Good Energy for Good Business

Posted on by Sustainable Brands

How eco-labelled renewable energy can power a sustainable economy.

For a growing number of companies, electricity is a prime resource in the value chain. However, several global corporations have come under fire from the general public, shareholders and major NGOs with regards to energy procurement. The failure to adequately manage corporate energy can leave a company vulnerable to risks, such as changing regulations and legal requirements. What is more, being seen as a big polluter carries detrimental effects for any brand.

More and more companies have set themselves a target of growing the share of renewable energy in their consumption. These commitments have been reflected in the global investments in sustainable energy: the past year witnessed an investment in renewables capacity that was roughly double that in fossil fuel generation. According to the latest report by the United Nations Environment Programme and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the corresponding new capacity from renewables was equivalent to 55% of all new power, the highest to date.

Leading businesses and renewable energy experts have also joined forces to form RE100, a global initiative aimed at motivating and recruiting major companies to use 100% renewable power across their operations. Launched at the New York Climate Week back in 2014, the campaign has continued to gather momentum, drawing commitments from over 100 leading companies in just the span of three years. The initiative is also a reflection of the wider interest to disclose and communicate corporate performance in energy: calculating and, more importantly, reducing emissions from purchased or acquired electricity (“Scope 2 emissions”) is a prerequisite for inclusion in the CDP’s prestigious Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index.

Nonetheless, joining initiatives and disclosing data alone will not be enough to boost corporate brand image and ranking, nor to ensure the “greenness” of energy. A key challenge for today’s multinational companies is the difficulty, in certain jurisdictions, of tracing whether the electricity they consume was produced using renewables or fossil fuels and nuclear. For tracing the origin of power, renewable energy certificates (RECs) are key. RECs contain and disclose the renewable sources from which the electricity is consumed and are issued for every megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity produced by a power station. Currently REC systems exist in the U.S., Canada, Europe (going by the name of ‘Guarantees of Origin’), Australia, and Japan, as well as in several developing countries under the International REC Standard.

However, not all RECs are the same in terms of impact. Only certain RECs with eco-labels ensure that the sources of energy are additional – or, in other words, that the purchased renewable energy certificates have had or will have an impact on the development of new renewable energy installations and yield added ecological value.

An example of an eco-label is EKOenergy: the supplier of EKOenergy labelled RECs contributes 0.10 Eur/MWh of to the Climate Fund, which in turn makes investments in new off-grid small scale renewable energy projects in developing countries. The fund contributed over 300’000 Euro so far in new solar installations in some of the world’s poorest countries.

Another eco-label is GoldPower: GoldPower labelled RECs stem only from recently built power plants that contribute to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and have quantifiable, positive impacts on communities. Developed together with the WWF in 2009, GoldPower has recently been updated to include the Gold Standard Renewable Energy Label.

Major market influencers and RE100 signatories have purchased GoldPower in the past, including the likes of SAP, Microsoft, Novo Nordisk and Tetra Pak. In the words of Mario Abreu, VP Environment at Tetra Pak: “We want to support the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy so it is incredibly important to us that the renewable energy we buy comes from new or recently built installations that also provide broad sustainability benefits for local communities.”

So why should other brands care? There are a plethora of benefits gained from a pivot towards renewable energy, and especially if sourced from projects that additionally contribute in a substantiated manner to the SDGs. Companies not only reduce their carbon footprint, but also demonstrate their commitment to their employees, customers and investors. Equally importantly, smart corporates can hedge against risks: the move to a low-carbon future is inevitable, and as societies and economies unlock from fossil fuels, the transition to renewables makes long-term economic sense for businesses.

As in the case of Tetra Pak, companies are becoming more demanding about how exactly their green power is produced. And rightfully so: leading organisations are already leveraging renewable energy certificates to hedge against transitional risks, reach their sustainability targets, and reflect an essential character of their brand. The unique capacity of eco-labelled RECs to secure new renewable energy production, mitigate business risks, and engage local stakeholders in projects is an indispensable asset in the global pursuit for renewable energy and a greener economy.

By Natalia Gorina – Sales Director Carbon & Renewables at South Pole Group

 

5 Types of Sustainability Marketing Tactics Corporate Execs Need to Understand, and Utilize, Better

Posted on by Sustainable Brands

Sustainability marketing is a strange and special animal.

To be effective, it needs to catch on among sustainability teams, that tend to be based on rigorous systems thinking, carefully and scientifically considering the whole picture before suggesting ways to improve it. And of course, sustainability marketing also needs to be as sexy and appealing as successful mainstream marketing. Striking that kind of balance is not easy, and there certainly has been significant progress over the last few years. At the same time, there still are some important sustainability marketing tactics that are not understood and adopted well enough.

