By: Tiffany Richmond

Do you know what’s impacting your company’s energy and environmental use? Do you have a reporting regime in place today? Does your company have a policy statement? Do you know how your organization compares to competitors? The industry? Do you know what best practices to follow?

Questions like these are the type of questions that are answered in the first step of a sustainability program. This article will outline how to develop a policy statement, how to analyze your current energy and environmental data and identifies industry best practices.

What is a sustainability policy?
A sustainability policy serves as a company’s public statement for its management and employees, plus a communication tool for its customers, vendors, and other interested parties. It is the heart and soul of a program as it explicitly states the value, commitment, and goals of an organization. The policy needs to be integrated into a set of parameters to make decisions on products/services it will manufacture, technology that will be used for production, and all supporting activities such as maintenance, transportation, energy, etc.

Some key questions to consider when developing or reviewing a policy for sustainability:

• What is driving the former/current sustainability program?
• Who are/were the key participants?
• What was accomplished with respect to the initial plan/policies?
• What gaps existed in the current/former policy?
• What successes do we need to build on?
• What setbacks serve as guidance on how to launch a new/modify the existing program?

It is also important to understand a policy can address other elements deemed important by the company. The policy must be constructed in such a manner that it addresses the following items:

• Be focused. The most important aspect of the policy is that it needs to clearly state the company’s vision statement and present core values and principles. The policy is meant to provide inspired leadership that establishes the framework for the policies and procedures that will be implemented to meet the stated objectives.
• Contain relevant content. If the policy’s content is not relevant to the company’s existing culture and operation, it might do more harm than good.
• Be signed and dated. The policy statement should be signed and dated at the very least by the owner or a responsible corporate official. Signatures demonstrate a personal commitment by the highest company official on the premises. If the names change, they should be updated by the new responsible officials as quickly as possible.
• Be posted. The policy statement should be posted on the company’s website and at the facility in a place where all employees and visitors can readily see it.

It’s important to have management commitment and support during the development of the policy and program. A committee should also be assigned to the development, with representatives from key operational areas.

In addition to the policy development a thorough review of available energy and environmental performance data should be completed. This will rely primarily on data in the form of electricity, natural gas, water and other utility data, but where available should also take advantage of additional data sources including:

• Waste and waste diversion data
• Refrigerants
• Transportation fuels
• Pollution release data (if applicable)
• Process impacts as they relate to pollutant release or ecosystem impact (this will vary by industry and organization)

At this point having an accurate reporting regime in place is extremely important. This will ensure that data is accurate, transparent and complete. Reviewing current energy and environmental performance data will also help set a baseline to compare against industry benchmarks and future performance. Once this data is collected some analysis can be performed on it.

• Benchmark Analysis. The benchmark analysis will compare a company’s energy and environmental performance data to industry benchmarked data.
• Quantile Distribution. This involves dividing ordered data into equal sized data subsets for analysis. The objective is to group the data into logical buckets or ‘bins’ to better understand how data (such as energy intensity performance) is distributed over a population.
• Trend Analysis. Analysis in the change in a data set over time (‘time series data’) in an effort to spot a pattern or ‘trend’ over the analysis period. The analysis focuses on the direction of the data in terms of its velocity and/or momentum, for example is it decreasing over time or increasing exponentially over time. It can sometimes be used in predictive modeling.
• Baseline Analysis Comparison. The baseline analysis will provide an overview of the current state of a company’s energy and environmental performance.

During this stage it’s important to outline best practices to follow in the development of the sustainability program. Some sources of best practices to consider include:

• Global Reporting Initiative
• United Nations Global Compact
• World Business Council for Sustainable Development and World Resources Institute’s Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative
• ISO 146064 Standards
• American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)
• Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)

Industry associations are also excellent sources of sector specific best practice guidance.

Once the sustainability policy has been developed and an analysis of existing energy and environmental performance is complete, it’s time to move to the second stage – goal and target development.

---

Tiffany Richmond is an enthusiastic marketing guru and is responsible for online marketing strategies at Energy Advantage Inc.

By: Tiffany Richmond

The word sustainability is often used, but what does sustainability really mean? Is it a motto, an ideal, a way to do business, a way to live life or a call to action?

The Natural Step defines sustainability as:

In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing;

• Concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust;
• Concentrations of substances produced by society;
• Degradation by physical means and, in that society; and
• People are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.

The United Nations defines sustainability as:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

However, with no universally agreed definition of sustainability every individual, company or community defines sustainability in their environment.

