Green Information Systems for Competitiveness and Collaboration in Alberta’s Bio-Industrial Sector

Mike Kennedy.
President/CEO of Green Analytics.

Increasingly, companies are implementing environmental sustainability strategies to mitigate risk, to respond to regulatory requirements and to enhance performance, spurred by shareholders, customers, employees, non-government organizations and suppliers. This is particular the case for companies starting up or moving into the bio-industrial sector. The purpose of this presentation is to drawn on recent experiences with the development and use of information systems to advance the discussion and practice of using green information systems in Alberta, with a specific emphasis on the bio-industrial sector.

Achieving environmental and corporate goals requires Information systems to measure, store, and analyze pertinent information and to communicate corporate, product and process outcomes to decision-makers. From experience and the academic literature we know that information systems can provide a cost-effective and strategically valuable contribution to individual company goals, sector goals and policy goals. Drawing on three case studies, the development of a bio-resource inventory system, known as the Bio-Resource Information Systems (BRIMS), a lifecycle product assessment for the commercialization of a bio-based polyurethane spray foam product (BioFoam) and an environmental performance tracking and monitoring systems (Green Metrics) this presentation seeks to highlight where there are opportunities to apply these same concepts specifically to the bio-industrial sector.

To propel the use of information systems and facilitate a discussion on next steps in the use of such systems in the bio-industrial sector, this presentation provides a roadmap for companies, non-profit organizations and governments to consider for advancing the measurement, analysis and reporting of environmental sustainability.