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1. How to Make the Most of Partnerships with Celebrities and Other Influential Societal Voices
Brands have been partnering successfully with celebrities and other influential societal voices such as policy makers, athletes and NGOs, for a long time. However, successful spreading of sustainability-inspired messaging and behavior, in particular, has been rarely achieved through such partnerships to date. When will sustainable products, services, values or actions become as mainstream and culturally influential as Air Jordan, for example? I hope soon. In the meantime, a few recent campaigns have come quite close, in my observation, and need to be given credit for that.

Like it or not, Pope Francis may be the most influential sustainability advocate to date. I doubt that you missed his authoritative and compelling “encyclical” on the environment. It will surely remain as a significant milestone in the history of environmentalism and sustainability – maybe even a turning point in global discussions on climate change and other pressing issues.

Stand for Trees, a collaboration led by non-profit CodeREDD, is running a first-of-its kind consumer campaign that enables everyone (not just companies) to purchase verified carbon offsets. What’s most remarkable about this is the unprecedented success of the main engagement tool the campaign is relying on, a video by social media celebrity Prince Ea, entitled “Dear Future Generations: Sorry.” It broke the record for most viral environmental campaign to date with more than 20 million views in its first 24 hours and over 16,000 tonnes of CO2 offset in the first two days.

2. How to Source Innovation Outside the Confines of Tradition R&D Teams and Processes
There is a growing, though still quite short, list of brands encouraging social and environmental entrepreneurship through crowdsourcing campaigns, competitions and other types of acceleration. Typically, the ultimate goal of such initiatives would be to fold winning ideas into the sponsoring brand’s portfolio, incentivizing and rewarding a wide pool of innovators in the process in order to achieve transformative innovation faster than the brand’s internal R&D processes would.

One prominent example is Unilever’s Foundry IDEAS platform, which acts as a digital hub for consumers and entrepreneurs to work together on tackling global sustainability challenges. Another is H&M’s partnership with DoSomething.org to launch the Close the Loop College Cup competition, incentivizing U.S. college students and faculty to innovate means to higher recycling rates for clothing. Still another is LEGO’s Sustainable Materials Centre, a commitment to tapping all employees of the company in an effort to come up with alternative, non-fossil-based raw materials to manufacture LEGO toys and packaging.

3. How to Encourage Moderate Consumption Without Compromising The Bottom Line
Patagonia has done it, famously, with its “Don’t Buy This Jacket” campaign. Are there others out there trying (and succeeding) in pulling off this all-too-crucial balancing act? Again, too few, if you ask me. We have to make a point of thinking and acting more on this.

I’ve been very impressed with Heineken’s work on this. The Enjoy Heineken Responsibly (EHR) campaign, a multi-pronged effort that has featured a number of ads and some unique social experiments demonstrating the aspirational value of moderate consumption of alcohol, seems to be getting across effectively with many demographics and cultures. Already activated in more than 40 markets, 10 percent of the company’s media budget is explicitly dedicated to the campaign. The brand is pushing on, conceiving and fine-tuning local partnerships that are reinforcing the unifying global message.

Another way to approach this type of sustainability marketing tactic is through entirely new business models that reduce the impacts of consumption by design. Compelling examples of this include: Mud Jeans, which leases jeans instead of selling them, encouraging customers to swap or return them after use; Terracycle, which excels at ‘making garbage great’ by converting used packaging and other waste to various branded assets; and Rapanui, which set out to be a next-generation, materially lean sustainable enterprise in all it’s doing from the beginning, earning acknowledgement from big names including Sirs David Attenborough, Richard Branson and Ranulph Fiennes.

4. How to Quickly Employ New Data Analyses That Aren’t Yet Commonly Accepted or Performed
This is probably the most accessible type of tactic in this list, and yet it is quite fascinating, in a not-so-pleasing kind of way, to observe how slowly certain breakthrough applications of clearly useful new data are being adopted. Take Kering’s environmental profit and loss (E P&L) statement, for example — the first version was released by Kering’s brand Puma all the way back in 2011, it has proven so valuable (for a variety of purpose, including marketing and PR) that the parent company did it for all its brands and even released the methodology to the public domain to speed up wider adoption. But despite all of that, only a handful of other companies have added an E P&L to their arsenal of sustainability tools.

