Report Tracks Growth of Corporate Sustainability Reporting

What are the implications when an organization forms solely to research and analyze sustainable investments? It means that institutional investors are requiring corporations to present sustainability performance data in their corporate responsibility reporting. If you haven’t already heard of the organization, meet the Sustainable Investment Research Analysts Network (SIRAN), which has just issued a report on the corporate responsibility initiatives of the S&P 100 companies.

According to the report, more than half of the U.S.’s largest publicly traded companies now report on their sustainability efforts. Over a third integrate elements of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) sustainability reporting guidelines. The GRI guidelines establish a standard for what should be in a sustainability report. Clearly this group puts pressure on the rest of the S&P 400 to “belly up to the bar.”

To me, the existence of a group like this demonstrates the extent to which sustainability initiatives have graduated out of Environmental Health and Safety departments into the corporate boardroom. Companies are being watched for their efforts to become sustainable and judged based on publishing real metrics, not glossy photos.
Out of the 100 companies:

• 86 have corporate sustainability sites, a 48 percent increase from 2005
• 49 produced a sustainability report in 2007, up 26 percent from 2005
• 41 incorporate GRI standards, a 71 percent increase from 2005
• 34 include a GRI Index in their report, up 70 percent from 2005

The SIRAN study says a sustainability report must include data covering three or more areas of corporate responsibility performance or execution on corporate governance initiatives.
What does this mean? It means your organization’s EHS data needs to be defensible in front of an industry analyst if it courts both institutional and individual investors.

Add comment July 23rd, 2008

Global Market Conditions Provide Impetus for Innovation, Sustainability

As we enter Q3 2008, the cable news channels are spouting their gloom-and-doom predictions, and the market is volatile. The price of oil’s up one day and down the next and everyone’s looking at their budgets. At the same time, a slew of new sustainability initiatives and regulations are inviting the enterprise to take a look at everything from supply chain to manufacturing to packaging.

The advantage of my age is that this isn’t my first business cycle rodeo. I have been here before. Watching the signs in the economy, I remember how we managed ESS through the last cycle, and how much we have learned about focus, about operational excellence and customer loyalty. Fortunately, we emerged from that downturn as a market leader, and we are going to continue our global growth and bring our customers with us. We are agile, and we pride ourselves on our quick response.

This time around, we find ourselves relatively rich in resources, especially people, to help us focus on our market leadership goals. We are doing what we encourage our customers to do: greening our company, monitoring and measuring our energy use and challenging ourselves to model the behavior we like to see in others. We will lower our own carbon footprint, question our expenditures for items like inter-office travel (could we do this with a videoconference?) and use the cost savings generated from being a sustainable company to help us maintain our industry lead.

For you, our customers, this is a time to focus on the operational efficiencies that can be gained from uniting silos of information into integrated platforms that give the executive team accurate information to make decisions in response to quick changes in the business environment. We have an aggressive product road map to help you do this, including mobile platforms. We are integrating all our offerings so they will gather data from the local to the global, presenting it as actionable information in reports that will be used for corporate governance.

Essential Suite 7.1 is really an enterprise sustainability platform, and we’re moving it further in that direction, integrating new features constantly and taking our lead from you, the customers we serve. As always, we are watching the regulatory changes, such as REACH, that impact you, and developing tools to help you not only deal with them, but turn them to your advantage.

We’ve had some big, important sales wins in Q2, but they don’t make us overconfident. Rather, they humble us. You have put your trust in us and we are going to keep earning your trust every day.

Add comment July 17th, 2008

Chemical Companies Face Both Data Management and Communications Issues from REACH

The biggest challenge in the new global regulatory environment created by REACH will be informational, according to Marc Dillon our Senior Product Manager. In order to be in compliance, chemical manufacturers will need to have all their information readily available in a single location that is auditable and verifiable.

The first step in managing this aspect of the challenge is to simply identify what information is actually needed. We suggest working with stakeholders in the organization to identify sources of information, gather up that data, evaluate the completeness and then try to fill in any existing holes. But maintaining and managing all this information can create its own set of challenges unless you know what to do with it.

Dillon recommends storing the information in a single database that allows users to query the information in multiple ways, view the information and then create the necessary reports. For example, with REACH you need to have information available for submission to the European Chemical Agency’s (Helsinki) IUCLID-5 application (this is the International Uniform Chemical Information Database, which serves as a common format to submit pre-registrations and registrations).

