August 1, 2023
Directors of Sustainability at globally scaling businesses have one of the most interesting and challenging professional jobs available. Because ever more companies and market regulators are beginning to grapple in earnest with the impacts of human-caused climate and environmental breakdown.
What has been developing for 30+ years as a field of volunteered leadership is becoming, in 2023, legally required. And now more than ever, professionals world-wide are beginning to understand climate science and its breathtaking implications for business, politics and even geo-politics. As all this comes bearing down on new Directors of Sustainability, it’s helpful to remember Calvin Coolidge’s brilliant advice: “Don’t hesitate to be as revolutionary as science; don’t hesitate to be as reactionary as a multiplication table.”
Directors of Sustainability must wear many hats. As they lead their small teams to influence their 5 or 50 or, indeed, 100 thousand person firms towards more sustainable value creation, the most important hat they don may be as their firm’s: “Ambassador to Reality.” It fairly falls onto the sustainability team to ensure the CEO, Board and the entire global organization, understand what science is increasingly revealing about the likely impacts of human-caused climate and environmental breakdown on the firm’s businesses and markets. All in a world that is – in Professor Rebecca Henderson of Harvard Business School’s memorable line – “increasingly on fire.”
The sustainability team must also message to the firm’s most sought-after customers, talent, investors, and host communities what the enterprise is doing to respond to this challenge. Which their regularly younger and more educated most sought-after stakeholders increasingly perceive as an ever more obvious threat to the quality of their lives and futures.
Rise of Sustainability Directors: The European Union’s recent adoption of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directives (CSRD) marks a pivotal moment in the move to more sustainable business. More than 10,000 publicly traded firms, including almost all SR Inc Member-clients are now required to measure and report on dozens of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations, including their global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Additionally, the SEC climate disclosure rule expected this fall will dramatically increase the number of firms required to report; creating a tsunami of new sustainability professionals. This is after the number of super empowered Chief Sustainability Officers (CSO) already tripled in 2021, according to a PWC study.
Scenario Planning & Realistic Guidance: The emergence of hundreds of CSOs and thousands of Directors of Sustainability creates an immense opportunity for global businesses and markets to become better acquainted with the realities of human-caused climate and environmental breakdown that has been unfolding for decades. Which UNICEF, in its 2021 Children’s Climate Risk Index Report, recognized has already placed more than a billion children at deadly risk due to the increasing frequency of “once in a thousand year” floods, droughts, famines, wild-fires and extreme weather in the 33 most climate vulnerable nations that have collectively contributed less than 9% of the heat trapping gasses (that last for centuries) dumped into the thin band of life we call our biosphere.
One of the critically important task sustainability teams must help their enterprise’s with is the increasingly mandated need to conduct “scenario planning” that considers different levels of increased global heating. Unfortunately, current practices in corporate “Climate Scenario Planning” would be darkly humorous – if it were not so important.
In July, Tim Lenton from University of Exeter led a team of expert authors in publishing an article, The Emperor’s New Climate Scenario, on how current climate-change scenario modeling fails to be realistic about the expected dangers associated with a warming world. Even as SR Inc continues to help Member-clients understand and implement accepted best practices in Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD) scenario analysis, SR Inc team encourages Member-clients to review this and related articles and ultimately specifically acknowledge the limitations of linear financial models in scenario planning. Learn more in SR Inc’s Thought Leadership on “Integrating Systemic Impacts into Climate Scenario Analysis.”
In 2023, it’s clear that to be an enterprise’s “Ambassador to Reality,” Directors of Sustainability, must familiarize themselves with Earth Systems Science. As Johan Rockström, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, stated at the 2023 Innovation Zero Congress, “There’s one conclusion without any uncertainty whatsoever, and that is that a 2.5C global mean surface temperature rise is a disaster. It’s something that humanity has absolutely no evidence that we can cope with. It would actually exceed the warmest temperature on Earth over the past four million years.”
Prompted, in-part, by a world that has never needed it more, a new global community of 10s of thousands of full-time, professional, Directors of Sustainability is emerging. It’s mission critical for this new and burgeoning community to recognize that nothing stands between us and unprecedented levels of courage, collaboration and creativity. This new, digitally connected, global community of Directors of Sustainability shares a respect for science; and we have an historic opportunity to fulfill our roles as “Ambassadors to Reality.”
I once heard Paul Hawken say, “if a history of this time is written, it will be a history of heroes and shared triumphs.” I am 100% confident that regardless of the ultimate outcome, we have a chance to make this moment one of outstanding and growing courage, collaboration, and creativity. Directors of Sustainability across every racial, religious, and regional difference and across every sector, industry and enterprise size, can step forward in this thin and beautiful band of life we call our biosphere and, together, triumph.
