Sun Microsystems has launched OpenEco.org, an online community to help organizations calculate, compare, and reduce green house gas emissions. The cost of admission is sharing data, transparently or anonymously, with other community participants.

Increasingly, according to Sun, GHG analysis is done with home-grown or proprietary tools and often requires significant internal resources or expensive consulting services. With the new site, Sun hopes carbon accounting data that might ordinarily remain in a company’s spreadsheet will be shared using the site’s GHG tools that lets organizations benchmark against one another, set reduction goals and share best practices to meet them.

Ceres and Natural Logic are early participants.

“Working together drives progress faster than working alone,” said Dave Douglas, Vice President of Eco Responsibility at Sun Microsystems. “Sun was built on the philosophy of openness and building communities to solve problems, which we’re now applying to the environment. When we share, sustainable business can be more attainable – and prosperous – for everyone.”