July 24, 2015
Sustainability Roundtable Inc. (SR Inc) Member-Client Oracle hosted the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s (SVLG) 3rd annual Energy & Sustainability Summit June 25th. SR Inc CEO Jim Boyle was pleased to present with multiple Member-Clients at the Summit about the power of organizing efforts towards more sustainable high performance through a comprehensive Sustainability Strategy. The Silicon Valley Leadership Group Summit once again brought together several hundred relevant executives from scores of global companies headquartered in Silicon Valley to explore: “Pathways to 50% – Getting from Here to There in Clean Energy, Next generation Transportation and Energy Efficiency.” Noted billionaire investor and philanthropist, Tom Steyer, provided the morning keynote about the energy efficiency and renewable energy revolutions underway.
Jim Boyle and Member Executives Amy Aves of Oracle, Karen Cochran of PG&E, and Brian Glazebrook of NetApp provided a panel discussion regarding the advantages of going beyond disparate energy efficiency measures to develop a practical and effective enterprise-wide Sustainability Strategy that resonates with customers, employees, investors as well as senior management. Amy, Karen and Brian presentations made clear that through creating a multi-year, milestone based, Sustainability Strategy with the correct and effectively adopted Roadmaps, Scorecards, KPIs and metrics, they were each able to drive fairly remarkable multiple bottom-line outcomes throughout their companies’ expansive corporate real estate portfolios. Outcomes that went far beyond energy efficiency to include improved health impacts, employee engagement as well as process and product innovations.
Amy Aves, Senior Director of Oracle’s Global Real Estate Operations team, is a 21 year Oracle veteran who, in addition to supporting programs related to technology, health and safety, and energy management, leads Oracle’s Real Estate Sustainability Program. With Amy’s active participation, Oracle’s Global Real Estate and Facilities team has, for several years improved to “Leader” performance on SR Inc’s Sustainable Business Enterprise Roundtable (SBER) Diagnostic and Assessment. SR Inc Advisors use the SBER Diagnostic and Assessment process to confidentially compare companies’ enterprise-wide management efforts against peer enterprises on six components essential to a successful sustainability strategy: Vision, Governance, Strategy, Guidance, Implementation, and Reporting Results.
Oracle has scored in the “Leader” category (the highest of four) for all but one component, achieving scores above 75% that substantially exceed the average component scores for industry peers that make up the SBER Information and Communication Technology (ICT ) Cohort. Amy played a lead role in helping Oracle build on it successes to set portfolio-wide sustainability goals for 2016 that include a 10% reduction of energy use per employee, a 6% improvement in power usage effectiveness (PUE) in production data centers, a 15% reduction in potable water use per employee as well as a 15% reduction in waste to landfill per employee. Between 2012 and 2013, Oracle’s total energy consumed decreased from 820,560,992 kWh to 762,083,360 kWh, and consumption per full-time employee (FTE) decreased from 7,105 kWh/FTE to 6,310 kWh/FTE. Total Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions dropped from 457,254 metrics tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e) to 401,363 MTCO2e. These and many other accomplishments were enabled by Amy and her team’s leadership and commitment to a portfolio-wide sustainability strategy.
Following Amy Aves presentation, another industry leading Member Executive – Karen Cochran – shared her experience working with SR Inc and leading a multi-faceted sustainability program for PG&E’s Corporate Real Estate portfolio of over six million square feet. Like Oracle, PG&E achieved the “Leader” category on all but one of the components in the SBER’s Diagnostic and Assessment. Karen shared some of the successes and lessons learned from PG&E’s five-year Environmental Leadership Index (ELI) Program, which concluded last year. PG & E exceeded all of its internal targets for energy, waste and water reductions and, more broadly, embedding sustainability into the real estate lifecycle.
During the 5 year period ending after 2014, PG&E was able to drive a 16.4% reduction in combined MMBTUs for electricity and gas across 168 sites, a 30.4% reduction in water use, and an 81% waste diversion rate. Furthermore, PG&E obtained LEED certification for 14 buildings, representing 31% of its facility footprint, and established a policy requiring all new construction to, at minimum, meet LEED Silver certification standards. Ms. Cochran’s leadership helped to enable these industry-leading achievements, which ultimately saved the company $10 million in utility costs over the course of the program and will continue with a minimum net savings of nearly $3.4 million per year going forward. Reflecting on the success of the ELI Program, Cochran reaffirmed the value that a multi-year, portfolio-wide sustainability strategy has for an enterprise, as it empowered her and her team to roll up disparate efficiency projects into an portfolio-wide program with enthusiastic C-Suite support.
Brian Glazebrook, Senior Global Sustainability Manager at NetApp, was the third SR Inc Member Executive to present on his work integrating sustainability into NetApp’s operations and real estate. Since joining NetApp in 2012, Mr. Glazebrook has worked to implement energy efficiency projects that make sense from a financial, operational, and technical standpoint. Select projects that he has overseen include portfolio-wide efforts to optimize HVAC systems, design improvements to NetApp Labs and Data Centers, and opportunities for renewable energy procurement. Constructed in 2009, NetApp’s Global Dynamic Lab in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina is 80% more energy efficient than an average data center and received an ENERGY STAR for its innovative, energy efficient design. With Brian’s guidance, NetApp is continuing to pursue LEED and/or ENERGY STAR certification for a number of other buildings in the portfolio, including the Global Dynamic Lab 2, another dedicated data center, which was completed in May 2014. Having a portfolio-wide sustainability strategy has enabled Brian to consider and merge perspectives from multiple departments within the enterprise to advance sustainability and optimize performance throughout NetApp’s corporate operations and real estate.
SR Inc’s Jim Boyle was grateful for the opportunity to highlight the cost savings and sustainable advantage that these three SR Inc Member-client enterprises have been able to achieve as a result of a practical and effective multi-year, mile-stone, based Sustainability Strategy. SR Inc has had the privilege for helping each enterprise develop and integrate their performance on the six key components of a effective sustainability strategy over multiple years. These Silicon Valley Member-clients as well as dozens of other SR Inc Member-clients have been able to promote sustainability in corporate operations and real estate in a way that is relevant and compelling to key stakeholders across the enterprise – from customers to the C-Suite. As Oracle, NetApp and PG & E demonstrated at SVLG Energy & Sustainability Summit, such a strategy can achieve significant operational savings in a manner that increases constructive engagement with employees, customers and senior most management.
For dozens of SR Inc Member-clients in Silicon Valley and beyond, developing a multi-year, milestone based Sustainability Strategy has proved a zero cap ex “force multiplier” that helps efficiency and sustainability initiatives to be better organized, accounted for, recognized and resourced. And this creates a virtuous cycle that Oracle, Netapp and PG & E as well as dozens of other SR Inc SBER Member-clients are benefiting from as their initial successes have helped them win increased recognition and resources to create ever greater additional successes.
Listed below is a small selection of SR Inc Member Briefings, Guidebooks & Tools relevant to the conversation at the Summit. If Member Executives have any questions, comments or contribution regarding the above or related topics, please do not hesitate to contact your SBER Advisor for timely assistance. Operating executives who are not member-clients, are encouraged to contact SR Inc for courtesy copy Member Briefings, Reports, Guidebooks or Tools to help them advance more sustainable high-performance.
Select Relevant SBER Executive Guidance:
