German business software SAP, with 50,000-plus employees and more than 80,000 corporate customers, isn’t commonly thought of as an early-moving risk taker. Enterprise software has languished in a backwater of bad design and poor integration. But this week, SAP took a surprisingly early step into the nascent carbon management market: it agreed to purchase the young (and relatively unknown in the broader software industry business) carbon management startup Clear Standards.

The deal, which is set to close in June, is a game-changer for big software firms that have been eying the carbon management market, for startups that have been working on competitive products, and for industries outside of cleantech that have been unsure whether or not to bank on the price of carbon.

While Oracle, Microsoft and IBM have all been working on environmental management tools, SAP is the first big software company to make a purchase in the carbon management space. The size of the investment wasn’t disclosed — neither SAP nor Clear Standards would even give a range — but 2-year-old Clear Standards was funded with just $4 million from Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Kinetic Ventures back in November 2008, so it couldn’t have been too high. Michael Meehan, CEO of carbon management firm Carbonetworks, a competitor to Clear Standards, described the purchase as surprising. “We didn’t expect SAP to buy so early,” he explained. “This is a really nascent market.”

Carbon management tools are starting to be used by companies that want to quantify how much carbon they emit through their business practices — what companies call their carbon footprint — so that they can reduce the amount of carbon they emit. AMR Research estimates the market for carbon management software and consulting services is already worth about $3.6 billion. There are a variety of reasons for this growth. Companies want to cut down on carbon emissions so that they can tout their low carbon footprints, so that they can cut costs (cutting energy consumption reduces both carbon and an energy bill), so that they can participate in currently launched carbon markets, and so that they can meet coming carbon regulations in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

SAP’s early bid signals a few things. First off, SAP clearly sees managing carbon emissions as a revenue driver. The president of Sterling, Virginia-based Clear Standards, Anirban Chakrabarti, says the acquisition of his company is proof that “a very big company is getting very serious about carbon management.” SAP’s VP of Sustainability, Scott Bolick, says the plan is to offer carbon management tools, and later energy and water usage tools, to its corporate customers within the year. So SAP will be offering Clear Standards tech before any kind of U.S. carbon regulation will be implemented — carbon regulation in Europe and the worldwide voluntary carbon emissions markets are already big enough sources of revenue to get SAP to move. Bolick told us the main reason that SAP plans to offer this product is that its worldwide corporate customers are already demanding it.

If the U.S. implements carbon regulations, SAP’s early purchase of Clear Standards will really pay off big time. SAP will have an early advantage with software that was built specifically for the carbon markets and isn’t a retooling of business software built for another environment. And, if U.S. regulation passes, the carbon management market will be massive — as Carbonetwork’s Meehan told me, “for the lid to really blow off the carbon software management market, it needs U.S. policy.”

It could be coming soon. Congress is currently working on an energy and climate bill that could pave the way for a carbon cap-and-trade system, and the Obama administration has been the most bullish U.S. president in history on carbon regulation. SAP’s acquisition is a bet that U.S. carbon regulation is around the corner, and for a company that isn’t traditionally in the clean power or energy-efficiency business, that’s a strong signal that industry is starting to get on board with the idea of incorporating the price of carbon into business.

In terms of SAP’s software competitors, the Clear Standard acquisition suggests that software companies that are already managing business processes for corporations should start making more aggressive moves into the carbon management market. What commonly happens in new tech markets like this is competitors start buying up what’s available — it happens in web, wireless and Internet infrastructure markets. IBM has been working on carbon management for years, and industry insiders expect it to keep on building products, rather than acquiring someone else’s. Oracle, on the other hand, could likely be the next company to acquire a startup in the carbon management space to complement its suite of “green” tools.

So, what’s likely to be the next carbon software company that gets bought? There are quite a few competitors in the space — some that are newer and others that are more established. Carbonetworks is one of the older firms in the space, founded in 2005 but its software was built in 1999, and raised $5 million in funding from NGEN in the middle of last year. Meehan says Carbonetworks isn’t looking to sell, but he predicts that because it’s been so difficult to raise financing recently because of the downturn, younger firms that are struggling to raise more money will get bought out at lower valuations. SAP might have started the buying spree, but it’s probably not the last. Expect more such deals to come this year.

Katie Fehrenbacher is the Editor and Founder of Earth2Tech.