Welcome to EOS EMISSIONSREDUCTION.CA Emission Offset Solutions - QSys & MSys Your Carbon Credit & Green House Gas Emission Solution
EOS provides business solutions to companies who need to manage all or part of the carbon offset industry. EOS, has developed QSys, a science and web-based carbon information management tool for agriculture, energy and various other industry sectors. The QSys tool generates, quantifies and serializes greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in the form of saleable offsets. QSys is the only complete ERP system on the market today to manage the complete offset life cycle. Operation of the QSys application is: • Transparent from end to end and highly automated • Readily scalable and easily customized • Compatible with various GHG quantification methodologies • Adaptable to various regulations and standardsEOS has also developed MSys for Large Final Emitters (LFE’s) to track and mange their internal carbon offset inventories.
Emissions Offset Solutions Corp., (EOS) is an Alberta-based private company that provides GHG Emission Reduction solutions to industry. EOS has developed software products and services that assist industry in defining, quantifying, validating, certifying, serializing, aggregating and selling “carbon offsets”. The company is currently a wholly-owned subsidiary of Failsafe Canada Inc., a provider of business solutions for the past 10 years. The management of Failsafe identified an ever increasing need to manage all aspects related to carbon-offset regulations and the subsequent opportunities for accessing and marketing emission reduction credits to large final emitters and governments. By deploying their systems globally and in various sectors, EOS intends to provide services in GHG quantification, verification, analysis of uncertainty, and audit and compliance reporting. Both GHG emitters and producers of carbon offset credits will benefit from these services which provide clear information upon which to assess and valuate respective assets and liabilities.
EOS Products and Services Overview
The EOS software products will assist groups and companies initiating GHG emission reduction projects as well as large organizations managing carbon credit portfolios. EOS's , two main applications, Offset Quantification System or QSYS, and, the Offset Management System MSYS, are market-proven systems which together will provide solutions for generators, aggregators and emitters to manage the entire carbon offset process. These systems help to solve complicated and detailed information generation and processing throughout the life cycle of a credit or “offset”. EOS is presently working with other partners to bring innovative solutions to the market which will include automatic base lining, banking and carbon footprint tracking. EOS also has a complete registry application available for regulatory bodies to manage their jurisdictional requirements.Environmental issues – along with the related business risks and opportunities – are of increasing concern to many companies around the world. But there is an international consensus that conventional accounting and information management practices simply do not provide adequate visibility to these issues, makingit a challenge for companies to recognize and address them. As a result, companies are paying increasing attention to Environmental Management Accounting (EMA) practices that enable companies to:
Plan and implement cost-effective compliance with environmental regulation and voluntary environmental policy Support the simultaneous reduction of business costs and environmental impacts via more efficient use of energy, waterand materials in internal operations and final products Support the evaluation and implementation of cost-effective and environmentally sensitive programs for ensuring the company’s long-term market and strategic position
Offset Quantification System (QSys)
The QSys application was initially developed for an aggregator of agricultural carbon credits under the Province of Alberta’s emissions reductions programs that were adopted in 2007. The goal was to develop an end to end enterprise solution designed to meet these unique technology needs. Accordingly,QSys integrates all data and processes into a unified system. It uses use multiple components of computer software and hardware to achieve this integration and uses a unified database to store data for all system modules. While this custom solution serves the hardware and software needs of any aggregator, it was developed in such a fashion that it can be utilized for all greenhouse gas reduction opportunities. QSys enables an entity to manage the entire lifecycle of a green house gas reduction project from “Cradle to Grave” by managing all data related to the identification, creation, tracking and selling of these credits. It provides support for managing all of the inputs (such as the properties, industry practices, historical information, property owners, property renters, service agreements and contracts for the appropriate protocol), the protocol coefficients, document creation, document management, the sales cycle and all of the necessary financial information . The core elements of this enterprise solution include:• Supply Chain Management• Credit creation, serialization and inventory management• Financial statements and other financial and operational reports• Customer relationship and contract management• Data warehousing and data/credit audit trail• Universal compliancy (CS0X, CCRA, Emission Audits)• Supply Chain Management • Credit creation, serialization and inventory management• Contact Management• Document Management
Offset Management System (MSYS)
MSYS is a system designed for use by Large Final Emitters who have acquired, and will continue to acquire offset credits from both internal projects and external sources. The complexities in the North American offset market are already becoming apparent as a result of the proliferation of different sources and pedigrees of offsets (such as Kyoto Protocol ERUs, CERs and VERs, a whole raft of Voluntary Emissions Reductions generated in various US locations, CUs, CDMs, EU denominated credits, Alberta VERs, Canadian (as yet untitled) credits, WCI (as yet untitled) credits, RGGI (as yet untitled) credits and US Federal (as yet untitled) credits. ) These credits all have different pedigrees and can only be used in specific jurisdictions, quickly complicating the decision-making process. MSYS will be used by emitters as an inventory management tool and they will also use the application as a decision-making tool when they are applying or retiring credits from this inventory. This product has already attracted interest from one of Alberta’s largest suppliers of electricity to both industrialand residential users, with who we are currently in a development project to include additional functionality specific to their needs.
