Different Worlds, Common Issues
•Download as PPT, PDF•
0 likes•696 views
Bresslergroup's presentation for Innovation Philadelphia's 2009 Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (19)
Similar to Different Worlds, Common Issues
Similar to Different Worlds, Common Issues (20)
More from Bresslergroup
More from Bresslergroup (12)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Different Worlds, Common Issues
- 1. Different Worlds, Common Issues Companies find common ground on sustainability issues
- 3. Panel Gary Sorin, Director, Operational Excellence NRG Energy Peter Byar, Senior Industrial Designer, Bresslergroup Peter Bressler, FIDSA Founder and Board Chair, SRS Energy Elysa Stein Soffer, Senior Graphic Designer, Bresslergroup
- 4. Panel Gary Sorin, Director, Operational Excellence NRG Energy Peter Byar, Senior Industrial Designer, Bresslergroup Peter Bressler, FIDSA Founder and Board Chair, SRS Energy. Elysa Stein Soffer, Senior Graphic Design, Bresslergroup
- 7. Key Observation #1: Agreement In November 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated … “ Warming of the climate is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea levels.”
- 10. Key Observation #2: Definition There are dozens of popular terms Corporate responsibility, sustainable development, corporate citizenship, environmental sustainability, corporate sustainability and green business, to name a few. Some common themes are emerging Many fall back on a common, foundational definition of sustainability … “ … meeting needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” - Brundtland World Commission on Environment and Development
- 11. Definition: My Focus I focus on the Environmental piece … And I call it “Corporate Environmental Sustainability” The primary issue addressed is: “How is my business impacting our planet?” A lot of perspectives … depending on who you ask … Top management – green strategy Environmental manager – environmental compliance Energy manager – green buildings Marketing manager – green products / services CFO – more green for green
- 12. Key Observation #3: Value Chain Companies are (or will be) taking a Value Chain view of Corporate Sustainability i.e. it’s not just factory emissions and energy use Start at the beginning … R&D – cradle to cradle design … lifecycle analysis Then … Take a look at every step in your value chain
- 29. Panel Gary Sorin, Director, Operational Excellence NRG Energy Peter Byar, Senior Industrial Designer, Bresslergroup Peter Bressler, FIDSA Founder and Board Chair, SRS Energy Elysa Stein Soffer, Senior Graphic Designer, Bresslergroup
- 30. Designing Sustainability Sustainability as a trigger for innovation, opportunities for product development
- 35. Minimizing material usage through Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
- 36. Use Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) To inform material and process choices
- 37. Mind Shifting Effectively communicating green awareness Influence the next generation
- 38. Choices for the future Worse and Worse: Unpleasant confrontations with scarcity Human potential applied to making and taking OR The Big Shift: Realizing that living better is living lighter Human potential applied proactively and creatively
- 39. Panel Gary Sorin, Director, Operational Excellence NRG Energy Peter Byar, Senior Industrial Designer, Bresslergroup Peter Bressler, FIDSA Founder and Board Chair, SRS Energy Elysa Stein Soffer, Senior Graphic Designer, Bresslergroup
- 40. Spawning a Solar Roofing System A flight of fantasy Problem: Generate electricity & balance efficiency, sustainability and desirability? Solution: An aesthetically integrated Photovoltaic roofing product Patented core technologies in 1998 Raw PV was $8.50 per watt Bad timing
- 45. Projected Cost Convergence DOE predicts grid parity by 2015, installed costs at < $4.14/watt
- 48. US Tile Headquarters test roof, Corona CA 500 W SRS vs. 500 W BP Solar Installed March 2009 “ Seamless” “ Profile Integration” Standard As much as 30% greater output Proving Performance
- 50. Panel Gary Sorin, Director, Operational Excellence NRG Energy Peter Byar, Senior Industrial Designer, Bresslergroup Peter Bressler, FIDSA Founder and Board Chair, SRS Energy Elysa Stein Soffer, Senior Graphic Designer, Bresslergroup
- 54. A design firm with 25 employees and a 10,000 sq ft studio yielded: 116 Metric Tons In 2008 So what does this mean? Let’s put this into perspective …
- 56. Breakdown of Company Emissions 2008
- 57. Breakdown of Personal Commute 2008 Breakdown of Company Emissions 2008
- 58. Breakdown of Personal Commute 2008 Breakdown of Company Emissions 2008 85% walk, ride bikes, use public transportation or telecommute
- 59. After calculating the carbon footprint, analyze areas that need help and start immediately ! Establish in-house green champions who want to lead the efforts to get things done and continue to motivate the team Site - Ensure your next purchases are energy saver peripherals, use laptops - Install a recycling program that covers as many items as possible such as glass, plastic & aluminum bottles and cans, paper, cardboard, computers & peripherals, ink cartridges - Set printers to automatically print double sided - More efficient thermostat regulation, filter changes quarterly - Purchase compact florescent bulbs as replacements, longer term: motion sensors and dimmers Personal Commute - Encourage employees to walk, or ride bikes, provide a bike parking area - Encourage public transportation (transit checks or other allowances) - Telecommuting, saves time & money Next Steps