Today, many individuals, companies and communities are faced with growing pressures to produce sustainable products, to run businesses in a sustainable manner and to build sustainable communities. This creates many challenges, such as defining what sustainability means, understanding current environmental performance, developing goals, and learning best practices to follow.

This Sustainability Series is focused on unraveling these challenges for organizations and developing a road map that is simple, focused and realistic.

There are three main areas to consider – economic performance, social responsibility and environmental stewardship. Often referred to as the triple bottom line, shaping a sustainability program includes measuring and reporting in these three spheres.

• Economic performance – business must achieve an acceptable return on investment and a healthy bottom line.
• Social responsibility – business must treat all individuals (employees, customers, and the community) fairly.
• Environmental stewardship – business must operate in an environmentally responsible manner.

Maintaining a healthy balance between these three categories isn’t easy and its common for companies to use the balance as a criteria to measure success.

The series is broken down into four stages. These stages will outline a road map that organizations can follow to develop a sustainability program. They include:

1. Policy development and best practices
2. Goals and targets
3. Identifying measures for sustainability
4. Performance measurement plan

At the end you will learn four important steps to follow, a sample program outline and what to do after program implementation. The first stage, policy development and best practices, will be posted next week.

---

Tiffany Richmond is an enthusiastic marketing professional and is responsible for online marketing strategies at Energy Advantage Inc.

By: Randi Kruse

Energy managers have it tough. They are expected to deliver significant reductions in energy use across multiple locations, often with relatively small operating budgets. Since most municipalities and leading businesses have greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets, it’s critical to their public reputation that their energy managers achieve success. But with aging infrastructure and constrained resources, what’s an energy manager to do?

I caught up with one of the most successful leaders in this field, Trevor Billy from the City of Coquitlam, BC. Trevor’s an unassuming and socially astute guy, the kind of person who is modest to a fault about his work and quick to notice my designer shoes. Trevor’s story is a good one because it offers insight into what other municipalities across Canada can be doing to dramatically cut their energy consumption, raise awareness about climate change issues, and reduce operating costs at the same time.

Population trends in Coquitlam are indicative of changes in the region. Greater Vancouver is one of the most rapidly growing areas in Canada, and Coquitlam is among the fastest growing municipalities with the population increasing by over 21% between 1986 and 1991, and again from 1991 to 1996. A further increase of 10.9% occurred between 1996 and 2001. Lots of people want to call Coquitlam home, and this is putting pressure on City staff like Trevor to address energy consumption in a meaningful way.

Trevor is a trained engineer and loves quantitative data. He is responsible for 130 municipal buildings and focuses his attention on the 20 responsible for 80% of the City’s total energy consumption. There are approximately 1600 staff working at municipal buildings across the community. What’s interesting is his approach to dealing with those top 20 buildings. Trevor prioritized social marketing projects “by accident” after a small pilot project with one building resulted in 10% energy reduction within one year – without any financial investments. He realized that behaviour change strategies aren’t “soft and fuzzy,” they have real numbers associated with them and significant dollar values attached to those savings.

About one year ago, the City of Coquitlam launched an energy conservation program using public events at municipal locations to build awareness of the City’s corporate climate change goals. The messaging was really about what individuals can do to support their community’s energy reduction commitments – inspiring, accessible, high level information that avoided any mention of kilowatt hours or other technical language. At the same time, Trevor implemented a framework for social marketing projects developed by BC Hydro which shifted the general awareness into specific behaviour targets. Trevor didn’t have a background in the social science of behaviour change, but instead relied on the resources and support from the local power authority. He says he is surprised that more energy managers don’t do the same.

“It’s almost irresponsible to ask for a couple million dollars from the City to install a new boiler before asking people to tune up their work stations,” said Trevor. Indeed.

Despite his success, the reaction from staff across the City has been mixed. About 20% were already aware of how they can save energy in their daily activities and were excited to see leadership from the City. The majority, 60%, needed more convincing but could be brought along and were generally supportive. And then there were the naysayers, those 20% social outliers who think energy conservation is inconvenient and resist change. Trevor says that at this stage, after one year of engaging, fun, and rewarding social marketing campaigns featuring new themes each month, the laggards are “getting outted” and are responding to social pressures from their colleagues to get power smart.

I asked Trevor why more energy managers aren’t focusing their attention on changing behaviour. “There is a technical focus and misperception that soft, fuzzy social programs aren’t worthy of their time.” The City of Coquitlam is effectively shattering the myth that behaviour change isn’t quantifiable, with consistently significant energy savings.