Our Essential Suite™ lets users export information out of their own database and put it into a format that is accepted by IUCLID-5. This is a time and, more importantly, error saver compared to the alternative of going to the agency’s website and filling out forms manually. But you wouldn’t want to buy something for a single use, and we’ve been careful to design Essential Suite so the information it collects can be used in many ways.

The advantage of a multiple-use system like Essential Suite, says Dillon, is that the information is available and can be accessed for other needs as well. The same system and information can be used to do things like generate labels and manage MSDS for chemicals that are stored and tracked in the system in order to comply with product stewardship initiatives.

Aside from the obvious benefit of serving as a data repository, Essential Suite can be used for multiple EH&S needs such as crisis management, risk management and compliance because the required information for associated reports is simply an output of the system.

REACH and other product stewardship initiatives are creating challenges related to what one expert refers to as the “communications circle,” or information sharing between external and internal business partners.

We regard REACH as a compliance issue; but it’s just as important to recognize that it is a supply chain issue. The entire supply chain is affected by REACH and everyone in that supply chain has to be in the know and in compliance for it to work. This is another case in which the information you have collected once, can be managed and output again.

Add comment July 8th, 2008

Australia Implements New Regulation for GHG Reporting

Effective this month, Australia has a new National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System that’s designed to monitor the emissions that cause climate change. Australian businesses that exceed greenhouse gases (GHG) limits will be required to monitor, measure and report emissions data to the government by 2009.

It’s the first step of Australia’s emissions trading program, which requires robust and comparable information –much of which is already demanded by the public.

Katie Lahey, chief executive of the Business Council of Australia, wrote last October in “The Age” newspaper, “…businesses cannot afford to sit back and wait for trading to formally start before addressing the implications of the new requirement on their strategies and operations. It’s a fundamental long-term transition from a high-emissions to a low-emissions world economy.”

This year, Australia will quantify emissions produced by large corporations. Businesses that emit more than 125 kilotons of greenhouse gases or consume or produce more than 500 trillion joules of energy will be required to collect data to meet annual reporting requirements.

Individual facilities that emit more than 25 kilotons of greenhouse gases, or use or produce 100 trillion joules of energy will also need to collect and report data. Twenty-five kilotons of greenhouse gas emissions is the equivalent of the annual emissions of more than 6,200 cars; 100 trillion joules equates to the annual energy use of about 1,900 households.

While the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act takes effect this month, businesses will have until August 31, 2009 to register and until October 31, 2009 to submit their first annual greenhouse and energy report.

Most Australian corporations already report their GHG information because of increasing pressure from stakeholders, but the new program will standardize what is monitored and measured.
A rapidly growing number of jurisdictions worldwide are adopting new standards for GHG reporting that require robust information management. The ESS GHG/Carbon Management Solution is designed to help businesses comply with regulations in Australia and most other countries worldwide. Whether your organization is conducting internal baseline calculations or complying with laws that require greater levels of transparency and accountability, integrated information management systems are a necessary component of a corporate carbon management plan.

Add comment July 2nd, 2008

Report Says Smart Technology Could Reduce Global Emissions by 15 Percent

SMART 2020: Enabling the low carbon economy in the information age, a new report published by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSi) and The Climate Group indicates that the technology industry’s unique ability to provide tools to monitor and maximize energy efficiency both inside and outside of its own sector could cut carbon emissions by up to five times the amount generated by its own carbon footprint.

SMART 2020, the world’s first comprehensive global study of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT), shows that information management is key to enabling organizations to reduce emissions. Global management consultants McKinsey & Company independently conducted the report’s supporting analysis

Transforming the way people and businesses use technology could reduce annual man-made global emissions by 15 percent by 2020 and deliver energy efficiency savings to global businesses of more than 500 billion euros (nearly $800 million USD), according to the report. This represents a reduction of 7.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent released into the environment by 2020 – an amount greater than the current annual emissions of either the U.S. or China.

Although tele-working, video-conferencing, e-paper and e-commerce are increasingly commonplace, the report notes that replacing physical products and services with the virtual equivalents is only a small part (approximately 6 percent) of the estimated low-carbon benefits the ICT sector can deliver. Far greater opportunities for emissions savings can be generated when organizations and industries implement a technology infrastructure to address carbon reporting and management.

The report cites four major opportunities where the use of information technology can make further transformational cuts in global emissions. These exist globally within smart building design and use, smart logistics, smart electricity grids and smart industrial motor systems.

I may have said this too many times lately, but it’s still true: we can’t reduce GHG emissions until everyone uses the right platform to measure and monitor them.

1 comment July 1st, 2008