- 60. Business Travel - Meet through web & video conferencing, may require upgrading video conferencing technology - Car Share, public transportation for meetings - Purchase carbon offsets for air travel Servers - Set up daytime back up These are just a few examples. Be creative and think of ways to reduce emissions that are specific to your business. Next Steps
- 61. Examples of ways we are reducing emissions specific to our industry: - Allot a budget per project for green research and product lifecycle evaluation - Create more (value, meaning, and performance) with less (materials, and energy) through good design - Raise awareness for clients and consumers by recommending the greenest design concept & by posting sustainable design project case studies and industry news to our blog: bresslergreen.com Bresslergroup’s Design & Development Process Improvements Source: Design is the Problem –Nathan Shedroff
- 63. Thank you! For more information about Bresslergroup, please contact: Mike Flanagan [email_address] Managing Partner, Bresslergroup
Editor's Notes
- Defining Sustainability, By Robert Pojasek, January 5, 2009 There are scores of different terms for something that many of us refer to as sustainability. These terms include corporate responsibility, sustainable development, corporate citizenship, environmental sustainability, corporate sustainability and green business. For these terms, there are literally hundreds of different definitions. So where do we find some guidance on how to make sustainability operational for an organization? Such an organization might be an individual, a family, neighborhood, community or local business. All corporations consist of local businesses of their own and their supply chain. For those of you working with the corporation perspective, we should be able to roll up this simple definition to help you out. In desperation, everyone has a default position: &quot;Use the Brundtland Commission definition!&quot; We all know what this is by now. It's a durable definition because it is flexible and open to interpretation. However, it literally begs the question asked here. People will always need food, water, energy and shelter to survive. Yet, to thrive will certainly take more than that. We should not presume to know beyond our own most basic needs what future generations will need to thrive. We can presume that they will value having choice just as we have had choices now and in the past. Because values, politics and our understanding of the Earth and its systems are still evolving, notions of what is sustainable will never be static or sure. However, the biggest problem with the Brundtland Commission definition of sustainable development is that it says nothing about making sustainability operational. Sustainability is about behaving in a way that can be continued or sustained. To operate sustainably, an organization must act in a way that is consistent with and supports the well-being of the physical environment and all of the biological communities and economies of the locations where they operate. The definition and the report do not tell us how to do this. Organizations seeking to operate sustainably must consider how their vision, mission and values (i.e., even individuals and families have such concepts even if they are not in writing) affect each of the following responsibilities: 1. Their financial performance and the broader economic prosperity of their community — you need both; 2. The environment including the availability of all resources (energy and water) and materials and the handling of all wastes; and 3. The well being of all life (ecosystems) in the local and global communities in which they operate. Organizations should think globally but act locally. Sustainability is achieved in operations by managing operational risks and acting on improvement opportunities recognizing responsibility for integrating economic, environmental and social outcomes. To be sustained, sustainability must be an integral part of the way the organization operates. This is best accomplished by including the three responsibilities into an integrated management system. There are a number of management systems that can be used to help the organization in this regard (e.g., ISO 9001, ISO 14001, AS 4360, OHSAS 18001, SA 8000, and BS 8900). Sustainability should adopt a positive view of the future (i.e., not be focused on &quot;doing less of a bad thing&quot;) and use the 15 leading indicators found in commonly available business excellence frameworks (see my previous blog). These frameworks now exist in about 75 countries. Sustainability requires a commitment to achieve continual improvement through the use of process improvement methods (e.g., lean and six sigma). When an integrated management system and a business excellence framework are used together, a demand is created for continual improvement. Sustainability doesn't require any fancy slogans such as &quot;triple bottom line&quot; or &quot;people, planet, profits.&quot; These slogans are distracting and not completely relevant to most organizations. Each organization should determine how it can effectively drive the sustainability process through its focus on outcomes that enhance its continuity (i.e., managing operational risk) and addressing its three responsibilities. All projects should address these needs and be selected and reviewed with the engagement of key stakeholders. It is important to make the program operational at the local level with genuine employee involvement. If it were this simple, I would not be writing this blog. But, maybe it really is this simple if we can step from behind the biases that we bring to this important understanding. Many people are so loyal to the Brundtland Commission definition that they cannot think about such things. I think they will need to deal with this if they want effective operational programs!