In a similar spirit, I’ve recently been introduced to the EMEA head of IBM’s Watson supercomputer and started learning about the vast potential Watson and similar technologies offer in terms of accessing real-time market intelligence and new modes of stakeholder engagement. Cognitive computing, and natural language processing in particular, can make sense of huge quantities of previously-untapped data, finding details and patterns that help explain complex stakeholder interactions and company performance. Retail, entertainment, hospitality, air travel and quite a number of other industries have been leveraging this new type of data analysis for years now, though not for any sustainability-related purposes.  

5. How to Build an Internal Company Culture that Screams both ‘Successful’ and ‘Sustainable’ Externally
If there is one thing that brands and individuals have in common, it is that sooner or later their identity, character and internal dialogue are inevitably projected externally, one way or another. Building an optimal company culture (for whatever purpose or set of purposes) is a challenging and often long process, and it is no wonder that embedding sustainability values throughout entire organizations has been achieved only by a select few to date. What’s striking to me, however, is that many brands are not even trying, or want to try but don’t seem to know what level of aspiration to set, how to begin and how to assess specific steps on a journey to company-wide culture change. There is a lot to learn from some of the leaders in this kind of exercise, including Unilever, Marks & Spencer, GSK and O2 Telefonica, among others.

As always, I’d be curious to hear what sustainability, brand and marketing professionals think about all of this — feel free to share your reaction in the comments section below. We at Sustainable Brands are strongly in favor of wider sustainability-related adoption of the five types of tactics described above, and we are doing our part to help. We’ll be tackling all of these topics at Sustainable Brands ’15 London in November, and some (the fourth and fifth) in just a few weeks at New Metrics ’15 in early October. 

Original Story: Sustainable Brands

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Ignorance is Not Bliss. We Must Take Action

Posted on by Jacklyn Kawana

We live in an ignorant world. A world that’s made to believe that it’s ok to live the same way each day: wake up, go to work, earn your salary, feed your children and do just enough to get by. But to me, this is real ignorance.

Life often feels unfulfilling if we just do enough to get by. What are we leaving behind for the next generation? Do we know what is happening around us? Or do we choose to ignore it?

People often have an egocentric approach to life, and we tend to believe that as long as we aren’t directly affected by a problem, then we are excused from addressing it. This gives a false sense of security. Things may not affect us directly, but whether we believe it or not, events such as climate change affect us all, and it’s happening right before our eyes.

Despite the decision made by the U.S. government to pull out of the Paris Agreement, individuals, organizations, companies, and communities in that country and around the world, should continue to take action on global climate. Our future is at stake, and it’s up to us to make a collective effort by working together and forming partnerships to implement a plan. 

We all have different ideas and skills, and when we team up and combine our thinking, innovation, and expertise, we are capable of developing a greater impact. Here are a few ways we can all take action.

Don’t buy a car – Cycle instead

If more people ride bikes, this will cut down the co2 emissions and also keep people fit and healthy. One of the biggest global warming contributors is the burning of fossil fuels and with the world’s population increasing each year emissions are escalating rapidly. If we cut down on the use of cars that emit co2 and ride bikes instead, there would be a gradual decrease in emissions.

Eat less red meat, or none at all

Did you know eating red meat contributes to the emissions of greenhouse gasses? On a global level, approximately 14.5% of all greenhouse gas pollution is caused by livestock. Animal flatulence creates methane – a potent greenhouse gas – and the manufacture of cattle food uses a lot of resources. We can live a much healthier life without red meat, and if you’re worried about not getting enough protein, you can get it from white meat, beans, eggs, milk, and nuts.

Recycle & Up-cycle

Trash in landfills is growing. Most of the time we buy things we don’t need, and we should start spending less on things we don’t need and get creative with what we already have. Reuse your plastic, paper, scrap metal, clothes and other non-biodegradable materials. Don’t throw it away, create something from it and decrease the trash in our landfills.

Below is a list of young leaders, who are making a positive impact on the environment, helping further sustainable growth and inspiring others to do the same:

1. The Vello Bike

https://www.instagram.com/p/BK8eiAAhlvM/?taken-by=vellobike

Vello bikes are high-performance, handmade and foldable bikes developed for urban commuting. The are the first self-charging electric folding bike.

 

2. Urban Green Farms

https://www.instagram.com/p/BRDG1fAANpR/?taken-by=urbangreenfarms

Australian-based Urban Green Farms is helping reduce our environmental impact by finding sustainable ways to farm and offer great healthy recipes that don’t include red meat.

 

3. South African Art

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPo1TMigaCU/?taken-by=caitlinmkhasibe

A South African artist who recycles old notes, cardboard and old paper to create moulds for her paintings.