Another barrier is time. If you’re serious about reducing energy consumption in your business or municipality, you need to refocus your expertise on social marketing programs and away from data administration. Learn more about how Energy Advantage can save 10% of your time and give you the support you need to excel.

Conservation resources aren’t limited to BC municipal energy managers; a quick search online resulted tools and incentives for both public organizations and private companies in BC, Alberta and Ontario. What are you waiting for?

---

Randi is a social marketing and corporate sustainability planner with ten years of communications management experience.

Articles about energy and environmental matters happening around the world.

TransAlta Admits Power Price Manipulation
TransAlta Corp. faces paying the highest penalty in Alberta’s history after admitting to manipulating power prices last year but critics say the $370,000 fine is a pittance compared to an estimated $5.5 million consumers paid in inflated costs.

World Headed For Irreversible Climate Change In Five Years, IEA Warns
If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change.

Water Privatization: Villainy or Necessity?
There’s a growing push to put control of the world’s water supplies in private hands, and some campaigners say that trend is both risky and morally wrong. Still, groups such as Water.org are using private funding to scale up developing-world water-infrastructure projects and improve access for the world’s poor.

Environmental Regulations Create Jobs, Economists Say
If you look at the facts, job creation vs. economic regulations shouldn’t even be a debate. A briefing from Economics for Equity and Environment (E3) states, as its first point, that “Reduced oil imports would create jobs.” The money we saved on oil would be spent at home, on things like alternative energy development, to the tune of 900,000 new jobs for every $100 billion decrease in spending on oil. Pretty neat, right?

6 Ways to Fund Energy Efficiency Retrofits
Energy efficiency is one of the most popular first steps to take when addressing corporate energy footprints, for the simple reason that small investments can produce big results.

By: Luke Ferdinands

On October 17th-19th, 2011 more than 1500 delegates gathered for the annual BC Hydro Power Smart Forum in Vancouver, British Columbia. With a theme of Climate Change: Mitigation or Adaptation, experts from across Canada and beyond gathered to talk about the changes necessary to reduce energy consumption in their sectors.

Myself, along with other employees from Energy Advantage attended, sharing stories about our successes in energy management and showcasing the Company’s TEEM solution to delegates from all different sectors. With a focus on how our TEEM Application Portal can save energy managers time and money we soon had hundreds of conference delegates circulating with our iconic clock stickers proudly displayed.

Both the plenary sessions and the workshop programs were first rate learning opportunities. Conference sessions featured wide ranging topics, from Generating Business Results Through Conservation to Selling Conservation? How to Secure Buy-in from Senior Executives. If you missed the conference, you can view all the speaker’s presentations for yourself.

Ken Harder, energy manager with Retirement Concepts was the lucky winner of our draw prize – a gift card from our friends at JOEY RESTAURANTS and a one night stay at the Coast Coal Harbour Hotel from our customer Coast Hotels & Resorts. I’d like to highlight that this new location of Coast Hotels & Resorts has done a great job incorporating sustainability concepts into their guest’s experience:

The hotel is one of the city’s most environmentally friendly hotels, incorporating zero waste management for the entire hotel, using biodegradable cleaning supplies, hot water heated on demand and striving to keep atop of the latest trends in an effort to make guests comfortable and, at the same time, working towards a carbon footprint free hotel.

In conjunction with the BC Hydro Power Smart Forum, Energy Advantage celebrated its 15th anniversary with its customers, suppliers, friends and associates at the fabulous JOEY BENTALL ONE location in downtown Vancouver. More than 125 people came out for a great evening of networking and shared stories. Thanks to our partners at Energent and our great customers at the JOEY RESTAURANTS for helping host such a great evening.

---

Luke Ferdinands has over 10 years of experience in energy and sustainability management and is the Regional Director for Western Canada at Energy Advantage Inc..

By: Tiffany Richmond

This short e-book describes the key elements in implementing and managing an energy and environmental management program

---

Tiffany Richmond is an enthusiastic marketing professional and is responsible for online marketing strategies at Energy Advantage Inc.

Articles about energy and environmental matters happening around the world.

3 Common Pitfalls of Sustainability Initiatives
This article discusses the pitfalls that can undermine sustainability initiatives — and offers advice on how to avoid such snares.

