Energy and Carbon Management Blog

The Importance of Sustainability in an Economic Downturn

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Recently, lines between mandatory and voluntary energy and carbon management initiatives have been blurred as businesses in nearly every sector face increased pressure from consumers, customers, investors, and regulators to implement sustainability initiatives.  Over the last few months this point was reinforced by several new requirements on businesses to develop and disclose sustainability efforts:

• The U.S. EPA set GHG reporting requirements
• Wal-Mart called on 100,000 vendors to disclose sustainability efforts
• The U.S. SEC announced that it will require publicly traded companies to disclose  climate risks
• The World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) began road testing two new standards - Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting Standard and the Scope 3 (Corporate Value Chain) Accounting and Reporting Standard
• The Carbon Disclosure Project expanded its Supply Chain Project for 2010

These new requirements provide confirmation that businesses must remain focused on energy, carbon, and environmental performance.  External pressures aside, sustainability is proving good for business performance. 

A Recent MIT Sloan Management Review (Sustainability and Competitive Advantage) survey of executives demonstrated that companies have identified multiple tangible and intangible benefits from sustainability initiatives.  These benefits frequently include enhanced profits from improved brand and customer loyalty, reduced costs tied to better energy management and increased operational efficiencies, and strengthened employee recruitment and retention.

Aberdeen Group, in their recent research (Sustainable Production: Good for the Plant, Good for the Planet), determined that 85% of surveyed companies responded to the current economic downturn by either sustaining or increasing investments in their sustainability programs.  Significant reductions or improvements across energy efficiency, waste reduction, environmental impact, and reuse and recycling amounted to enhanced financial performance directly attributable to sustainability program investments.  Common amongst Best-in-Class manufacturers was a corporate-wide energy and emissions data program.

Pace Globals’s integrated energy and carbon data management solution, ECM Hub^SM, provides businesses with a foundation for their sustainability programs.  These tools centralize enterprise energy, carbon, and sustainability data in a web-enabled environment that provides management with line of sight to key performance indicators at enterprise, business unit, facility, and unit-level resolution – and at a price point 50% to 70% below the cost of internally developed efforts.  For more information, please contact us or click here to learn more.