 

4. Ocean Clean Up

https://www.instagram.com/p/6U2Ec5LP4Z/?taken-by=theoceancleanup

The Ocean Clean Up is an innovative start up that is dedicated to developing technologies that extract, prevent and intercept ocean plastic pollution. They are also investigating how they can reuse the material once it is back on shore.

 

5. Weaver Green

https://www.instagram.com/p/BGwYIIXRMSx/?taken-by=weaver.green

Weaver Green makes indoor and outdoor rugs and textiles from yarn spun entirely from recycled plastic bottles. 100% recycled, environmentally friendly and ethically produced.

 

6. Sustainable Surf

https://www.instagram.com/p/BTxpbBmjz_R/?taken-by=sustainsurf

Sustainable Surf create surfboards from styrofoam and up-cycles damaged surfboards.

 

 

What is Amazon Doing to Advance Sustainable Packaging?

Posted on by GreenBiz

Ever experience “wrap rage” when shopping online?

You wrestle with kitchen scissors through inches of sealed plastic to get that new pair of headphones free and think, “Why is there so much?” And have you ever removed a product from a box within a box within a box and think, “There has to be a better way”?

Amazon claims to have heard your frustrations. “Fundamentally, the experience around packaging is changing,” said Kara Hurst, Amazon’s head of worldwide sustainability, at GreenBiz 17. Hurst spoke about the company’s innovations around packaging to both enhance the customer experience and reduce waste.

Original Story: GreenBiz

 

Enterprise Community Partners Merges Better Housing and Sustainability

Posted on by EcoDistricts

 Enterprise Community Partners is a respected national organization working to create opportunity for low- and moderate-income people through affordable housing in diverse, thriving communities. An EcoDistricts Organizational Member, Enterprise and EcoDistricts are working together to incorporate principles of sustainability, equity and resilience into neighborhood-scale affordable housing development. 

How many employees work at Enterprise Community Partners?
Enterprise has 722 employees in 17 cities, 12 states and Washington, DC.

Why did you become an EcoDistricts Member?
Enterprise Community Partners became an EcoDistricts member for several reasons. First, EcoDistricts provides an important holistic framework for community developers to pursue sustainability goals while advancing the engagement of communities, residents and leadership in their planning. Second, the EcoDistricts network is an invaluable tool that connects us to stakeholders nationwide. Finally, EcoDistricts presents many learning opportunities for us and other members. Their conferences provide excellent examples of organizations across the country that are doing work in resiliency, healthcare and sustainability.

How are our resources and connections influencing your work?
Enterprise and EcoDistricts support many of the same community development groups. In this way, we are collaborating to bring together resources, grants and technical assistance to their training platforms.

The EcoDistricts resources and connections also help us at Enterprise to think more ambitiously about sustainability goals at the neighborhood scale. We’ve been a leader at incorporating sustainability goals and methods into the affordable housing and community development industry at the building level.

We launched in 2004 our Enterprise Green Communities Criteria to bring the improved health, economic and environmental benefits of sustainable construction practices to low-income families. This criteria is the first in the nation to address the unique needs of the affordable housing sector. EcoDistricts has helped us to think more broadly about how to institute our work at the neighborhood scale, which is reflected in our 2015 Enterprise Green Communities Criteria. The updated criteria takes into account buildings’ broader impacts on and connections to the neighborhood and includes Active Design elements to promote resident and community health.

What makes you and Enterprise Community Partners most excited about EcoDistricts?
We are looking forward to the EcoDistricts Summit in Atlanta this October 2017. It will be an opportunity to better get to know this great city and the amazing community activists there. We are also launching a new “Climate and Cultural Resilience” program and will be bringing those partners and their perspective to the Summit.

We will also bring our Enterprise Rose Fellows, a group of innovative change agents in communities across the country, many of whom are working on neighborhood sustainability issues. Launched in 2000, the fellowship is a career path for young architects to support public interest design, partnering emerging designers with community developers for three years. It’s designed to cultivate the next generation of architectural leaders bringing the economic, health and education benefits of quality design to low-income communities. The summit will showcase the good work that is being done nationally and help to accelerate the local work that’s happening.

How are you planning on utilizing the Member benefits in the coming year?
We look forward to participating in many of EcoDistrict’s networking events. In the past, these events have allowed our team to meet many other innovative organizations with ambitious sustainability goals. It’s been a great way to forge relationships and build partnerships with other groups that have similar or complementary missions.

