7 Leading Companies in the Carbon Accounting Sector

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Companies like Caterpillar(CAT), Kraft Foods(KFT), Newmont Mining(NEM) and Dell(DELL) are all changing the way they calculate, monitor, report and utilize environmentally sensitive data thanks to a new crop of software programs that focus on sustainability performance and management.

Paul Baier, vice president of sustainability consulting at Groom Energy and author of an annual report on enterprise carbon accounting said that since investors, customers and regulators are increasingly demanding accurate carbon emissions data and asking executives to make expensive decisions based on that data, companies are investing in ECA software to automate the environmental data process the same way they bought financial accounting software to track financial data.

"Organizations are beginning to track carbon emissions as rigorously as they track revenue and expenses," he said.

Companies populating the ECA solutions sector range from startups like Hara to stalwarts like IBM(IBM) and Baier releases a yearly list of ECA emerging leaders to help executives identify which products best suit their company's needs.

Here are some of his 2010 picks with examples of their environmental data management solutions and a list of the major companies that use them.