EOS # 110 - 3025 - 12 St. N.E. Calgary Alberta Canada T2E-7J2
Office & Contact Hours: Monday - Friday 8:30AM to 4:30 PM MST
Phone: (403) 313 - 6789Ext. 103 or 104Fax: (403) 313 - 6792info@failsafecanada.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://eworldwire.com/pdf/18333.pdf
http://www.eworldwire.com/pressreleases/18333
http://www.cnw.ca/en/releases/archive/July2008/18/c5675.html
http://newsblaze.com/story/2008040112010200002.ew/topstory.html
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/December2008/22/c3922.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carbon Credit Generator ( QSYS )
Application Overview
Background
The QSYS application was initially developed for an aggregator of agricultural carbon credits under the Province of Alberta’s emissions reductions programs that were adopted in 2007. The goal was to develop an end to end enterprise solution designed to meet these unique technology needs. Accordingly, QSYS integrates all data and processes into a unified system. It uses use multiple components of computer software and hardware to achieve this integration and uses a unified database to store data for all system modules. While this custom solution serves the hardware and software needs of any aggregator, it was developed in such a fashion that it can be adapted to other greenhouse gas reduction opportunities. This will be explained in more detail below.
QSYS enables an entity to mange the entire lifecycle of a green house gas reduction project from “Cradle to Grave” by managing all data related to the identification, creation, tracking and selling of these credits. It provides support for managing all of the inputs (such as the properties, farming practices, historical land use information, property owners, property renters, service agreements and contracts for the agricultural protocol), the protocol coefficients, document creation, document management, the sales cycle and all of the necessary financial information .
The core elements of this enterprise solution include:
Supply Chain Management
Credit creation, serialization and inventory management
Financial statements and other financial and operational reports
Customer relationship and contract management
Data warehousing and data/credit audit trail
Universal compliancy (CS0X, CCRA, Emission Audits)
The Front Office component of this enterprise solution is known as QSYS. QSYS encompasses the following elements of the enterprise solution.
Supply Chain Management
Credit creation, serialization and inventory management
Contact Management
Document Management
QSYS Technology
QSYS is a smart client application that uses the Internet to interact with XML Web services. It employs common user interface controls and has an easy to learn and user-navigation paradigm. Strong searching capabilities make locating specific data fast and easy. QSYS‘s liberal use of visual cues helps users find critical information quickly. QSYS supports attaching files or Web links to all critical data records. As such documents related to a specific property, person or contract for example can be retrieved from the database and displayed to the end user in seconds.
QSYS has been built on Epicor’s Clientele Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Built completely on Microsoft .NET, the QSYS application leverages the power of a service-oriented architecture to provide a robust data management solution. It leverages object-oriented development to provide powerful functionality. Customization is performed using Microsoft’s intuitive Visual Studio .NET development tool which means changes can be made using any of the numerous .NET-compatible programming languages. In addition, .NET-based architecture uses inheritance — allowing customizations to be isolated from source code, so future upgrades and migrations to the source code do not overwrite custom changes.
QSYS takes a unique approach to web-based applications by providing a rich windows client that communicates with Web services using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). This “smart client” provides the benefits of a rich windows user interface with web-based accessibility. All QSYS communication can be encrypted by securing the application web server using Secure Socket Layer (SSL).
With QSYS greenhouse gas reduction projects are able to manage their data, business process and customer relationships by exploiting the benefits of the Microsoft .NET architecture, delivering powerful accessibility, extensibility and integration. Employing native Web services and XML throughout, QSYS makes integration to external applications easier and faster than ever.
QSYS Database and Data Security
QSYS currently utilizes two databases: a production database that runs on Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and a reporting database that resides on Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Direct access to both of these databases is restricted to database administrators. End users of the QSYS application and associated reports may only communicate to these databases via QSYS and SQL Server 2005 reporting services.
Audit tables that record the historical transactions on core database tables are in place. This means that should the need arise it is possible to retrieve a complete history of all data transactions for a specific property or land use record. This functionality is being expanded so that the transaction history of all data will be stored in audit tables.
Business rules, developed in the SQL Server database, have been implemented so that specific data cannot be deleted from the system once that data has been used to generate an approved offset credit.