Why are Equity, Sustainability and Resilience important to Enterprise Community Partners?
At Enterprise, our goal is to end housing insecurity, an issue that impacts nearly 19 million low-income families who are homeless or paying more than half of their monthly income on housing. We take a holistic approach to addressing this challenge and as such, equity, sustainability and resilience must be a part of the conversation.

Low-income communities often face the brunt of the damage caused by climate change. During extreme weather events, people of color in low-income communities are typically the first to be affected and the last to recover. Building more resilient, sustainable buildings and neighborhoods for low-income communities will become increasingly important as we continue to grapple with the effects of climate change.

This is why we believe that design excellence must be the norm in the affordable housing industry. Well-designed, sustainable development has the ability to bring its social, economic, environmental and health benefits to low-income communities nationwide.

Original Story: EcoDistricts

 

Richard Branson: Reinventing How We Live and Work to Become a Force For Good

Posted on by Real Leaders

The energetic and playful entrepreneur believes the time is right for a radically different approach to business. He’s ready to explore the next great frontier.

Your new vision for the future is a marked departure from the “business as usual” model. At what point in your career, and based on what personal experiences, did you start to recognize that business needed to start embracing the values-based approach that you are now evangelizing?

I first realized the power that business had to drive change at age 17. A school friend and I started Student, a youth magazine that gave young people a voice and access to politicians, business leaders and artists. I convinced my parents to let me leave school, persuading them about the possibilities of Student, and set out to pursue my first business endeavor.

We supported social enterprises like the Student Advisory Centre, created to help young people with their sexual health issues, and Mates Condoms, to help stop HIV/AIDS from spreading in the U.K. We were always thinking about using Virgin’s entrepreneurial energy and resources across our businesses as a force for good. Since then, Virgin has grown and now comprises more than 400 companies globally – in travel and leisure, financial services, mobile and media, health and wellness, clean technology, and even space travel.

The staff of Virgin established Virgin Unite, our non-profit foundation, in 2004 to do what the name suggests – to unite all the Virgin communities globally as a force for good. It’s not about a single issue or one big campaign: it’s about a way of living and working that aspires to put people and planet alongside profit at the core of all we do. Moving beyond charity and CSR, we’re reinventing how we live and work in the world, and showing that business can, and must, be a force for good and that this is also good for business.

What does your new business model look like today when it comes to balancing profit against caring for people, communities and the planet?

We believe the time is right for a radically different approach to business – one that puts people and planet at the core of how business is done. Whether it’s transforming an existing business or creating a new business whose sole purpose is to solve an issue, or inventing new financing vehicles, there are many exciting examples of models that work. Household names like Ben & Jerry and The Postcode Lottery have led the way. There is also a new generation of businesses using innovative hybrid models  – like Participant, Better World Books, Husk Power and others.
“There is an incredible opportunity to make a difference as a ‘Real Leader’ – now.”

The traditional giving model of “do well and then give back … because that’s what’s expected.” Do you believe it’s possible to rather “do good while doing well… because that’s good business,” and what gives you the confidence to support this approach?

Doing good is good for business. Whether you’re an emerging entrepreneur or a champion of industry, now is an exciting time to explore the next great frontier where business puts people, planet and profit at its core. With the constraints of the world’s resources, business as usual won’t work: we need to build new business models. There are great examples of reinventing businesses that we can all learn from – like Ray Anderson from Interface Global, and Marks & Spencer.

What does it mean to be a “Real Leader?”

“Real Leaders” aren’t pressured by short-term reporting and profits to make poor decisions that may make their company look good in the near future but doesn’t consider the future. “Real Leaders” are taking a hard look at the real cost of doing business and are calculating how much of the planet’s natural resources are being spent on manufacturing and distributing their products – which will help them figure out cost savings and profit opportunities, and therefore make better decisions.

Also, “Real Leaders” see opportunities, where others only see challenges. That’s certainly how we view investing in clean energy companies. For example, we’ve got global airlines and are in the dirty fuels business – as customers of dirty fuels – so we’re taking a leadership role in developing alternative fuels. That mindset led me to pledge 100 percent transportation profits to clean energy and get more businesses to equally prioritize people, planet and profits.

While governments dither, debate and delay ending fossil fuel subsidies and their support of lasting growth in clean tech and resource efficiency, “Real Leaders” aren’t going to wait for someone else to take action: they’re going to move away from fossil fuels while slashing carbon emissions to become market leaders, growing innovative technology and profits.

