Tagged with #susbiz

Sustainable Investment Guidelines – linking sustainability into the investment decision

Green InvestmentThe single largest investor in capital works  is the public sector, but it’s the same sector that struggles with some of the fundamentals of sustainable investment.
Key challenges include:

• the prioritisation of construction over operational spends;

• a lack of focus on long term benefits realisation at the expense of immediate delivery pressures;

• a narrow definition of sustainability, often singularly toward environmental (as opposed to social or economic) issues;

• and a fundamental disjoint between sustainability and the investment decision. Major Projects Victoria and AECOM have tackled the issue by developing guidance that explains why and how to embed sustainability into investment decisions. This guidance will (subject to approvals) form a core part of the Investment Lifecycle Guidance – the suite of documents that provide the ‘rules’ for all public capital projects across Victoria. The document seeks to achieve a paradigm shift – away from a mindset where sustainability is something additional and cost additive ; toward recognition that sustainability is simply a vehicle to create a better project.

The guidance focuses on:

• linking everything back to clearly identifiable benefits (quantified or otherwise);

• putting sustainability on the agenda from concept stage by providing a set of prompts to consider;

• gradually building the robustness of the objectives such that they form an explicit part of the business case and the investment decision. This way of thinking is of relevance to all organisations (public and private) procuring capital works.

Ed Brown – Associate Director- AECOM will present on this topic at the 6th Making Cities Liveable Conference in conjunction with the Sustainability Conference “SustainableTransformation” bringing a new era of collaboration, information sharing and professional networking. The 3 day meeting will be held from the 17th – 19th June 2013 at Novotel Melbourne St Kilda… full details here

The Many Sides of Sustainability – revisted

In early 2011 Oracle released a white paper on the “The Many Sides of Sustainability”

The following is quoted directly from the paper and refers to 2010 data…

Oracle White Paper


“Regardless of how large or how profitable they are, businesses today do not stand alone. They are inextricably linked with the societies in which they operate. Every decision they make—whether it‘s to close a plant, move opera

tions to a different country or set a price for a new product—affects the surrounding community and the natural environment, for better or for worse.

Regulations resulting from corporate scandals, the rising influence of non-governmental organizations, environmental concerns and the fact that nearly one-third of the world‘s top 100 economic entities are corporations, not countries, have prompted the emergence of a new trend: Sustainability. How successfully companies embrace these concepts may well determine their ability to develop new markets, negotiate partnerships and compete for talent.

Consider these telling statistics:

 76 percent of executives surveyed in 2010 say sustainability contributes positively to shareholder value in the long term, and 50 percent see short-term value creation (McKinsey & Company).
 $1 out of every $9 under professional management in the United States now involves an element of ―socially responsible investment‖ (Geoffrey Heal, Columbia Business School).
 Over 2,600 organizations registered sustainability reports with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) through 2010
 Over 3,000 organizations voluntarily submitted data regarding greenhouse gas emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in 2010

Broadly speaking, sustainability is a hot-button topic that‘s grabbing headlines from The Wall Street Journal to The Economist; yet it still means many things to many people. Some equate it with philanthropy, while others expand the definition to focus on regulatory compliance, business ethics and the environment. Even the terminology is diffuse, with Corporate Social Responsibility, Corporate Responsibility, Corporate Citizenship, Triple P (People, Planet, Profit), Triple Bottom Line and ―Being Green‖ often used interchangeably.

In this paper, we refer to ―sustainability as the umbrella term.

A business can only expect to receive stakeholder contributions, such as capital, labor, materials, infrastructure, customer business and government regulations, when it is prepared to meet stakeholder requirements, such as financial returns, a good place to work, and being a responsible citizen. A wider focus on the whole value chain ensures an efficient and effective business. At a strategic level, this approach can reconcile different—and sometimes conflicting—stakeholder objectives while building a foundation of trust in the process.

So how do you get there from here?”

We would appreciate your feedback on this last question, do you you think the GFC has slowed business and Government interest?  Should the sector be pleased with its accomplishments to date or do we need a little re-branding?

