The Carbon Challenge

State regulators just set energy efficiency standards for new TVs, but the Consumer Electronics Association isn't happy about. It should be. If past is prologue, this new regulation will drive innovation in the form of exciting new technologies that can be adapted for other products.

The recent green agreements have lowered expectations for any global deal at the Copenhagen climate conference next month, but they may also foreshadow a new approach focusing on job creation and technological innovation.

The IT industry generates as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines, leading more companies to try and find a solution.

Nine chief executives and chairmen from around the world have signed up for an exclusive CNBC initiative, "The Carbon Council", aimed at identifying opportunities in clean technology and the larger business of sustainability. 

Ahead-of-the-curve retail investors looking to play carbon as a commodity may want to bone up on the facts while they are waiting to for the nascent market to scale up.

California is flirting with car insurance paid at the gas pump, so you’re actually paying based on how much of highway system you use—and how much carbon you pump into the air. Allstate, State Farm and Progressive are considering the idea.

Can you cash in on climate change? Barely a day passes it seems without a new green fund launch, or another ETF bundling together a collection of stocks in companies that have green credentials.

Countries like the US and Germany have dominated the renewable-energy market by investing heavily, but some of the emerging markets look likely to take over in the race to clean energy.

In addition to the usual specialized brokerage and accounting services any commodity needs, carbon markets also require established standards to ensure credits are reliably similar and registries to track those credits from birth to retirement

Companies will soon be fined if they don't have the answer to that question. And that's a good thing for software companies--assuming you use their carbon counting products.