I started a business initiative in 2103 called The B Team, which spreads concrete solutions to make capitalism a driving force for social, environmental and economic benefit – where people, planet and profits are equally prioritized. We’ve been talking with people we think are “Real Leaders,” many of whom are from the younger generation that start companies that put people and planet into their business model; examples include TOMS Shoes and Warby Parker, whose consumers purchase one item for themselves and one for someone in need

In 2007 you launched the Virgin Earth Challenge, a US$25 million prize for whoever can demonstrate a commercially viable design that results in the net removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases towards a more stable climate. What’s next in this journey, what have you learned through this process and do you expect there will be a winner?

Removing CO2 from the air is essential if we are to maintain life on this planet. So we created Virgin Earth Challenge as one of the biggest prizes on earth as an incentive for scalable and sustainable net-carbon-negative activities, and that’s not an easy status to achieve.

Thanks to the excellent work being done, it’s not a question of “if ” there’ll be a winner, but rather “when.” Prizes help drive solutions forward but it doesn’t end there: these solutions should not, and will not, allow for business as usual. We must still cut global greenhouse gas emissions drastically, and we need to cut them fast. I call upon all companies, NGOs, governments and policymakers to further research negative-emissions to see how they can contribute.

Ocean Elders is one of your endeavors. What was your motivation for setting up Ocean Elders and how do you see technology playing a role in improving ocean health?

I’ve long been involved in ocean conservation and species preservation work. My travels have allowed me to see some beautiful parts of the world that have been ruined by ocean pollution, drilling, irresponsible fishing practices and cruel practices such as shark finning. Much of this can be stopped with education and advocacy, which is why you’ll see me swimming with sharks and whales (fish are more valuable to local communities alive than dead) and supporting organizations such as Greenpeace and WildAid. OceanElders was formed in 2010 by Dr Sylvia Earle to bring together people (such as Jean-Michel Cousteau, Queen Noor, Neil Young) to raise awareness and support organizations that protect the ocean.

The ocean is our life force, providing at least 50 percent of our oxygen and absorbing 25 percent of all our carbon emissions. Since the start of the industrial age, the ocean has become 30 percent more acidic and we have little idea of what this might entail for its long-term health.

This is something we should be very alarmed about, as today the ocean delivers an estimated $21 trillion in natural services, yet it’s being destroyed on all levels. Today, we sadly know little about our oceans; the ocean makes up most of the planet but it’s the least researched and explored (why is it called “planet earth” when 71 percent of the planet’s surface is ocean?).

OceanElders are championing new technology that can help us explore and learn from the ocean. For example, submarines now have technology that enables research and establishment of baselines, and Google’s Underwater Street View and the Catlin Seaview Survey will make available amazing images of the world’s reefs to millions of people. There’s also new technology in fishing equipment that will eliminate bycatch – so there are lots of different ways technology can help with ocean conservation. 

What are your views on the role of business and technology in addressing many of the social issues we face?

The Carbon War Room, which works with a range of industries on practical and profitable ways to reduce carbon, is a good example of how business and technology can work hand-in-hand to address social issues. For example, in the shipping industry, CWR connected shipping companies with clean technologies and design elements for both new and existing ships, built a website (www.shippingefficiency.org) that rates ships on energy efficiency, and encourages businesses to choose environmentally friendly ships, not dirty ships – which saves them money on fuel.
Three of the world’s biggest charterers, Cargill, Huntsman and UMIPEC, announced they would drop energy inefficient ships and now only charter ships that are energy efficient. This represents US$425 million in new business for cleaner ships. This is incredible progress for the shipping industry.

What are the biggest challenges sitting in the way of us achieving a sustainable future?

Governments and non-profits cannot tackle these issues on their own; business can, and must, participate and contribute new entrepreneurial approaches. In Rio in 2012, Ted Turner and I sat on a panel with Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt. As early as the 1970s, Denmark confronted its dependence on fossil fuel imports, before many other countries, and decided to prioritize clean energy development.

Through a combination of government incentives, private sector leadership and ingenuity, Denmark is well on the path to not just using clean energy (the country will get to 50 percent wind power by 2025) but also to exporting its energy technology to a widening audience in need of this expertise. Market barriers are also a challenge. We need to create the right market environments for ideas to thrive and grow, including getting capital flowing into them and the right government policies in place

For example, Virgin Unite incubated The Carbon War Room to unlock market-based solutions to climate change. The Carbon War Room helped drive this change in the shipping industry by getting major transporters across the oil, agriculture and chemical industries to drop their fuel-inefficient vessels for more efficient vessels that operate in the shipping industry – in a clear signal to ship owners that the market will reward those that have more sustainable practices.