Why Oil isn’t Behaving Like Other Commodities
Commodities have been getting the crunch treatment as the euro zone debt crisis spun out of control and talk of another recession spewed from the lips of assorted economists and doomsayers. Since the spring, prices have fallen roughly in line with the equity markets.

Organic Farming and the Rise of ‘Green Pesticides’
When people think of organic food, the assumption is that it’s healthier, tastier, better for the planet, and grown without the use of chemicals. The first three are generally true, but there’s a widespread misconception about chemical use on organic foods, namely that there is none.

The Australian Carbon Tax: Finally, Someone Gets it Right!
Hurrah, finally someone has managed to get a carbon tax to beat climate change right. Yes, it’s the Australians, with their new carbon tax that have got it right.

‘Living’ Buildings Could Inhale City Carbon Emissions
What if buildings had lungs that could absorb carbon emissions from the city and convert them into something useful? What if they had skin that could control their temperature without the need for radiators or air-conditioning? What if buildings could come “alive?”

By: Tiffany Richmond

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol launched two new standards that aim to give companies a comprehensive view of the life cycle impacts of their products and value chains. Developed by the World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the new standards, which is supplement to the existing Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, will provide a standardized method to inventory the emissions associated with individual products across their full life cycles and of corporate value chains, taking into account impacts both upstream and downstream of the company’s operations.

At the core of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s comprehensive accounting and reporting framework these standards will facilitate identifying greenhouse gas reduction opportunities, setting reduction targets, and tracking performance in value chains.

The New Standards:

Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard – this standard will allow companies to evaluate their greenhouse gas emissions across their entire value chain. Focusing on the downstream activities, it includes but not limited to activities like transportation and distribution, processing, use of sold products, end of life treatment, leased assets, etc. This will allow companies to identify which parts of its value chain it should target to reduce emissions.

Product Life Cycle Standard – this standard will allow companies to measure the greenhouse gas emissions of an individual product. This standard will cover activities such as materials, manufacturing, distribution and storage use and disposal of a product. This will allow companies to develop new low-carbon product lines.

The new standards complete the Greenhouse Gas Protocol suite of corporate accounting and reporting standards created for business. The tools establish a much-needed comprehensive, global, standardized framework for companies working to manage their value chain and product emissions and to mitigate their climate impacts.

The Corporate Value Chain and Product Life Cycle standards have been created through a broad, inclusive, multi-stakeholder process. Over a three year period:

• 2,300 participants were involved from 55 countries;
• 207 members formed technical working groups to draft the standards, and;
• 60 companies from various industries road tested the standards in 2010.

The new standards provide a methodology that can be used to account for and report emissions from companies of all sectors, globally.

---

Tiffany Richmond is an enthusiastic marketing professional and is responsible for online marketing strategies at Energy Advantage Inc.

By: Tiffany Richmond

In order to respond to their energy and environmental challenges, organizations need to clearly understand their energy costs, identify areas for improvement in operational practices, reduce energy costs and environmental impact, develop a baseline to compare against industry benchmarks or future performance, and finally, to track and report their performance. These key initiatives require expertise in various areas, but have one crucial element in common. If you guessed energy data then you are correct. The gathering of energy data is the first step in effective and environmentally-forward energy management. To begin, your organization will need a complete and up-to-date set of utility billing information. But what happens if you don’t have this information or if it is difficult to obtain? Where do you start?

The purpose of this article is to help identify ways that companies can collect their utility bill data and establish a comprehensive and accurate energy data set. The first step is to create a data foundation. In order for any company to make informed decisions about energy management, it must establish a data foundation. The age old saying you can’t manage what you don’t measure is as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago. Why is this important? Well, once the raw data is collected, data manipulation, analysis, trending and comparison can be completed.

Seems easy, right? Now all you have to do is find the data.

The Challenges
Every organization is different. Some companies track data but not all in one place, others rely on utilities or third parties, and some don’t track it at all. In every case, establishing a data foundation that is accurate, transparent and complete can prove quite difficult. Finding and collecting the right data can be an arduous task.

Where do you look for this data? It can be very time consuming poking around your organization or even contacting utilities for this information. The challenge is compounded when you have multiple locations, across provinces and/or states, and are searching for multiple data types, like natural gas, electricity and water data, that include data points like demand, consumption, and total costs.

Once you’ve obtained the data, the next challenge is to determine how to compile it. This is most pertinent if you are gathering the data from different places. It’s important to have one location, whether a file or a database, that will contain all the data, making it easier to manipulate for analysis.