- Defining Sustainability, By Robert Pojasek, January 5, 2009 There are scores of different terms for something that many of us refer to as sustainability. These terms include corporate responsibility, sustainable development, corporate citizenship, environmental sustainability, corporate sustainability and green business. For these terms, there are literally hundreds of different definitions. So where do we find some guidance on how to make sustainability operational for an organization? Such an organization might be an individual, a family, neighborhood, community or local business. All corporations consist of local businesses of their own and their supply chain. For those of you working with the corporation perspective, we should be able to roll up this simple definition to help you out. In desperation, everyone has a default position: &quot;Use the Brundtland Commission definition!&quot; We all know what this is by now. It's a durable definition because it is flexible and open to interpretation. However, it literally begs the question asked here. People will always need food, water, energy and shelter to survive. Yet, to thrive will certainly take more than that. We should not presume to know beyond our own most basic needs what future generations will need to thrive. We can presume that they will value having choice just as we have had choices now and in the past. Because values, politics and our understanding of the Earth and its systems are still evolving, notions of what is sustainable will never be static or sure. However, the biggest problem with the Brundtland Commission definition of sustainable development is that it says nothing about making sustainability operational. Sustainability is about behaving in a way that can be continued or sustained. To operate sustainably, an organization must act in a way that is consistent with and supports the well-being of the physical environment and all of the biological communities and economies of the locations where they operate. The definition and the report do not tell us how to do this. Organizations seeking to operate sustainably must consider how their vision, mission and values (i.e., even individuals and families have such concepts even if they are not in writing) affect each of the following responsibilities: 1. Their financial performance and the broader economic prosperity of their community — you need both; 2. The environment including the availability of all resources (energy and water) and materials and the handling of all wastes; and 3. The well being of all life (ecosystems) in the local and global communities in which they operate. Organizations should think globally but act locally. Sustainability is achieved in operations by managing operational risks and acting on improvement opportunities recognizing responsibility for integrating economic, environmental and social outcomes. To be sustained, sustainability must be an integral part of the way the organization operates. This is best accomplished by including the three responsibilities into an integrated management system. There are a number of management systems that can be used to help the organization in this regard (e.g., ISO 9001, ISO 14001, AS 4360, OHSAS 18001, SA 8000, and BS 8900). Sustainability should adopt a positive view of the future (i.e., not be focused on &quot;doing less of a bad thing&quot;) and use the 15 leading indicators found in commonly available business excellence frameworks (see my previous blog). These frameworks now exist in about 75 countries. Sustainability requires a commitment to achieve continual improvement through the use of process improvement methods (e.g., lean and six sigma). When an integrated management system and a business excellence framework are used together, a demand is created for continual improvement. Sustainability doesn't require any fancy slogans such as &quot;triple bottom line&quot; or &quot;people, planet, profits.&quot; These slogans are distracting and not completely relevant to most organizations. Each organization should determine how it can effectively drive the sustainability process through its focus on outcomes that enhance its continuity (i.e., managing operational risk) and addressing its three responsibilities. All projects should address these needs and be selected and reviewed with the engagement of key stakeholders. It is important to make the program operational at the local level with genuine employee involvement. If it were this simple, I would not be writing this blog. But, maybe it really is this simple if we can step from behind the biases that we bring to this important understanding. Many people are so loyal to the Brundtland Commission definition that they cannot think about such things. I think they will need to deal with this if they want effective operational programs!