We must open our minds and see challenges as opportunities. Think about the hospitality industry and the millions of plastic water bottles that are wastefully used by tourists and business travelers alike. Necker Island, one of our resort islands near Puerto Rico, goes through more than 200,000 plastic bottles a year alone. Instead of further contributing to the water and waste problem, we got involved in a new initiative that gets hotels and restaurants to filter and bottle their own water and distribute it in beautiful recycled glass bottles (designed by Yves Behar), and then plow 10 percent of its profits into local water projects, which helps address the growing water crisis.

The scheme helps hotels do three important things: make money, contribute to local water projects, and reduce waste – a brilliant example of working toward business as a force for good and for a sustainable future.

What gives you the most hope that a sustainable future is possible? 

There are so many companies and great initiatives already embracing this new way of doing business. We simply need to start doing. Time is ticking and if we don’t act fast enough we may miss this opportunity – and become a disappointment to our children and our children’s children.

We all want our businesses to be around for the next 100, 200, 500 years or more – that’s not going to be possible if we destroy our planet in the process. We’re investing in efforts to find green energy solutions and will continue to focus on groups such as the Carbon War Room to harness the power of entrepreneurs, with the aim of unlocking gigaton-scale, market-driven solutions to climate change. Especially inspiring are young entrepreneurs in South Africa and Jamaica – whom we work with through our Centers for Entrepreneurship.

They’re just getting started, but are already getting cool businesses off the ground, creating jobs and uplifting their communities. Each of you should visit and mentor them.

The Little Company With A Big Goal

Posted on by Carbon Lighthouse

Carbon Lighthouse is a rare breed of young company – an environmental organization executing nuts and bolts building retrofits, while seeking startup-like growth. Startups seek exponential growth and wide market reach, while most  service companies doing physical work (e.g. contractors, restaurants, consultants) have a local focus and scale more or less linearly with the number of staff. Carbon Lighthouse was founded with the audacious goal of solving climate change and we intend to get there through relentlessly pursuing practical solutions, starting with energy efficiency in commercial and industrial buildings.

To meet our mission, we need to be both highly local while also rapidly scalable. Interestingly, this exact challenge faces many socially motivated ventures. The recurring storyline is a huge, seemingly unsurmountable challenge that needs to be tackled quickly – education in inner cities, clean water, malaria – and solving it requires working with people and infrastructure – individually, locally, and personally.

Scaling this type of business model, where there is no substitute for hands-on action, is hard. Teach for America is arguable one of the most successful examples from the non-profit space, yet there are placing only 10 times more teachers in schools per year today than they did at their start 20 years ago. (Teach for America started with 500 teachers in 1990 and placed 5,100 new teachers in 2011.)  Zipcar, the most successful car sharing company in the  U.S., is another example. When they were acquired in 2012 after 13 years of business they were profitable and had 800,000 users, a business success story, but they have not fundamentally changed the landscape of personal car ownership.

Given the difficulties of rapidly scaling this type of company, why did Carbon Lighthouse choose to pursue such a labor intensive solution (physically managing energy efficiency projects) to a problem that requires immediate, scalable action (climate change)? There are some very good companies that are developing software solution for reducing energy and helping mitigate carbon emissions.

However, actually solving climate change is an infrastructure problem; someone needs to physically enter buildings and do a thorough job or making them run better, so that is what we are doing. This puts us in relatively uncharted waters when it comes to growing our type of company as quickly as we need to and our mission is our only guide. There are three key areas that are critical to scaling, each of which has been strengthened and focused in surprising beneficial ways by our strong and unwavering commitment to mitigating climate change.

People

Being a good energy efficiency engineer is hard and not terribly glamourous. It requires doing complicated engineering calculations, conducting potentially dangerous field work and interacting with C-suite executives all in the same day. People with these skills are really hard to find, but we have been extremely fortunate in recruiting and have securing our top picks in every hiring round.

Moreover, in the three years since our founding not a single teammate has left the company. There are many reasons for this, but a few are directly related to the strength of our mission. First and foremost, making the mission front and center during the recruitment process attracts people who are passionate about what they (and we) do. Second, once people are one board, our mission unites us as a team against a larger challenge.

This keeps us from getting bogged down in details of small ego-related issues. I have personally watched hundreds of disagreements get resolved by refocusing the discussion on how best to serve the mission.

Innovation

As a company, making physical changes in the world, Carbon Lighthouse’s ultimate success depends on changing an enormous number of valves, pumps, fans, and other equally exciting assets in buildings. Since valves cannot be changed by an app, our mission necessarily requires us to grow our team and make it possible for each person to be more productive each month than they were the one before.

