“In 2006, Paul Rak, president of VeriForm Inc, a Canadian steel fabricator, set his company on the kind of do-gooder mission that could have given his corporate accountant fits. Rak had just seen Al Gore’s climate change film, An Inconvenient Truth, his first child had recently been born, and Rak decided he was obliged to find ways to deeply cut his company’s greenhouse gas emissions, even though he knew it was going to cost plenty.

Increasing energy prices, the hidden cost of carbon, growing risks from energy supply disruption and climate-change compliance issues are four key reasons why finance executives need a multi-year efficiency strategy to maximize costs savings, meet carbon reduction goals and make financial decisions based on total cost of ownership, according to a Verdantix study.

The recent United Nations COP15 conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, has focused industry attention on the possibilities offered by carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies as a means of driving CO2 emission cuts for energy-intensive businesses.