December 19, 2016
Sustainability Roundtable Inc. (SR Inc) was pleased to host the Summit For Sustainable Operations V in DC on December 7th & 8th. For more than seven years, SR Inc has worked with over 75 leading enterprises on a multi-year basis to help them accelerate their move to more sustainable operations. In DC, SR Inc’s full-time team was glad to share some of what Member-Clients have learned about driving sustainable high-performance through-out large (oftentimes global) enterprises.
As CEO & Founder of SR Inc, I want to extend a special thanks to Sustainable Business & Enterprise Roundtable (SBER) Member-Clients who worked with our SR Inc team to define, detail and present portfolio-wide management best practices including Anthem, Bloomberg, Capital One, Cisco, Intuit, Kaiser Permanente, Lenovo, NIH, and Oracle as well as to our special guests from the EPA, U.S. Dept. of Energy and U.S. Senate.
From an unforgettable morning keynote from Paul Hawken – who has done so much to envision, inspire and lead the global sustainable business movement – through to the examination of three mutually reinforcing revolutions in Healthy Workplaces, Renewable Energy and the Internet of Things (IoT) in Sustainable Operations – Summit V changed participants understanding of what is possible. Indeed, more than a few participants observed that before the Summit the theme of “Regenerative Operations by 2030” (i.e., operations that profitably contribute more to our health and ecology than degrade them) seemed an audacious aspiration, but following the Summit, it seemed an eminently attainable goal.
A DC Dinner Guest:
The Summit began the night prior. At the dinner preceding the Summit, Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts (author of the Markey/Waxman Cap & Trade Bill that passed the House in 2009) joined us and announced that earlier in the day he had joined Senator Merkley of Oregon to introduce a Resolution in the Senate supporting a transition to 100% clean, renewable energy. That resolution has attracted multiple Co-sponsors in the Senate and corresponds to a parallel resolution in the House with 60 Sponsors. Both resolutions build on the work of Mark Jacobson, Director of the Atmosphere & Energy Program at Stanford, and his team’s documenting of the feasibility of 100% renewable energy in each of the 50 states and in the U.S. as a whole – a body of research that has captivated the attention of several Member-Clients with public goals to power 100% of their operations with renewable energy.
An Inspirational Call to “Align Business with Life”:
The Summit itself began with Paul Hawken’s personal and compelling talk about his remarkable Project Drawdown (and related publication coming in April). Project Drawdown has attracted the C-Level support of leading SBER Member-clients and demanded Paul’s attention for multiple years. Paul has led in enlisting hundreds of top scientists, researchers and sustainability strategist to rigorously quantify what combinations of technologies and approaches can most help drawdown carbon from our atmosphere. Project Drawdown amounts to no less than the first plan to solve climate change (as opposed to “just” avoiding an increase in global mean temperature above 1.5 C). Consequently, through both exposition and example, Paul helped SBER Members understand that we can move from “managing to avoid the bad” to “leading towards the good,” and that we can lead towards both profit and the drawdown of carbon in our atmosphere if we “lead fearlessly to align business with life.”
Three Mutually Reinforcing Revolutions:
Moving from “managing to avoid the bad” (e.g. unneeded costs and fugitive carbon) to “leading to align business with life” became a theme of the Summit as we examined three distinct, mutually reinforcing revolutions in corporate operations. The 1st revolution is a change of leaders’ focus from managing buildings and spaces to leading people towards “Sustainably Healthy Workplaces” portfolio-wide. The 2nd revolution is driven by the inflecting adoption of Renewable Energy Portfolio-wide that increasingly powers businesses in a manner aligned with life. The 3rd revolution is the IoT in Operations that is making it possible to measure and manage in a human-centric – as opposed to building and space-centric – manner.
A Breakthrough Accounting for More Sustainable Operations:
Before we examined these three revolutions, we moved from the conceptual to the impressively practical with Jason
Shulman, Global Head of Sustainable Operations at Bloomberg. It was my pleasure to set precedent and recognize Bloomberg LP as the SBER’s first repeat Outstanding Corporate Leader of the Year for Bloomberg’s exceptional leadership in SR Inc’s scoring of Sustainable Operations.
Jason shared the details regarding how Bloomberg has moved to top leadership in more sustainable business (including ever more Class A, LEED Certified, office space and renewable energy) while scoring and reporting tens of millions of dollars saved due to their careful, portfolio-wide, growth adjusted, accounting. We highlighted Bloomberg’s approach to scoring and reporting sustainable savings as our Featured Management Best Practice because it is a tested, breakthrough, approach for accounting for the full benefit of more sustainable operations our every SBER Member-client should understand.
An Exceptional Individual Executive:
In addition to recognizing Bloomberg as a company, I also had the pleasure of recognizing Hakon Mattson, CRE Director, Energy & Sustainability at Anthem as the SBER Outstanding Corporate Executive of 2016. Hakon demonstrated why, when he explained how he has established and driven a Sustainably Healthy Workplace program at Anthem that integrates human health related metrics as he seeks to lead tens of thousands in Anthem’s growing workforce towards a Sustainably Healthy Workplace.