- Defining Sustainability, By Robert Pojasek, January 5, 2009 There are scores of different terms for something that many of us refer to as sustainability. These terms include corporate responsibility, sustainable development, corporate citizenship, environmental sustainability, corporate sustainability and green business. For these terms, there are literally hundreds of different definitions. So where do we find some guidance on how to make sustainability operational for an organization? Such an organization might be an individual, a family, neighborhood, community or local business. All corporations consist of local businesses of their own and their supply chain. For those of you working with the corporation perspective, we should be able to roll up this simple definition to help you out. In desperation, everyone has a default position: &quot;Use the Brundtland Commission definition!&quot; We all know what this is by now. It's a durable definition because it is flexible and open to interpretation. However, it literally begs the question asked here. People will always need food, water, energy and shelter to survive. Yet, to thrive will certainly take more than that. We should not presume to know beyond our own most basic needs what future generations will need to thrive. We can presume that they will value having choice just as we have had choices now and in the past. Because values, politics and our understanding of the Earth and its systems are still evolving, notions of what is sustainable will never be static or sure. However, the biggest problem with the Brundtland Commission definition of sustainable development is that it says nothing about making sustainability operational. Sustainability is about behaving in a way that can be continued or sustained. To operate sustainably, an organization must act in a way that is consistent with and supports the well-being of the physical environment and all of the biological communities and economies of the locations where they operate. The definition and the report do not tell us how to do this. Organizations seeking to operate sustainably must consider how their vision, mission and values (i.e., even individuals and families have such concepts even if they are not in writing) affect each of the following responsibilities: 1. Their financial performance and the broader economic prosperity of their community — you need both; 2. The environment including the availability of all resources (energy and water) and materials and the handling of all wastes; and 3. The well being of all life (ecosystems) in the local and global communities in which they operate. Organizations should think globally but act locally. Sustainability is achieved in operations by managing operational risks and acting on improvement opportunities recognizing responsibility for integrating economic, environmental and social outcomes. To be sustained, sustainability must be an integral part of the way the organization operates. This is best accomplished by including the three responsibilities into an integrated management system. There are a number of management systems that can be used to help the organization in this regard (e.g., ISO 9001, ISO 14001, AS 4360, OHSAS 18001, SA 8000, and BS 8900). Sustainability should adopt a positive view of the future (i.e., not be focused on &quot;doing less of a bad thing&quot;) and use the 15 leading indicators found in commonly available business excellence frameworks (see my previous blog). These frameworks now exist in about 75 countries. Sustainability requires a commitment to achieve continual improvement through the use of process improvement methods (e.g., lean and six sigma). When an integrated management system and a business excellence framework are used together, a demand is created for continual improvement. Sustainability doesn't require any fancy slogans such as &quot;triple bottom line&quot; or &quot;people, planet, profits.&quot; These slogans are distracting and not completely relevant to most organizations. Each organization should determine how it can effectively drive the sustainability process through its focus on outcomes that enhance its continuity (i.e., managing operational risk) and addressing its three responsibilities. All projects should address these needs and be selected and reviewed with the engagement of key stakeholders. It is important to make the program operational at the local level with genuine employee involvement. If it were this simple, I would not be writing this blog. But, maybe it really is this simple if we can step from behind the biases that we bring to this important understanding. Many people are so loyal to the Brundtland Commission definition that they cannot think about such things. I think they will need to deal with this if they want effective operational programs!
