Solar Installation - how long does it take?

I am often asked how long it took to build our solar installation in El Segundo.

The installation has approaching 3000 modules, a combination of a raised tracking system over the parking lot and fixed panels on the roof. It will produce just short of a 1 M KW hours of clean electricity per year.

From initial concept through to 'power on' it took us just about two years.

The idea was raised in February 07 by a colleague in our commercial contracting team who saw the window of opportunity with the CA incentive rebates. Much though I am disappointed I didn’t think of it (!) I am thrilled that employees throughout the organization are participating in environmental initiatives. The same colleague championed the project from start to finish.

With initial internal approval, we released the RFP in May and a vendor and solution was decided upon in July. A couple of design alterations required renegotiation and extended the timeline.

We held a big public launch event with HRH Prince Andrew and BT Chairman Sir Michael Rake in February 08 and work commenced in earnest in the summer of 08. Much of the work was below ground or on the roof, so although progress was being made, little was visible at the site until towards the end of the calendar year. Finally, in a short period of only a few weeks at the end of the 08 calendar year, the panels went up on the raised lot over only a couple of weeks. January and February 09 saw some testing, approval and sign off process and here we are now with a working system.

I am sure there are a couple of places where progress could have been quicker. But with four parties involved, financing partner, integrator, ourselves and our landlord, there are inevitably a number of things that have to be socialized and agreement reached and I am pretty pleased with the time line.

We have just launched an employee residential solar program for our US employees. I plan to provide some insights into how that is going in a future post.

The Impact of Earth Day

It is Earth Day today. A day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the environment. It feels like only last month it was Earth Hour - and that’s because it was. In fact, Earth Hour took place less than a month ago on March 28th.

Is it worth having all these special events or do they just allow us to ease our conscience for a day and then go back to our normal behavior for the rest of the year?

I think these events are very valuable. There is a lot to be said for concentrating action into a short time span and the motivational impact of knowing you are participating with millions of others. I can vouch for the fact that after every one of these special events I am approached by additional volunteers who want to get involved and who stay involved in new activities.

Of course, we don’t see people maintaining 100% of the activity they put in on Earth Day for the rest of the year. But if participants increment their ongoing activities by just 5%, the day will have made a great contribution.

Uptime Symposium and Miami University of Ohio Event

I have just returned from speaking engagements at two contrasting conferences. Together they demonstrate the breadth to which sustainability is becoming embedded in business practice.

First, I attended the Uptime Institute Symposium in New York with about 1,500 people for the week long event. The symposium focused on energy efficiency in data centers with a very tech savvy audience. I spoke on a panel with Eric Olsen of BSR on the broader sustainability landscape for corporations. In the late afternoon, I attended a valuable keynote by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar at Google, who described his very practical top ten lessons learned.

I then joined a more intimate conference, entitled Managing Risk to Achieve Strategy in the Post-Financial Crisis World. There were about 150 attendees at the Miami University of Ohio. Dr Brian Ballou and Dr. Dan Heitger, co-directors of the Center for Business Excellence, organized the conference and were excellent hosts and facilitators. The participants were a mixture of business folks, and MBA and accountancy students.

What was I doing there you might ask? I asked the same when I was approached to be a speaker. The morning presentations from risk management professionals at Marathon Oil, Estee Lauder, Convergys and Cintas opened my eyes to the power of the link between sustainability and enterprise risk management. I cannot hope to do justice to the synergy between the two in a blog post, but would encourage you to take a look at a paper on the topic by Dr Ballou and Dr. Heitger.

Bruce Johnstone, Managing Director and Senior Strategist at Fidelity Investments, presented a truly superb keynote on the economic crisis.

I spoke on the Four Dimensions of Sustainability and provided CSR practitioners a perspective that I hope was helpful to the participants.

As with Net Impact, the enthusiasm of the students energized me. Many from the school welcomed me, including my table hosts Scott and Marissa, who promised to comment on my blog. And for the record, a simple hello won’t cut it. I am looking for an insightful critique of something I said!

A lot to be said for the networking potential at big conferences, but somehow I find that smaller events provide even more opportunity for real engagement with others.

Corporate Responsibility Officers Association - Board of Governors

The newly formed Board of Governors of the Corporate Responsibility Officers Association was officially announced yesterday. I was pleased to be invited to be a member of the Board. The CRO Association will cover a number of topics. Among them, will be the CRO's list of 100 Best Corporate Citizens that is especially well known.

I have a particular interest in the role of the corporate social responsibility officer and in developing the professional standing of that role. I know that between myself and colleagues in other companies the role varies from compliance to advisory to public relations; from environment to poverty to health and from developing profitable business opportunity to charitable giving. I made reference to this in my January 09 post 'Issue Advertising and the Role of the Sustainability Officer'. I am hoping that one of the things the CROA will be able to contribute to will be increasing the structure and recognition of the role and in so doing, will enhance the professional standing of practitioners.