The production database has recently been transferred to SQL Server 2005. In conjunction with this migration complete database audit trails and enhanced data security are now in place.
Data Management Life Cycle
QSYS is required to manage an enormous amount of data in order to generate and provide serialized green house gas reductions to large final emitters (LFE’s). In addition to managing this data, its security and integrity, QSYS must implement/enable business processes so that end users can work efficiently, confident that the application will respond in a timely and meaningful manner as they interact with it.
Some of the QSYS development team’s goals were:
Ease of data entry
Ease of data retrieval
Elimination of data entry errors (Data checks, drop down lists etc)
Generation of Meaningful reports
Capture of the right data
QSYS provides value by managing entities critical to the entity, and the codification of key business processes within the application.
The main entities in the system are:
Contacts
People
Groups
Organizations
Sales Agents
Properties
Historical land use
Historical farming practices
Legal descriptions
Land Title Records
Owners
Renters
Service Agreements
Contracts
Reductions/Credits
Protocols
Documents
QSYS enables the following business processes:
Contact Management
Manage Farmers (suppliers)
Manage Buyers (customers)
Manage Sales Agents
Manage Auditors
Manage Government Contacts
Land Management
Land Title Searches and Integration
Validate owner details
Validate legal description and other data
Property owners and renters
Capture, update and validate land use data year over year
Capture, update and validate farming practices year over year
Creation of Service Agreements and related documents
Associated land units with service agreements
Create contracts
Generate legal documents
Projected credits & other summary data
Manage Chart of Protocols
Manage credit creation and serialization
Inventory Management
Back office integration
The following diagram depicts the business process that is enabled in QSYS enterprise solutions. The Blue boxes indicate the process components that are enabled in QSYS while the green boxes show the business processes that are found in the back office financial application.
The above roadmap lays out the process for an Alberta-approved agricultural protocol. While adjustments will be made for other protocols, this gives the reader a good understanding of the overall process.
Farmers and their associated land units (properties) are entered into QSYS. The application ensures that all properties are unique by ensuring that legal land descriptions are unique. Land units are associated with a service agreement when they are entered into the system
Ownership of all properties is confirmed by conducting Land Title Searches. Land Title Data is imported into QSYS. Property owner contact data is update with land titles data where required.
Annual land use data and farming practices data is captured. QSYS’s data entry screens control what data is entered while business logic ensures that specific data constraints are adhered to.
Once all relevant data has been captured and ownership has been validated against land titles data contracts are created. These contracts consist of a digital contract record in QSYS as well as all relevant contract documents. These documents are generated from QSYS and contain all of the pertinent data related to each and every property included in the contract.
Contracts are delivered to property owners who review all land use and farming practice data. Once they have reviewed this data the contract may be signed and returned along with any other data that supports the farmers land use practices, such as crop insurance records.
Signed contracts are reviewed by senior internal staff. When a contract it is determined to be complete and correct it is approved by the reviewer. This event triggers a business process in the QSYS application that locks down all of the data related to the approved contract. This prevents this data from being deleted from the QSYS database and from being changed.
Offset credits are then generated by system based upon the chart of protocols in QSYS. The chart of protocols contains the information required to determine the number of Offset credits generated by each land use unit in a contract.
For each approved protocol the chart of protocols contains a list of all possible combinations of attribute data that are used to determine the coefficient to be applied to a land use record. If the attributes of a land use record do not match one of the unique records in the chart of protocols that land use record is given an offset credit of 0 tons.
If a match is found the area of the land use record and the corresponding protocol coefficient are used to determine the offset amount generated by the land use record and protocol.
As required, a third party auditor is charged with verifying the data and the protocols used to determine the offset credits generated by this process. This verification process adheres to the international standard ISO 14064 Part -3 Greenhouse Gases: Specification with guidance for the validation and verification of greenhouse gas assertions.
Upon successful completion of the third party audit an application is made to the Canadian Standards Association for their stamp of approval on the offset credits generated. Once approved serial numbers supplied by the CSA are attached to each offset credit, these serialized credits are then added to QSYS’s back office system as saleable inventory.
Offset Management System (MSYS)
The Offset Management System is an adaptation of QSYS. This system is designed for use by Large Final Emitters who have acquired, and will continue to acquire offset credits from both internal and external sources. This product has already attracted interest from EPCOR, one of Alberta’s largest suppliers of electricity to both industrial and residential users, with whom we are currently in a development project to include additional functionality specific to their needs.
For further information please contact:
QSYS EOS Office
Failsafe Canada Inc.
Suite 110 – 3025 – 12 St.
N.E. Calgary Alberta
Canada T2E-7J2
Offc 403 313 6789 Ext. 103 or 104
www.failsafecanada.com
Intelligent Business Solutions using Innovative Technology