Andrew Green, Manager, Environmental Sustainability at Capital One also made a vitally important contribution in explaining the critical element of cross departmental coordination to advance Capital One’s world-class initiatives in healthy workplaces for its rapidly growing workforce. Diedre Buzzetto, Director of International Real Estate at Lenovo, joined Hakon and Andrew to help bring home the fact that the movement to dynamic, human centered, workplace leadership transcends industries and borders world-wide.
Then, Sean Kinghorn, Senior Sustainability Program Manager at Intuit, (and SBER Outstanding Executive of 2015) explained how he had innovated to create a single compelling, 8 year term PPA for renewable energy for multi-site, leased space. Amy Aves, Senior Director of Global Real Estate Operations at Oracle and Clayton Mitchell, Executive Director of Facilities Services at Kaiser Permanente, explained how the plummeting costs and rising functionality of the IoT for Operations was enabling them to advance human – as opposed to building – focused leadership through superior insight into utilization and even individual employee preferences and behavior change.
Public Leadership & Brilliance at Lunch:
At lunch, we were not only treated to the insights of David Freidman, Acting Assistant Secretary at the Dept. of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy about the inflecting change in renewable energy, energy storage and EVs, but we also had the special benefit of Salesforce’s Director of Sustainability Patrick Flynn sharing a developed version of his TEDx Talk on “Mankind’s Biggest Machine” and, specifically, what executives could do through the CoLo Buyers’ Principles to advance towards a “global information machine” that was – to insert a phrase – better aligned with life. Following lunch, Jean Lupinacci, Chief of the Energy Star, Commercial & Industrial Branch of the EPA reviewed the voluntary program’s remarkable growth and new services. Kenny Floyd, Director at the Division of Environmental Protection of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), demonstrated how the NIH has led by example for years in aligning its campus, buildings and behavior with human health.
That all set the stage for our brief and focused afternoon “Base Camp Huddles” on how best SBER Member Executives could ascend from being perceived as managing cost centers to creating strategic and enduring value for their enterprises – especially in regard to their move to Sustainably Healthy Workplaces and Renewable Energy Portfolio-wide. In both instances, Member Executives confirmed what we have regularly heard one-on-one. Namely, they want decision support on the enabling IoT solutions and configurable business cases that are industry, market, building type and space use -specific for Sustainably Healthy Workplaces and Renewable Energy Portfolio-wide.
Fortunately, SR Inc has partnered with NRG and Delos (which sponsors the Well Building Standard) to develop rigorous, science based SBER Executive Guidance & Decision Tools in 2017 to help executives profitably move towards Sustainably Healthy Workplaces and renewable energy-powered portfolios. NRG Vice President of Sustainability Bruno Sarda presented at the Summit to share NRG’s broad ranging initiatives and interest in partnering with top companies to leverage its unique capabilities as one of the country’s largest energy companies to help shape the future of more sustainable business.
Consequently, following the holidays, SBER Charter Members will examine and refine the SBER proposed Chartered Agenda 2017 reflecting our proposed deliverables and meeting formats and calendar. We will finalize that Charter and our 2017 calendar through our Charter Agenda 2017 Webinar February 16th from 2-3pm ET.
Conclusion:
As post-meeting surveys reveal, several who participated in the Summit for Sustainable Operations V have taken to heart Paul Hawken’s invitation to: “fearlessly lead to align business with life.” There is no business case for degrading living systems in ever more transparent markets. However, in highly imperfect markets, aligning growing business profit “with life” requires exceptional, human focused leadership. For this reason, SBER Member Executives’ time and leadership are especially appreciated as we all work together to help define and achieve enduring leadership in global corporate real estate and operations in a breakthrough 2017.
Jim Boyle is CEO & Chairman of Sustainability Roundtable, Inc. For nearly eight years, Jim has led full-time teams of diverse experts assisting world-leading corporations, real estate owners, and federal agencies in their move to greater sustainability. He has led in developing SR Inc’s confidential, industry specific, annual management assessment and recommendation process for more sustainable operations and real estate that is compatible with major public standards globally. Further, he has directed the development of hundreds of pieces of SR Inc original Executive Guidance & Tools and led in the creation of SR Inc’s Renewable Energy Procurement Services (REPS) practice, which represents top corporate off-takers across the U.S. and internationally. Before founding SR Inc, Mr. Boyle advised fast growth technology firms, private equity firms, and institutional investors as an adviser on real estate strategy and implementation, and before that, as a large law firm attorney assisting corporate and investment clients on complex real estate and environmental compliance-related issues. Jim is a graduate of Middlebury College and Boston College Law School, who early in his career served as a federal law clerk and as an aide to John F. Kerry in the U. S. Senate.