Sustainability lessons from Japan

Improvement is often best informed by changing your perspective and looking at yourself through a different lens.

Sen. Chuck Grassley's recent remarks that executives of AIG should consider following what he described as the Japanese model of shamed corporate executives: apology or suicide, were outrageous. But his reference to Japanese executives did get me thinking. In the US we have a perception that Japanese business executives subordinate their personal interests in favor of the interests of the business. And I think we have a level of admiration for that. I suspect US businesses would regain a lot of confidence amongst stakeholders if we could move the dial closer to the Japanese model in this respect.

And what about the workforce? Underlying most unionization debates is a basic lack of confidence in the USA of whether unions have the best interests of the business at heart. Rather we have a perception that they put the individual workers interests ahead of the sustainability of the business. I hear repeatedly that our resistance to ‘freedom to associate’ guidelines is a point of difference in many global discussions on ethical labor standards. In contrast, I recall a recent discussion as I was developing a sustainability framework with CSR peers from Japan. One of the dimensions was approach to unionization. The contrast between the approach of the American participants and the Japanese participants to unions was striking (pun intended). My Japanese peers described a mutually trusting relationship.

I am also intrigued by the harmonious approach of Japanese corporations. Take Canon’s corporate philosophy to ‘Achieve corporate growth and development while contributing to the prosperity of the world and the happiness of humankind’. I see it reflected in an integrated approach to sustainability across Canon’s website.

Or Omron, a Japanese manufacturer of electronics components and solutions based on sensing technologies. Omron’s mission is ‘No matter what challenges the future brings, we will continually develop new solutions to help build a safe and sustainable society where people enjoy peace of mind.’ I see this reflected absolutely in discussions I have had with Omron’s CSR representatives.

I suspect that if we are willing to listen carefully, we in the US have much to learn from the Japanese in the sustainability space.

A Fresher Washing and Drying “Sustainability” Cycle

A number of you have pointed out an error in one of the illustrative examples in my white paper The Four Dimensions of Sustainability. Perhaps I focused too much on green washing and whitewashing, but didn’t pay enough attention to clothes washing.

I quote clothing as an example of a product that does not have a 'product in-life' carbon footprint. However, I was wrong. It has been pointed out to me that when you wash and dry your clothes you consume energy and generate emissions. According to the Citizens Action Coalition Education Fund in Indiana, "appliances such as your refrigerator, clothes washer and dryer, dishwasher and electronics (TV, computer, audio and video systems, etc.) account for about 20% of your household’s annual energy bill.” Further, "by using a clothesline instead of your dryer, you can save 1,016 pounds of CO2 annually.”

Washing and drying clothes can add up to 5% of the carbon footprint of an average household

Moreover, as far back as April 2007, Marks and Spencer over in the UK realized this and started to encourage their customers to wash clothes at a lower temperature. "From today, Marks & Spencer will encourage its customers to help reduce their impact on the environment by lowering their washing temperature to 30°C, saving around 40% energy per wash. Independent tests also show that around 70% of M&S clothes(ii) can be effectively washed at 30°C, without any significant reduction in performance of everyday washes. Over the coming months, Marks & Spencer will re-label almost three quarters of its clothing ranges to include the words ‘Think Climate – Wash at 30°C’ on the garment care labels.”

Therefore, the next draft of my paper will not include this example!

Should business invest in renewables while the rules are shifting?

I wrote earlier on my blog a post Signs of An Inflexion Approaching highlighting changes in carbon accounting rules for businesses on both sides of the Atlantic.

These can be a tough times for businesses that have been first movers. Rules change, and what seemed like the right decision at the time suddenly looks less so going into the future. A carbon neutral position can become invalidated or seemingly regress by either a company or a government entity, such as the recent example of the US House of Representatives abandoning plans to make their offices carbon neutral.

But that is not how we should be judging. It is the actions of the businesses and governments that stepped into the fray before things were clear that have been the catalysts to crystallize the landscape and help facilitate decisions on rules and frameworks.

The investments of these first mover organizations will not have been wasted. These companies and other organizations will be able to inform policy and rulemaking and will be ahead of their competitors both in adapting quickly, based on knowledge and experience, to the new rules.

And enlightened government will ensure that rule and their timescales for introduction do not penalize first movers. I see this in the timescales for the new EPA rules for Green Power Partners that allow companies to adjust before the rules take effect.

Some businesses will have to sacrifice a little pride and revisit carbon reductions in the light of a new framework - but this is the worst case.

The ground is going to continue shifting for some time before rules become clear. But businesses should not wait. Renewables decisions should of course include scenario planning as would any other business decisions, but they should go ahead where they make commercial sense. And government should recognize the valuable contribution of first movers and the damage it would do to other potential actors if the whole market is paralyzed into inaction until all the rules are clear.

This post was originally featured in Greenbiz.com