Your thoughts and comments are welcome and will help us frame the program for the 2013 conference.  We will publish all comments.

Angela Greene
The Association for Sustainability in Business Secretariat

Integrated reporting “the next step”

FSinsight editor Jeroen Derwall, Assistant Professor at the Tilburg Center for Sustainability and at Maastricht University, talks about the upward trend that more companies are reporting on their sustainability practices. However, the quality of the reporting differs. He calls integrated reporting “the next step.”

Positive Carbon Management: The Buck Starts with the Environmental Data

What separates leaders from followers in the area of energy and carbon management?  Bigger cost reductions and better operating performance.  How do they achieve these results? By outperforming followers with executive sponsored programs and investing in technology to manage and analyse data.

That’s the message to take away from a recent energy and carbon management report by research firm Aberdeen Group. What can be inferred from this report is that delivering improved business performance will, in the long term, only be achieved by a systematic and consistent approach to energy and carbon, which will accommodate the increasing complexity and quantity of the underlying data.

The challenges of (environmental) data management   Data management is a common problem across many areas of business in different industries, and carbon management is no exception. However, managing carbon suffers from a lack of maturity, driven by insufficient business attention. The good news is that data practises from more mature industries can be applied.   Receiving data from your supply chain in a timely and easy to manage format is the first major obstacle for most organisations. Leaders are 50% more likely to have supplier data transferred directly into a software application*. Some organisations choose a single supplier to simplify this although this is not always the best commercial decision.

The concept of a Network of Exchange is used by industries such as aviation and automotive and allows the collection of disparate data and subsequent standardisation for communication to reporting platforms. Such a Network now exists for the flow of environmental data from utility supplier to organisations.   Consistency and completeness of data are the next challenges for effective carbon management. Environmental data is usually fragmented and decentralised as it resides with multiple stakeholders across the business. There is also a wide variety of environmental data collected such as energy cost, Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions and consumption at an activity and asset level.   To overcome this, it’s important to accept that data comes from many sources, and equally important to avoid the temptation to ‘turn off’ any data source. The concept of data pedigree priority allows the ‘ranking’ of data based on quality and value to your business. Business decisions can be made on the best available data at the time (which is better than no data), and your carbon management system can automatically substitute higher value data as it becomes available.

Why you need more than a spreadsheet for environmental data management   Spreadsheets are fine for calculation. However, for sustained carbon management you need more than calculation of your co?-e. When the big data flows arrive a spreadsheet will drown you in a mass of numbers. Granularity in your data will lead to improved decision making but only if you have a system that can manage the data and present information in a manner that your stakeholders can relate to.

Environmental data programs need to be managed in the same way a Sales or HR program would be managed, with a scalable software solution that allows you to forecast and set and track against targets.   Making the most of environmental data management processes   With a platform of robust and complete data behind you, you are now in a position to deliver ongoing value to your business. Leading organisations deliver this by ensuring metrics are linked to operational and financial elements that are already embedded into the organisation*. A system that allows the linking of carbon data to other business benchmarks such as output, revenue or inventory can provide indicators and benchmarks that are easily understood. Overlaying this information with technology elements such as analytics, dashboard and mobility provides the visibility across the business to effect change.

What does your business stand to gain from good environmental data and effective carbon management?   Accessibility to reliable environmental data allows businesses to make fast decisions that reduce costs. For example, manufacturing plants are using energy data to contextualise real-time events to minimise production, improve energy efficiency and minimise emissions*.

Consistency of data allows organisations to benchmark and identify best practices that can be shared. Equally poor performing areas of the business can take responsibility and make improvements. There is much that can be applied from the fundamentals of good data management to improve environmental data. The sooner you start the sooner you can benefit from cost reductions and process efficiencies.

*Energy and Carbon Management: A Roadmap for Sustainable Production July 2012 | Aberdeen Group

Simon McCabe is the resident Green Crusader and the Business Relations Director for Intelligent Pathways.