Below are my notes from the NAEM Conference: Essential Steps in Building a Best in Class Corporate Sustainability Programs
Palo Alto, CA Apr 28
The event was sponsored by Roche/Genentech and NAEM. Great conference everyone
Raw Conference Notes from Paul Baier
A. Essential Steps for Getting Started
Bruce Klafter, Head of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, Applied Materials
Key elements in sustainability operations
- Data gathering critical. energy use and raw material data simply didn’t exist initially with facilities and supply chain
- Analysis
- Benchmarking (initial benchmarks were from public info, then peers
- Planning
- Vision/principles
- Goal setting
- Implementation
Getting started
- need to have key executives to endorse project
- be sure to involve CFO or someone from finance
- one lesson: much better dynamic in group, rather than individual meetings; drive toward steering or governance meeting if possible
His role is to report what other groups are doing, but don’t “own” project. Need to give lots of recognition
Start small and partial is better than none for carbon inventory
- Applied started with 4 locations, 75% of footprint (now 110 locations)
- we learned how to do basic footprint and then can do benchmarking
Guiding principles (built from review of 50 CSR reports)
- energy efficiency
- design for environment
- pollution prevention
- employee and public outreach
No separate sustainability budget, all part of ‘business as usual”
Corporate goals
- reduce Co2MT by 20% by 2012
- product design: reduce energy and resource consumption by 20%
Supplier scorecard
- one of the most critical issue for sustainability, especially for electronics (e.g. HP doesn’t make anything, but they spend $60B will outsourced manufacturers)
Metrics are critical (KPI); reviewed quarterly, published more frequently
Reporting
- transparency is important
- reporting is key element of our strategy; publishing a report drives alignment and action internally.
- use peer comparison/benchmarking by department in other companies to drive internal behavior
CSR report now called Corporate Citizenship report
- initial report was very anecdotal and initially report every 2 years; over 3 years moved to a report which lots of data, goals, detail
Price of carbon used for carbon abated
- use price of carbon as academic and awareness exercise
- get price from CCX, use to calculate abatement
Dave Asplund, Global EHS manager, Juniper Networks
initial pressure points for action were requests from investors and customers
- media now asking CEO about company’s reduction program
data is key
- first footprint in 2005, EICC in 2007, CDP 2008, first CSR report in 2010; GRI in 2010
- goals is to be in middle tier of peer group
footpring
- “toes print” not yet footprint. because outsource so much of our manufacturing [funny quote]
- targeting offices of 100+ ee
CEO is being asking about their carbon footprint. reporters asked CEO about carbon reduction strategy and CEO didn’t have one, so this pushed action
“my biggest challenge is cross functional support”, this won’t be important internally until sustainability is important for CEO and executive management [PB, customers drive this]
supply chain
- biggest challenge is getting data for CDP. avoid if not in the contract
B. Sustainability goals and metrics
Joe Bialowitz, Project Manager, Environmental Stewardship, Kaiser Permente
employee engagement
- turn off lights (2,000 people in pledge), used approach similar to Walmart PSP
- connect health and safety with environment
C. Supply Chain
Rodney Davis, Manager Global Sustainability, Mattel
started with compliance
Sustainability model: Design it; Make it, Live it
- Design it (products)
- Make it (energy efficiency, water, waste)
- Live it (personal commitment
Single most important thing we have done is to have crisp and clear strategy backed up by true management commitment
Still too early to require our suppliers to work with their suppliers. We want to walk the talk first
Yonnie Leung, Manager, Supply Chain Performance, PG&E
- supply chain defined as $4B yearly purchase for power plants, wires, engineering services, office (excludes energy purchases which are $12B)
-started 3 years ago. benchmark Walmart, HP. High tech firms as group doing most in supply chain
- initial focus on 20 important suppliers. Moving in next 12 months to define benchmark
- Add green evaluation in RFP and supplier score cards. Buyers must be on board and this takes education. Buyer support needed to ensure green criteria has “teeth”
- Aim to have top 20 suppliers have baseline GHG footprints by 2012
PG&E announced sustainability officer (first utility to do this)
only 20-30% of our suppliers have even started their sustainability journey
Carrot vs. stick incentives. Few years ago PGE had to pay 5 suppliers to go Green Supplier Network review 3 years ago. Today, a few suppliers helped fund large LCA project with Berkeley
D. ECA/GHG software panel
Katie Excoffier, Sustainability Manager, Genentech
- issued 4 CSR reports over the years, cover energy, water, waste, commute, travel, health and safety trends
- initially used giant spreadsheets, external reporting to Climate Leaders, Roche acquisitions
- Roche CEO very committed to sustainability, increases visibility. made spreadsheet
Software selection: SaaS (not to burden IT), sustainability focus, interface with utility data (PG&E); involved small team. 2 month selection process (driven by securing 2009 budget)
- implementation: upload spreadsheets with historical data. software was useful to help us to become more precise; found hours. 2 consultants 2 days per week. consultants now deployed for higher value add. Working with automated data feeds from local utility (PG&E)
- biggest surprise/lesson: decision for incremental approach worked well. perhaps a bit more planning on implementation
critical to ensure that ever data that goes in can come out easily in spreadsheets, especially for local data entry
Ramana Kolluri, Manager, EHS Management Info Systems, Barrick Gold (world’s largest gold producer with 26 mines, 20,000 employees, on DJSI)
- publish responsibility report since 2002, GRI framework
- RIMS: Responsibility Information Management System to collect, manage, and compile data
- Evaluated 18 evendors, short listed 4
- Selected Entropy, how a subsidiary of BSI (British Standards Institute)
Software selection: completed requirements document; needed to short list to 4 quickly, must haves (multi-language); were open to premise based; selection was EHS, sustainability, IT. 6-8 month process
- Business justification: justified along with safety incidents (helped to drive down safety incidents)
- Implementation: biggest challenge was user training and user acceptance
Biggest surprise/lesson: we didn’t involve enough people, especially at local level. we spend enough time looking at local requirements (e.g. some locations have internet down 20% of time). Key is to make tool valuable for local site manager, not simply a corporate reporting tool
Nayeem Sheikh, Global Energy Manager, Cisco Systems
- drivers budgeting, reporting (EPA, CDP, CSR, DJSI, Greenpeace,others)
- Energy and water focused. 80% of GHG emissions from real estate operations
- Use data entered monthly and quarterly spreadsheet. Data entry a real pain
25% reduction goal from 2007 to 2012 approved by EcoBoard/CEO
Developed Environmental Data Tool (EDT)- spreadsheet based
- Currently evaluating tools: needs to manage energy, water, and waste. take directly from meters, OCR, directly from utility. Want to get away from manual data entry.
- software selection currently ongoing: looking at 5 vendors; keys are automation at major sites, SaaS, affordable, use historical data (data collected since 2002; large amount)
- business justification: mandates, labor savings through automation
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