instead of the targeted 20% would encourage more low-carbon investment.

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