Walking the Walk

The cliché goes, “He talks the talk, but does he walk the walk?” Making promises, but not being able to keep them is not good business practice. In this era of concern for sustainability, climate change, and energy efficiency, companies are making long-range promises, but will they be able to honor them?
 
Indeed, companies of all sizes across all business sectors are elevating sustainability as a core tenet of their practices, and yet a new Black & Veatch report discovers that many companies continue to establish targets without a clear understanding of how to achieve them.
 
GreenBiz Group, in collaboration with Black & Veatch, conducted extensive research into corporate sustainability goals and the strategies being developed and deployed to achieve them. The report, Corporate Sustainability Goal Setting and Measurement, is based on an online survey that polled nearly 500 respondents across 14 industry sectors, with additional insight from interviews conducted with sustainability leadership at several Fortune 500 companies.
 
It finds that corporate leadership teams across all sectors are working to accelerate the shift from discussing and establishing sustainability goals to actively delivering tangible results. How to achieve the most aggressive goals remains an area of uncertainty, however.
 
The report confirms that sustainability strategies increasingly are becoming complex and require companies to consider operational planning views that can extend for decades. With decarbonization a critical element, roadmaps will help companies set realistic targets in the short and medium terms, while offering the flexibility and agility required to comply with complex regulatory changes and rapidly evolving technology.
 
Key findings include:
 
  • More than 80% of companies surveyed with revenues greater than $250 million have set greenhouse gas reduction goals, but 25% are unsure how they’ll meet them.
  • Electric vehicles are being tested by more than half of companies with revenues greater than $1 billion as a strategic component toward achieving sustainability goals.
  • More than three-quarters of companies with revenues of at least $10 billion are using analytics to reduce energy and water usage, as are more than half of all other companies.
  • Companies are using a combination of capital expenditures and operating expenses to fund sustainability projects while green and sustainability bonds gain traction.
  • Corporate management and investors are the top stakeholders driving sustainability commitments, far outweighing other influencers such as customers or regulators.
  • Of the survey’s largest companies – those with revenue exceeding $10 billion – two-thirds have set Scope 3 emissions targets, reflecting the growing trend to influence emissions of other companies and activities in their value chains.
 
Greenhouse gas reductions through the combination of energy efficiency and renewable energy sourcing is viewed as essential for many large companies. Given that enterprise-level power assets can have operational horizons that span decades, companies setting or adjusting targets must understand all options available to them to avoid getting locked into one technology path. By having a clear understanding of technology maturity and cost, as well as the changing regulatory environment, companies can avoid these pitfalls.
 
The transition will take time, but many innovative solutions are already available. Low- and zero-emissions power generation, advanced renewable energy projects, alternative-fueled vehicles, and advancing energy storage are creating an entire ecosystem of carbon-reduction technologies. Now companies must identify their impact on the global carbon cycle, comprehend the associated climate risks, and identify opportunities to conceive, update or alter their decarbonization roadmap.