- (Notes: Wal Mart Program and Young Generation) (note: parallel to quality movement)
- Three questions: What do you know, what are you doing and what are you saying? - GreenBiz Are we at the tipping point? People see all the action, all the stuff [in the news] everyday. It's easy to say, &quot;Wow, this is really happening, we've reached the tipping point.&quot; The fact is, we really haven't. There's is a lot going on, but in terms of a lot of companies doing a lot of substantive things? We're just not there yet. (We've) got a lot of companies doing a lot of things, but it's still kind of what I call random acts of greenness. It's just this assortment of different activities, and isn't necessarily coherent and cohesive and it isn't enough to really move the needle to really address the environmental challenges. Is this just a trend? Absolutely not. This is a transformation of how business is being done. Once companies wring out the carbon and waste and inefficiency and materials and energy embodied in all their products and operations, those aren't going to come back once oil prices were to drop to only $75 a barrel. This is the new way of doing business, and when you see the transformations taking place, and getting off of oil over the next couple of decades, and the new business opportunities that are coming out of that, and the new kinds of materials, and the new water efficient or closed-loop processes, and bio-mimicry, and the whole range of sort of cutting-edge technologies, we're not going to be going back to the way it used to be. And so, green business and the green economy is really here to stay. Joel Makower – GreenBiz
- Building an Agenda for Management Innovation What is it about the way large organizations are managed, structured, and led that will most imperil their ability to thrive in the decades ahead? What sorts of changes will be needed in management principles and practices to build companies that are truly fit for the future? These were the questions put to 35 management scholars and practitioners who met for two days in California to debate the future of management. The conference, organized by The Management Lab with the support of McKinsey & Company, included a diverse mix of veteran academics, new-age management thinkers, progressive CEOs, and venture capitalists. The conversations were spirited and occasionally combative. Yet through it all, no one lost sight of the ultimate goal: to develop a bold agenda that would spur the reinvention of management in the twenty-first century. As we struggled with this task, we were cognizant that management experts have often suffered from ambition-deficit disorder. What, we asked ourselves, was management’s equivalent to unpacking the human genome, inventing a cure for AIDS, or reversing global warming? After the event, a subgroup synthesized a master list of challenges from the materials generated during the conference. Our goal wasn’t to condense the list into a handful of meta-challenges but to present a relatively comprehensive catalog that honored the varied and often subtle viewpoints of those who had participated. In the end, the conference itself wasn’t as important as the mission that brought us together: to provide encouragement, direction—and a little air cover for management renegades everywhere. The Renegade Brigade Eric Abrahamson, Columbia Business School Chris Argyris, Harvard University Joanna Barsh, McKinsey & Company Julian Birkinshaw, London Business School Tim Brown, IDEO Lowell Bryan, McKinsey & Company Bhaskar Chakravorti, Harvard Business School Yves Doz, Insead Alex Ehrlich, UBS Gary Hamel, The Management Lab Linda Hill, Harvard Business School Jeffrey Hollender, Seventh Generation Steve Jurvetson, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Kevin Kelly, Wired Terri Kelly, W.L. Gore & Associates Ed Lawler, USC’s Marshall School of Business John Mackey, Whole Foods Market Tom Malone, MIT’s Sloan School of Management Marissa Mayer, Google Andrew McAfee, Harvard Business School Lenny Mendonca, McKinsey & Company Henry Mintzberg, McGill University Vineet Nayar, HCL Technologies Jeffrey Pfeffer, Stanford University C.K. Prahalad, University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business J. Leighton Read, Alloy Ventures and Seriosity, Incorporated Keith Sawyer, Washington University in St. Louis Peter Senge, Society for Organizational Learning and MIT Rajendra Sisodia, Bentley University Tom Stewart, Booz & Company James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds Hal Varian, University of California, Berkeley Steven Weber, University of California, Berkeley David Wolfe, Wolfe Resources Group Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard Business School (retired) Management’s Grand Challenges 1: Ensure that the work of management serves a higher purpose. Management, both in theory and practice, must orient itself to the achievement of noble, socially significant goals. 2: Fully embed the ideas of community and citizenship in management systems. There’s a need for processes and practices that reflect the interdependence of all stakeholder groups. 3: Reconstruct management’s philosophical foundations. To build organizations that are more than merely efficient, we will need to draw lessons from such fields as biology, political science, and theology. 4: Eliminate the pathologies of formal hierarchy. There are advantages to natural hierarchies, where power flows up from the bottom and leaders emerge instead of being appointed. 5: Reduce fear and increase trust. Mistrust and fear are toxic to innovation and engagement and must be wrung out of tomorrow’s management systems. 6: Reinvent the means of control. To transcend the discipline-versus-freedom trade-off, control systems will have to encourage control from within rather than constraints from without. 7: Redefine the work of leadership. The notion of the leader as a heroic decision maker is untenable. Leaders must be recast as social-systems architects who enable innovation and collaboration. 8: Expand and exploit diversity. We must create a management system that values diversity, disagreement, and divergence as much as conformance, consensus, and cohesion. 9: Reinvent strategy making as an emergent process. In a turbulent world, strategy making must reflect the biological principles of variety, selection, and retention. 10: De-structure and disaggregate the organization. To become more adaptable and innovative, large entities must be disaggregated into smaller, more malleable units. 