In recognition of this, we have worked hard to make sure that our company has a culture actionable innovation. Our first priority is to innovate and automate ourselves out of the labor and tasks wherever possible, such as downloading field data. Our second priority is to increase achievable energy savings per building by improving modeling, reducing the cost of installing measures, and accelerating the measurement and verification process.

Our third priority is to develop new ideas for solving climate change. Carbon Lighthouse’s mission motivates a clear understanding of these priorities and focuses every team member’s work in the same direction, resulting in rapid iteration and improvements on the highest impact areas.

Operations and Measuring Progress

Our mission has given us the foresight to invest in long-term company infrastructure and operations early. For example, because we will need thousands of engineers within the next decade to achieve our goals, we invested heavily to create a program that reduced the training time for our most recent hires from six months to six weeks. The value of this asset will grow exponentially as we do. Our operations team also spent hundreds of hours creating a project management tool that reduces project time by dozens of hours per project.

Without the focus on long-term scale provided by our mission, we would not have been able to justify either of these time-investments so early on. Our corporate metrics for progress are also driven entirely by our mission; they are CO2 reduced per person-hour of labor and profit per ton of CO2 eliminated – in that order. Because we see profit as a means to an end, and that end is solving climate change, we repeated defer short term profits to lay the groundwork for a more impactful economy in the long term.

This has made us a much more resilient and scalable company because our investment in research has opened up more savings per building and new market segments, while decrease labor per project.

Carbon Lighthouse’s mission commitment has put us on a challenging path, but it is also acting as the guiding light that will get us there. As we succeed and grow, we hope that the course we are charing will provide direction to the huge range of ambitious companies tackling rapid growth in hands-on industries.

 

Free download: Guide to Understanding Sustainability

Posted on by Real Leaders

Download our free guide to sustainability and understand the origins of this crucial concept, how it creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony and how a sustainably-minded future can help fulfill the social and economic requirements of present and future generations.

Click on the link below for your free download:

The Real Leaders Guide to Understanding Sustainability

 

 

Investing For Impact

Posted on by Real Leaders Inc.

Founded by entrepreneur Andrew Kuper and launched with President Bill Clinton in 2008, LeapFrog set out to reach 25 million vulnerable people, including 15 million women and children, within 10 years. In just 3.5 years, LeapFrog’s portfolio companies have reached nearly 10 million people in emerging markets – 70% of them women and children – providing millions of families a financial safety net and springboard to escape poverty. According to President Clinton, “LeapFrog’s team is widely recognized as having opened up a new frontier in microfinance and alternative investment.”

Since their launch in 2008, they have become a global leader and pioneer in the impact investing movement, with distinctive success at scale: their average deal size of $12 million is roughly 8x the industry average. Their unique business model, a team across four continents and a community of influential stakeholders has created a company that can operate at the scale necessary to make a dent in mass poverty. Both sustainability and social justice are central to LeapFrog’s vision.

They have simultaneously played a major role in creating a new asset class, offering diversification and top quartile investment returns, and opened the gates of the capital markets to innovative pro-poor companies. Not surprisingly, LeapFrog’s portfolio companies have shown strong financial performance while serving the “next billion” rising consumers. In addition, an accelerated growth trajectory at their portfolio companies increases employment directly and indirectly, supporting over 30,000 jobs and livelihoods.

Sustainability for Kuper is not an afterthought; rather, it’s at the centre of his company’s investment strategy. Ultimately, Kuper’s vision is for LeapFrog’s profit-with-purpose model to lead the way in developing a more catalytic, inclusive, and sustainable capitalism. His goal is to match the size of the problem – 4 billion people in poverty – with a transformative solution.

A solution that creates businesses that can scale, reach vast numbers of low income people and mobilize trillions of dollars from capital markets. Families that lose their only productive asset, such as their home or their sole income-earner, usually fall into poverty with no safety net under them. The efforts of many years can be wiped out in a single tragic day. For this reason, it’s no wonder that insurance and savings are the two most demanded financial products among low-income people worldwide.

Yet, financial tools are more than simply protective, they are also enabling, providing springboards that can break the cycle of poverty. People who are secure will make different daily choices; families can expand their horizons, from grappling with daily fears to longer-term investments. Impact investment is often unable to attract pure financial investors such as major reinsurers and global banks.

LeapFrog has bucked this trend by demonstrating that to achieve social impact, we need not accept a smaller financial return. They have shown that social and financial return are mutually reinforcing.

https://notablemagazine.com/want-to-speak-to-a-holocaust-survivor-now-you-can/

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