January 21, 2015
SR Inc Member-Client companies are among the world leaders in establishing and driving towards goals in more sustainable high-performance in real estate and operations. In 2015, most are setting or adjusting 2nd generation goals to ensure these goals are aligned with – or leading – enterprise-wide efforts.
Across sectors and geography, SR Inc is pleased to increasingly help Sustainable Business & Enterprise Roundtable (SBER) Member-Client companies determine the best goals they can set to help them organize their efforts to drive towards more sustainable high-performance. It has been our pleasure to help Member-Clients better understand the best management approaches, systems, goals, KPIs and metrics to help them work with more engaged and productive employees to drive greater resource productivity across real estate, energy, and materials management.
Some are not yet reporting their carbon footprint but others, particularly among SBER companies who are leading global IT companies, are driving towards ambitious public goals intended to make clear they are determined to align with their employees and customers’ always growing concern for social and environmental responsibility. And most all Member-Clients now understand the advantages of a Sustainability Strategy that is multi-year, milestone-based and CEO-approved; over disparate initiatives, however good those separately funded and scored efforts are.
John Elkington founded SustainAbility, the first and still a leading firm in Corporate Sustainability in 1987. Two years ago, he published his 17th book, Zeronauts, which highlighted visionaries like Ray Anderson, the late CEO of Interface’s exploration of “the power of zero” in setting corporate goals. Goals like zero deaths in construction or zero defects in manufacturing were deemed as impractical and aspirational – until they were achieved.
Obsessive zero-based optimization planning can, however, force managers to look inward too much. Consequently, embracing the wider frame of corporate sustainability to guide zero-based optimization planning can help companies set priorities and “see” broader opportunities while building a culture that celebrates innovations and partnerships of growing importance in a world increasingly defined by resource constraints.
Keenly aware of the need to drive towards greater corporate sustainability in a changing world, an elite cohort of SR Inc Member-Clients are driving towards 100% renewable energy (i.e. zero net fossil fuels) at least for their data centers. In doing so, they are engaging in one the most fascinating engineering and business challenges of our time. As they take advantage of – and help accelerate – the plummeting cost and increasing efficiency of renewable energy and related partnerships and transactions.
This has brought the prospect of Net Zero Energy Portfolios championed by the Rocky Mountain Institute to the attention of CoreNet Global – the trade association for Directors of Corporate Real Estate. Just as GRESB – the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark – has heightened interest in portfolio-wide sustainability among large real estate owners. Both of these developments helped prompt Member-Clients to SR Inc to begin examining Net Zero Emissions Portfolio-wide which simply and powerfully ties together Member-Client interest in: (a) energy management (b) on- and off-site renewable energy and (c) reducing GHG emissions from operations. This Q4 focus will continue into 02015 (additional zero deliberate), as SBER Member-Clients again and again prove the business case for a more sustainable approach to operations.