11: Dramatically reduce the pull of the past. Existing management systems often mindlessly reinforce the status quo. In the future, they must facilitate innovation and change. 12: Share the work of setting direction. To engender commitment, the responsibility for goal setting must be distributed through a process in which share of voice is a function of insight, not power. 13: Develop holistic performance measures. Existing performance metrics must be recast, since they give inadequate attention to the critical human capabilities that drive success in the creative economy. 14: Stretch executive time frames and perspectives. We need to discover alternatives to compensation and reward systems that encourage managers to sacrifice long-term goals for short-term gains. 15: Create a democracy of information. Companies need information systems that equip every employee to act in the interests of the entire enterprise. 16: Empower the renegades and disarm the reactionaries. Management systems must give more power to employees whose emotional equity is invested in the future rather than the past. 17: Expand the scope of employee autonomy. Management systems must be redesigned to facilitate grassroots initiatives and local experimentation. 18: Create internal markets for ideas, talent, and resources. Markets are better than hierarchies at allocating resources, and companies’ resource allocation processes need to reflect this fact. 19: Depoliticize decision making. Decision processes must be free of positional biases and should exploit the collective wisdom of the entire organization and beyond. 20: Better optimize trade-offs. Management systems tend to force either-or choices. What’s needed are hybrid systems that subtly optimize key trade-offs. 21: Further unleash human imagination. Much is known about what engenders human creativity. This knowledge must be better applied in the design of management systems. 22: Enable communities of passion. To maximize employee engagement, management systems must facilitate the formation of self-defining communities of passion. 23: Retool management for an open world. Value-creating networks often transcend the firm’s boundaries and can render traditional power-based management tools ineffective. New management tools are needed for building and shaping complex ecosystems. 24: Humanize the language and practice of business. Tomorrow’s management systems must give as much credence to such timeless human ideals as beauty, justice, and community as they do to the traditional goals of efficiency, advantage, and profit. 25: Retrain managerial minds. Managers’ deductive and analytical skills must be complemented by conceptual and systems-thinking skills. Copyright © 2009 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. Gary Hamel (gh@managementlab.org) is a visiting professor of strategic and international management at London Business School and the director of The Management Lab, a Silicon Valley–based nonprofit research organization that focuses on management innovation. Hamel’s latest book (with Bill Breen) is The Future of Management (Harvard Business Press, 2007).
- The State of Green Business 2009: Water Becomes the New Carbon, By Joel Makower, February 3, 2009 It has become eco-chic in recent years to declare that &quot;water will be the oil of the 21st century&quot; — an essential and limited resource, unevenly distributed around the world, the growing shortage of which will lead to economic power for water-rich nations and poverty for the rest, possibly even resource wars between the haves and have-nots. Given that, how do water-dependent companies manage in a world where water quality and quantity become a constraint to doing business? The question has remained largely theoretical, the basis of scenario and contingency planning for a handful of firms, with relatively few companies engaging in water strategy planning. But as the effects of climate change materialize with greater frequency, companies from California to Calcutta are taking a deeper dive into water efficiency, measuring and managing its use and finding ways to close the loop, even setting goals to become &quot;water neutral.&quot; In that regard, water is less the &quot;new oil&quot; than the new carbon. The large beverage companies seem to be at the forefront of this wave. Anheuser-Busch announced that its company wide water use increased 2.4 percent over five years while its beverage production climbed about 2 percent. But thanks to a number of efficiency efforts, the brewer managed to reduce the amount of water used make beer, keeping its water use, well, flat. Coca-Cola is aiming for water neutrality. In 2007, the company developed an integrated water strategy focused on plant performance (water use efficiency, water quality, and wastewater treatment), watershed protection,enabling access to clean drinking water, and working to drive global awareness and action to address water challenges. Coke's system wide goal is to return all water used in its operations back to nature. Its mantra: Reduce, recycle, and replenish. But water efficiency is also bubbling up in other sectors. GE said it plans to cut freshwater use 20 percent, in absolute terms, through reuse efficiencies in its commercial and manufacturing processes. The company's learnings will be passed on to its industrial, municipal, and government customers. GE issued a water reuse white paper to help communities and governments boost water recycling and reuse. IBM announced a water management research center in the Netherlands as part of its Big Green Innovations initiative. The company also issued a report outlining the concept for an educational and perhaps advocacy organization focused on establishing the value of applying advanced sensing, information technology, and modeling to water management in the U.S. Some of the action on water taps into a wellspring of knowledge of how to measure the full water impacts of products. The notion of &quot;embedded water&quot; (also referred to as&quot;virtual water&quot;) has achieved increased attention in a handful of companies. The term refers to the amount of water used in the production and trade of food and consumer products —again, a counterpart to the notion of embedded carbon. A cup of coffee, for instance, has 140 liters (about 37 gallons) of embedded water, when you consider the amount used to grow, produce, package, and ship the beans. A hamburger contains 2,400 liters (634 gallons). Such metrics provide new opportunities to better understand, manage, and reduce water use.
