Discovering the Environment Management Module

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to discover the Environment Management Module.

Environment Management

The Environment Management solution provides the following capabilities:

  • Central repository for all compliance requirements from enterprise level down to specific equipment including regulatory, permit-driven, and internal policies.

  • Ability to detect and track compliance deviations through a lifecycle of investigation, causal analysis, and corrective actions.

  • Task Calendar and Task Monitor applications.

  • Calculator for GHG as well as other air or water emissions to fulfill legal and reporting requirements.

  • Interface for specific providers of regulatory content.

Customers can benefit from the following:

  • Reduce the risk of noncompliance and penalties.

  • Reduce the effort to calculate emission totals.

  • Ensure continuity of license to operate.

  • Improve the calculation accuracy and transparency.

Understand the SAP application interface. The first screenshot is labeled Manage Compliance Scenario and features a list of locations and compliance scenarios. The second screenshot, labeled Monitor Data, displays a line graph showing collected data for daily natural gas consumption over a period.

SAP Fiori Launchpad – Role-Based Entry Screen

The SAP Fiori Launchpad interface provides the users with various labeled features such as anchor navigation for group access, group tiles for personalized content organization, news and feed to enhance collaboration, search functionality to get immediate answers, color coding alerts for any overdue, new, or immediate actions, and edit mode for instant personalization of groups and tiles.

Growing Environmental Policies Around the World

The figure depicts various environmental regulations in different regions. Highlighted countries and regions include: Canada, US, Europe, China, Japan, Philippines, and Australia.

This figure shows the various governments around the world that have issued environmental regulations to protect the environment and the ecosystem. For example, in the U.S. there is the Clean Air Act to ensure good quality of air, the Clean Water Act to protect the natural waters of the U.S. and minimize the pollution.

Similarly, other country governments have issued similar policies and regulations to protect the environment.

Trends Driving Need for Environmental Footprint Data

The figure shows Trends Driving Need for Environmental Footprint Data. It is a world map with four plants located in different regions: one in North America, one in South America, one in Europe, and one in the Middle East. The four trends are the following: Customers, investors, and other stakeholders, regulatory authorities, ISO certificates and audits, and internal management (cost, risk, and branding).

Beyond governments enacting laws to protect the environment, various internal and external stake holders are pressuring organizations or businesses to improve their environmental performance and report it.

For example, investors are asking companies to report their environmental performance data annually in the Sustainability reports.

Business partners are asking for certification to prove they have good environmental management systems in place - for example, ISO140001.

Internal management is concerned with the impact to the brand for not being environmentally conscience the risk associated with it.

Emissions Management Challenges

The image illustrates global emissions management challenges. It highlights different regulations and permits such as local, state, federal, international requirements, along with associated tasks like complex calculation, monitoring, record keeping, or reporting.

Environmental management challenges are as follows:

  • They must follow all requirements from various applicable regulations, policies, or permits.

  • They must be aware of changes to multiple specific rules or requirements.

  • They must enact a timely fulfillment of compliance requirements and record-keeping.

  • They must ensure proper data collection and calculation accuracy.

  • They must maintain consistent, transparent, and auditable inventory processes.

Government policies as well as internal or external stakeholders pose a challenge to an organization to ensure that they stay compliant all the time. Organizations have to identify all the requirements that they must comply with such as policies, regulations, or permits. Sometimes, these can be in thousands for one location. They have to keep up with changing regulations, implement compliance requirements in a timely manner, and keep records, collect and/or calculate environmental data. Additionally, they must implement a consistent, transparent, and auditable compliance process.

Greenhouse Gas Management (GHG) - Developing and Tracking an Emission Inventory

SAP's environment management products support customers in the following:

  • Leverage a pre-built emission factor library and equations.

  • Collect activity data like fuel or electricity used.

  • Proactively flag data issues with the data collection or emission calculations.

  • Monitor thresholds of greenhouse gas emissions.

  • Report on greenhouse gas emissions.

Regulatory and Permit Compliance

Check the Regulatory and Permit Compliance in the SAP Manage Compliance Scenario interface with a menu for managing compliance scenarios. It displays location details, compliance requirements, and activities.

Regulatory and Permit Compliance has the objective of supporting the process of managing a central legal, permit, or policy requirement registry and consistent processes that support the full lifecycle of compliance-driven tasks and exceptions.

The solution provides the following capabilities:

  • Import and get automated change updates to applicable regulatory requirements from content providers.

  • Establish and maintain a comprehensive EHS legal, permit, or policy requirement registry.

  • Manage all compliance-related tasks by monitoring compliance tasks using the Task Calendar.

Customers can benefit in the following ways:

  • Ensure transparency on compliance requirements and improve compliance performance.

  • Reduce Compliance risk and ensure auditability.

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