Carbon Footprint and Accounting and Environmental Management Systems: A Conceptual Overview

For the purpose of sustainability accounting and reporting, organizations need to manage their carbon footprint, energy use, and other operations with an environmental impact. Green information systems and environmental management information systems thus become necessary for monitoring and controlling activities and procedures regarding environmental concerns. Unfortunately, the lack of knowledge and practices has become the hurdle of adoption to many organizations. In the IS research community, scholars have not yet given full attention to carbon management and reporting and environmental management information systems, despite our increasing efforts in working on green information systems issues. In this poster session we aim to introduce the concepts of carbon footprint, carbon accounting, and environmental management information systems by discussing their characteristics, usage, standardization, and governance issues. We provide an overview of a collection of green and sustainable information systems and share thoughts on directions for conducting IS research on these topics.