- Define Sustainability It is a wooly word. Ask 50 companies, NGOs, or sustainability consulting firms, and you will get 40 different definitions, while the other 10 will ask you whether you mean business sustainability, environmental sustainability or if you're trying to invite them to a conference they don't want to attend. Twenty-five years ago, The Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development as &quot;development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.&quot; While that is more of a macro-economic definition than micro-economic, that is a good a place as any to start. Sustainability is using resources at a rate that can be renewed or using the earth as a sink at a rate that does not exceed its absorption capacity. Academics and writers have been focused on sustainability long before we started to notice demonstrable change in climate or &quot;green&quot; entered the hyperbolic realm of Madison Avenue's whiteboards. If you want to get specific, look to Herman Daly, Eric Neumeyer, Kenneth Bolding, Aldo Leopold, among many others. But for starters, pick a definition that makes sense to you, your employees, and your stakeholders, and go with it. Know Your Company Every company will be at a different point on the sustainability awareness curve. Click for larger image If you are a company that is or has been a non-believer in climate change, you are making that decision based on emotion -- don't bother with a sustainability initiative. You can't argue with emotion using reason. Exxon is a good example of this. At the top end of the curve, you have complete believers -- such as Patagonia or Seventh Generation, who are also making decisions on emotion. Here you obviously want to appeal to the values of your employees and the culture of your company to ensure the success of initiatives. In between is a broad spectrum of companies that are all making decisions on sustainability based on rational decision-making -- what makes for good business? Here you want to know what your awareness is, who needs to be convinced, and make a business case for change. We often see clients whose employees are more aware than management about sustainability. You can have internal champions who can help build the case for initiatives, but remember there needs to be a strong business case. Trying to argue with reason using emotion fails. Emotion is what drives you to advocate for change, while reason is often what makes it happen. Assume Nothing Again, drawing on the lessons of the tech boom, you should assume nothing about your customers or stakeholders. There is often the perception that the entire world is standing at your doorstep: an array of environmentalists, shareholder activists, Byzantine monks, and concerned citizens all challenging you to take action. This is not always the case, and you run the risk of misreading what you should do and what your customers are prepared for. While working for the aforementioned tech company in Silicon Valley, we made several mistakes, but one of the largest was that we believed that most of the U.S. uses broadband and had the bandwidth to use our service. In 2000, amazingly only 5 percent of the population had broadband. Many companies at that time were building over-engineered websites that consumers could neither understand nor upload. Even today only 55 percent of U.S. households have broadband. Fast forward to the sustainability revolution. Tesco is spending 5 million pounds to include the carbon footprint of each of its products on the label. Now, Tesco is doing a lot of great things related to sustainability. But many of their customers don't know the impact of carbon from their exhaust pipes, let alone from their arugula, and many others are just trying to get their heads around the saturated fat content of rigatoni. Don't assume your stakeholders are all as savvy as those reading Treehugger.com on an hourly basis. Start with appropriate, and affordable, solutions, and continuously educate yourselves and your stakeholders as you move up the awareness curve. Which brings us to the next point ... Make It Personal This is a human behavioral challenge, not an environmental problem or a technological puzzle. The environment did not put us in this situation; humans did. And we have all the technology and resources we need to solve it (at least what is left after we bail out every single industry leader who can manage to get a jet into Dulles or Washington National while the getting is good). We just need to change human behavior. If you believe the private sector will be a leading change agent in the realm of sustainability, then that change is more likely to come from HR than from R&D. Making your company more sustainability is about getting people to stop doing some things they currently do, and start doing things they are not doing. There is a person behind every building code, inefficient distribution system, polluting fleet, skyscraper alight at night, thalate laced product, off-gassing paint, or excessive packaging. Your employees are the change we want to see in the world, and you should be the catalyst. If we started reading psychology books and stopped reading polemics on sustainability (this article included) we might actually start getting somewhere. &quot;Dogs bark at people they do not know.