Harley-Davidson seeks to take an inclusive stakeholder approach to ensure profitable growth and sustainable long-term value for the planet, people, and communities. Their focus areas include inclusion and belonging, driving positive change in their communities, and creating a path to net zero.
IDEXX is committed to being a socially responsible company guided by their purpose of enhancing the health and well-being of pets, people, and livestock. IDEXX’s sustainability goals include establishing GHG emissions targets, driving efficiencies to reduce their operational impact, and more sustainable solutions for packaging.
June 28, 2023. SR Inc held our second quarterly 2023 Executive Symposium on June 22nd at simultaneous live events at the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, CA and the Cambridge Innovation Center in Cambridge, MA, as well as virtually. Member-Clients were engaged on two major topics, Sustainability Strategy Leadership and Corporate Global Decarbonization. Member-Clients heard from Member Executive Maggie Finnegan, Head of Climate & Product Sustainability at Wayfair, about Wayfair’s Scope 2 decarbonization strategy, and Joe Speicher, Vice President of ESG & Impact at Autodesk, who discussed Autodesk’s own decarbonization approach.
2023 SBER Q2 Symposium: CSRD & Scenario Analysis
June 28, 2023. SR Inc held our second quarterly 2023 Executive Symposium on June 22nd at simultaneous live events at the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, CA and the Cambridge Innovation Center in Cambridge, MA, as well as virtually. In the first session of “Sustainability Strategy Leadership,” participants first heard from SR Inc CEO Jim Boyle and two Member-Client speakers, largely on the topic of causing new renewable energy capacity and approaches to decarbonization. This discussion was then followed by the presentation of two Member-Advisory deliverables, the first focused on the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), and the latter on TCFD scenario analysis.
SR Inc Welcomes Alison Millman as Senior Analyst
As a Senior Analyst at SR Inc, Alison supports Member-Clients with outsourced program assistance and creates original research to help clients drive industry best practices in topic areas ranging from mandatory ESG and climate reporting to sustainability function design.
NZCB Participants Create a 100 MW Solar Buyer Aggregated VPPA
May 15, 2023. EMD Electronics, Biogen Inc., Wayfair Inc., Autodesk, Inc. and a large healthcare company, with support from Sustainability Roundtable Inc’s Net Zero Consortium for Buyers, signed an aggregated virtual power purchase agreement for 100% of the production capacity of the Liberty Solar project. Recurrent Energy, LLC (“Recurrent”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Canadian Solar Inc. (“Canadian Solar”) is currently developing the 100 MWac solar project in Liberty County, Texas, around 50 miles from Houston.
NZCB Achieves Half of Gigawatt by 2025 Goal
May 10, 2023. Sustainability Roundtable Inc (SR Inc) is pleased to announce that its Net Zero Consortium for Buyers (NZCB) has achieved 50% of its goal of enabling SR Inc Member-clients to cause a gigawatt of new renewable energy capacity by 2025. Ongoing NZCB individual and aggregated procurements in the U.S. and Europe bolster optimism for achieving the gigawatt goal ahead of schedule.
Member-Client Highlight: PTC Demonstrates Next Generation Sustainability Leadership
June 8, 2023. Under the direction of VP of Sustainability Dave Duncan, PTC’s ESG team has begun and made impressive progress in developing a robust program, including carbon footprint measurement and tracking, extensive public reporting efforts, and crafting a world-class decarbonization strategy.
May 23, 2023. Sustainability Roundtable, Inc. (SR Inc) is working with key relevant industry players including leaders at CEBA, CEBI, and the EPA’s Green Power Partnership to explore how best to establish a “Purchaser Caused” (PC) tag, which will certify Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) as having enabled new grid capacity.
Net Zero Consortium for Buyers U.S. VPPA Opportunity Index: 2023 Q1
April 24, 2023. SR Inc was pleased to guide Member-Clients in multiple virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs) through the Net Zero Consortium for Buyers (NZCB) in Q1 2023 in the U.S. and Europe. All SR Inc Member-Clients of sufficient scale are interested in VPPAs as they move towards 100% renewable energy as a core part of their Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi)-aligned journey to Net Zero Emissions.
SR Inc’s Community Service: GoTo’s Earth Day Clean Up
April 21, 2023. The SR Inc Team volunteered with Member-Client GoTo to help clean Boston’s Seaport city streets. SR Inc has pledged 1% of employee time annually to volunteer opportunities, including protecting the environment by cleaning up our local neighborhood.
Q3 Executive Symposium
Thursday, September 21, 2023
12:00 – 2:30 pm ET
Member-Clients meet in New York City & remotely
Q4 Executive Symposium
Friday, December 8 , 2023
11:00 – 4:00 pm ET
Member-Clients meet in Washington, D.C
