I had an opportunity this week to finally sit down and read a report issued last month by a former client and collaborator, the National Association for Environmental Management, more commonly known as NAEM.  NAEM is essentially the leading U.S. professional association for corporate environmental, health, safety, and sustainability (EHS&S) managers and executives. Its members could rightly be considered to be among the most sophisticated practitioners of EHS&S management in American business.  NAEM regularly issues reports speaking to important issues (some of which I have contributed to in the past), and its most recent one is particularly timely.  The report, Leading GHG Management Strategies and Metrics, provides an up-to-date look at what the larger and more sophisticated players within American industry are doing to address climate change, why they are doing so, and what benefits they perceive from adopting a proactive approach to this important business issue.

Learning from the Big Guys

I always find this sort of information interesting in its own right, but I believe that it is also highly relevant to the owners of smaller businesses as well as those managing the operations of schools, cultural institutions, and nonprofit organizations.  This is so for at least two reasons.  One is that in thinking about how to address an emerging issue, it is very often useful to review the experience and lessons learned of those who have already been working on the issue for some time.  Better to learn from the experience of others than to reinvent the wheel.  Another is that for those organizations provide products or services to larger companies, it is useful to have a sense of what new expectations may be coming from one’s customers.  It is no small thing that large retailers (e.g., Wal-Mart), the U.S. federal government, and many state and local governments have issued “guidance,” scorecards, and other materials that establish new expectations for suppliers.  These speak to the management of such issues as packaging, energy and water use, prohibited chemicals and other substances, pollutant emissions, and more.  What is guidance today may become contractual requirements tomorrow, so forewarned is, at least to some extent, forearmed.

The NAEM report provides a summary of the findings of a recent survey of about 90 member companies.  The survey inquired about the goals, components, maturity, and performance of greenhouse gas (GHG) management programs, as well as the scope and reporting of company-level GHG emissions.

Key Findings

For our customers, several points emerge as particularly relevant:

• Although for the predominantly very large companies represented in the sample, regulatory (reporting) requirements often drive the formation and operation of GHG management programs, cost savings, improved reputation, and stakeholder engagement also are within the top five drivers.
• While external reporting of GHG emissions generally occurs annually (e.g., in a sustainability report or disclosure to the CDP), many companies measure, report, and use GHG emissions on a quarterly or even monthly basis, suggesting that this information has value to the business for performance monitoring and/or decision-making purposes.
• Emissions results are frequently reported to the highest levels of the company—the Board of Directors and/or CEO—lending further credence to the idea that this information is viewed as highly important to the business.
• GHG management programs take many forms, but tend to share a number of specific activities. Metrics reporting (86% of respondents), facility energy audits (69%), and energy efficient buildings (64%) are those most commonly included.  For those respondents with mature programs, energy efficient buildings is the second-most common activity (84%), behind only metrics reporting (97%).  The use of buildings as the most common focal point for actions to reduce energy consumption and emissions (as opposed to goal-setting and evaluation) is both striking and logical.
• Among the more effective strategies reported by survey respondents are monitoring energy usage; engaging employees and facility-level leadership; conducting energy efficiency audits; and upgrading and retrofitting buildings.

Implications

To me, these survey findings suggest that proactive energy and GHG emissions management are becoming ever more integrated into mainstream business operations, across all types of commercial enterprises.  Smaller business, nonprofits, and other organizations can readily tap into the advances that have been achieved by the big guys to plan and execute their own GHG management and broader sustainability initiatives, strategies, and programs.  As many sophisticated companies have found, smart steps to reduce energy use and emissions provide a host of benefits to the organization as well as its stakeholders.