&quot; -- Heraclites If you want to dissolve the ire of the masses, which, as has already been noted, may not be masses after all, then start telling people what you are doing. You don't have to wait for your Annual Report or even your Corporate Sustainability Report. Start with a website that simply states, &quot;We are taking steps to address sustainability -- here is where we have made progress, here is where we just started, and here, well, here we haven't a clue.&quot; Stakeholders don't expect you to become a squeaky clean enterprise overnight, but they expect you to tell them what you are doing. In this financial and environmental climate, the absence of information breeds fear and panic, and the company with no information becomes, in the imagination of the consumer-citizen, the next Cuyahoga, Valdez, &quot;A Civil Action&quot; ... Tell people what you are doing with regards to sustainability, tell them often, and hire someone to manage it. Focus on the Dollar Spent at the Margin Solving sustainability for your company is not an either-or exercise. There is no one best way and there are no binary decision points that lead to the garden of profitability and blue ribbon corporate citizenship. There is no end-of-year awards party -- or at least there should not be for the foreseeable future. This is a classic optimization exercise -- human and capital resources are finite, but the challenge is not. In this period of unheralded economic uncertainty, think about the value of your sustainability dollar spent at the margin, and think of it along two axes -- the impact that dollar has on the environment, and the influence you have on the recipient to change behavior.
- Global energy consumption was roughly 5 quadrillion BTUs in 2008. The United States consumes 20% of that global demand. As architects it’s important to recognize the buildings we design account for 40% of the energy consumption in the US. That is roughly 10% of all of the energy consumption on the planet. Just think of the effect we could have if we were designing buildings in China or India…some of us are!
- 87% of the world’s energy production is still from non-renewable sources but the growth in renewable energy production is projected to be as much as 40% per year through 2015. Even in the global recession projections were held at 30%. The greatest potential of all of the “renewables”, no surprise, is the sun. The sun is the source of growth of every natural resource on our planet.
- Now that we know how much potential there is for solar energy we should understand how far we still have to go (how far behind we are nationally) or how big the opportunity is, depending upon your perspective. Though PV technology was originated in the US, this country has always been behind the rest of the world in the acceptance and usage of solar power because of the low cost and subsidized fossil fuel. Using this chart for reference, you can see that the US installed 15% as much PV as Spain and one fifth as much as Germany in 2008. In early 2009 China began to exceed the US demand for PV. Of the US demand, the state of CA accounts for over 50% of the PV per year. Interestingly, New Jersey has the second highest install rate in the country.
- Current predicted cost convergence of fossil fuel electricity and that of Thin film PV, as an example, is between 2013 and 2015. That is only 3.5 to 5.5 years away. If the cost of oil exceeds $100 per barrel again this convergence would accelerate significantly.
- Describe the rebirth of the solar industry w/ key developments from 90’s to 2004.
- Debating whether to have this or something like this as an intro slide, or if you should just talk to it on other slides.
- Story: A demonstration roof was installed at the US tile headquarters in Corona, CA to compare the performance of similarly rated installations of both SRS Tiles and BP Solar Crystalline panels. Once active the SRS portion mysteriously generated small amount of electricity AT NIGHT……it turns out that the roof was near a street lamp. The light form the street lamp was creating small amounts of electricity on the triple junction amorphous material. Factoid: On a cloudy day the Solé system generated 30% more electricity than the BP system. On sunny days the Sole system generated about 3-5% more electricity because it “wakes up earlier and stays up later”. ***Update graph when Class A-cell tiles are replaced on Corona roof- numbers will be better!
- Expedia & TerraPass team up