Where to Find Your Data
So where do you start? There are four sources that can help you find and collect your energy data, outlined below:

• Directly Contact Utilities. All utilities keep a historical record of data. You can call the utility and ask them to send you historical information for your account. Each utility has its own policy, but some will send a soft copy of your utility bill, known as a historical print out, which is a screen shot from their system of some data points, including amount of bill, consumption, and demand. If you request a hard copy of the utility bill, you may be charged a fee per bill.
• Utility Online Databases. Some utility companies have online databases that allow users to log in and view account details and utility bill information. You can download the utility information online and compile this data in one document. Some utilities offer e-billing services, advising you by email when your bill is ready to be downloaded from their site. Examples of utilities that have online databases include Union Gas, Enmax, BC Hydro, Hydro One, Hydro Quebec. Other utilities partner with Canada Post; they post your bill on their site, and E-post sends you notification by email that your invoice is available.
• Company Accounts Payable Department. A good place to start is your company’s accounts payable department. They should have utility data for the current year.
• Third Party. You can hire a third party to help with the ‘heavy lifting.’ If you use a third party to help collect, track, and manage your utility data, then you are a step ahead of the game. Third parties have the expertise and knowledge to work with utilities and to ensure the right information is being collected. Most third parties will have online portals that give you access to your utility data 24/7.

The Types of Data to Collect
Now that you know where to collect your energy data, what type of data should you ask for? I’ve outlined some considerations below:

• Size of the Data. Are you looking for a full data set, spanning all of your company’s locations, or a sample set that includes only a few? If you are looking for a data sample, you need to consider some factors that may affect the overall completeness, including the location, the weather (winter vs. summer) and the type of business you are in. For example, if you operate a restaurant in Alberta, you would use more natural gas in January due to cold weather than a similar operation in California.
• Number of Years. Are you looking for 12 months or 24 months’ worth of data?
• Data Types. These can include electricity, natural gas, water, steam, propane, and furnace oil.
• Data Points. Having all the data points on a utility bill would be ideal, but in the event that this isn’t possible, the most important ones are consumption, demand, and total amount of bill. You should also inquire if the total amount of bill includes taxes.

Collecting energy data will always be challenging for organizations. I hope this article identified steps that may ease this process for your company.

---

Tiffany Richmond is an enthusiastic marketing guru and is responsible for online marketing strategies at Energy Advantage Inc.

By: Tiffany Richmond

You’re a real estate organization that recognizes that energy and environmental challenges can significantly impact your organization and have proactively engaged in developing a program or undergoing initiatives to reduce your company’s overall impact on the environment.

You’ve developed a policy, under gone energy audits, identified opportunities and have begun implementing measures to help achieve the targets and goals you’ve set forth.

This all sounds great, however if you missed to do this one simple activity, then your program will not deliver best results.

Engage tenants and key employees.

As much as this may sounds straight forward, it is often over looked when developing and implementing an energy program. Tenants and key employees are your building’s main operators; they switch lights off and on, they run water and control heating and cooling levels. Not only are their behaviours a major influencer but their insights on how the building operates can help shape the development of a program immensely.

Engaging tenants and key employees at the beginning of the planning process will only help build the momentum of the program and allow them to understand the WHAT, WHY and HOW.

In saying this, I’ve outlined three steps to engage tenants and key employees when developing an energy and environmental program.

The first is educating your tenants and key employees about the program. This includes the program’s plans, goals, objectives, and obtaining buy-in early in the planning process. Once your tenants and key employees understand what the program is and why you are doing it, it will be a lot easier to obtain buy-in.

The second step is to include your tenants and key employees in the strategy development of the program. This includes gathering their opinions and suggestions about building controls, operating procedures and capital improvement initiatives during the planning phase and incorporating these suggestions in the overall strategy document. Using an online surveying tool is a great way to gather information efficiently.

And lastly, share the success of the program with your tenants and key employees so they can see the value the program has delivered. This could include displaying the results of the program throughout the building, writing a newsletter about the success, hosting a lunch and learn to inform tenants and key employees or sending monthly email updates on the progress of the program.

Maintaining sustainable building practices is a multi-tiered effort. Tenants and staff are key players in making fundamental changes to reducing energy use, minimizing risk and improving environmental reputation and including them at the beginning of the program will help make the program a success.

---

Tiffany Richmond is an enthusiastic marketing guru and is responsible for online marketing strategies at Energy Advantage Inc.