Energy Unlimited: Four Steps to 100% Renewable Energy
By Barbara Maria Albert and Jon Dee
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About this ebook
HAVE YOU been tasked with developing a plan to transition your organisation to 100% renewable energy but need more information to make this project a success?
DO YOU want to reduce or eliminate fossil fuels in your organisation but need to build a business case to get executives on board?
ARE YOU an eco-entrep
Barbara Maria Albert
Barbara Albert is the founder of Sustainable Business Consulting and co-founder of 100% Renewables. She is a strategic adviser, author, and speaker, and works with businesses and governments on carbon reduction, climate change and energy management. She teaches several sustainability courses and is the go-to person for organisations interested in transitioning to 100% renewable energy or zero net emissions. Barbara is a preferred supplier for the New South Wales and Australian Federal Governments and holds a master's degree in commerce from the University for Business Administration and Economics, in Vienna, Austria. She also studied at New York University's Stern School of Business, is certified in GRI sustainability reporting, and holds four sustainability and training-related tertiary certificates. She is known for helping her clients achieve extraordinary sustainability outcomes that win them leading industry awards. Barbara is married and lives in Sydney with her husband and two children.
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Energy Unlimited - Barbara Maria Albert
Step 1 – Lead
i7If you think big, and set ambitious goals, then your achievement of them will be big as well. Goals channel your organisation’s efforts and behaviour in a particular direction. Once you have a clear vision, you begin to narrow your attention and efforts to activities related to the goal, and start moving towards it.
The new standard for climate change leadership is 100% renewable energy, but is this an appropriate goal for your organisation? What does it mean to commit to 100% renewable energy? Must you be 100% renewable right away? Or can this be a long-term, staged target?
How is it possible to achieve the target, and what energy technologies get you there?
Step 1 – Lead, explores current sustainability market drivers and what makes organisations adopt such an ambitious target.
You set the scope of what is covered under your 100% goal and select an appropriate target year. Here, we examine renewable energy technologies and energy efficiency options for your electricity, heating and transport needs, as well as the opportunities battery storage and other emerging trends provide.
‘Establishing a 100 per cent renewable energy goal helps us better serve society by reducing environmental impact. The pursuit of renewable energy benefits our customers and communities through cleaner air while strengthening our business through lower and more stable energy costs.’
– Mary Barra, Chairman and CEO, GM
Chapter 1
Committing to 100% renewable energy
‘We are convinced this is good for business, this is not about greenwashing. This is about locking in prices for us in the long term. Increasingly, renewable energy is the lowest cost option. Our founders are convinced climate change is a real, immediate threat, so we have to do our part.’
Marc Oman, EU energy lead at Google
Moving to 100% renewable energy has many benefits to society: cleaner air and water, healthier communities, higher energy independence, local investment and employment opportunities, greater shared local ownership of the energy system, and a sensible option to help counter the problem of climate change.
However, not only will our society benefit from transitioning to 100% renewable energy but also your organisation. The advantages of 100% renewable energy for your business are locked in long-term energy costs, more control over your energy supply, greater energy security, a steady and increasingly lucrative return on investment, a strong reputation in the market, a more engaged workforce, and the reassurance that your organisation is doing its bit, contributing to a sustainable future.
When I analysed why organisations commit to 100% renewable energy, five major drivers became apparent, as shown below:
i8Figure 2: The five major drivers for committing to 100% renewable energy
Let’s investigate these in more detail and see which ones resonate with you. They may even help you to build a business case as to precisely why your organisation should move down this path.
1. Meeting sustainability goals
Boards of directors and senior management teams are increasingly focused on corporate social responsibility performance, which is reflected in organisational sustainability-related targets and reporting.
The top performing organisations have set public sustainability goals for more than 20 years, but it is only since the 2000s that setting goals has become standard practice. According to the Ceres ‘Power Forward’ report,²⁸ 59% of the Fortune 100 and nearly two-thirds of the Global 100 have set carbon emissions reduction commitments, renewable energy commitments or both.
On 1 January 2016, the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development officially came into force.²⁹ As I mentioned in the introduction, these SDGs are a set of global goals adopted by the 193 UN member states, of which goal seven, ‘Affordable and clean energy’,³⁰ and goal 13, ‘Climate action’,³¹ directly relate to renewable energy.
While it is governments that sign up to the SDGs, businesses are needed to help achieve those goals, which is what the UN Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative,³² wants to achieve. According to research from PricewaterhouseCoopers,³³ 70% of businesses plan to embed the SDGs within five years.
Implementing energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives helps achieve your sustainability goals. Previously, the implementation of renewable projects was expensive, and came with a long payback period, which resulted in them being parked for future implementation. The time is now right to revisit these opportunities.
With the recent price falls, switching to renewable energy is a cost-effective way to meet climate change mitigation targets. Renewables enable your organisation to set more stringent carbon reduction goals, with 100% renewable energy being the most ambitious one.
Committing to 100% is the new standard in climate change leadership
Many organisations have greenhouse gas reduction targets in place and, over the years, yours likely has worked on implementing ‘low-hanging fruit’ opportunities, such as increasing energy efficiency. With all your successes, you might be wondering what should be next on your agenda and how much further you can reduce your carbon footprint.
Recently, the expectations in the marketplace for transparency, disclosure, and measuring progress towards goals have climbed. Standards for targets have also consistently risen, making it harder for organisations to stand out unless they commit to exceptionally difficult-to-reach ones. The new standard in climate change leadership is to commit to 100% renewable energy.
Local government sustainability goals
Committing to 100% renewable energy is the new standard for businesses, but increasingly it is also becoming the new standard for cities and towns. Sometimes this is led by the executive management within these organisations; in other instances, it is driven by communities and community leaders.
Cities have the opportunity to participate in a number of programs, which has resulted in many of them setting sustainability goals. Current programs for cities include the ‘CDP for Cities’, the ‘Compact of Mayors’, ‘C40’, and the ‘Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance’.
C40 is a network of the world’s megacities committed to mitigating climate change. The CDP for Cities works with more than 300 cities to address their carbon emissions. The Compact of Mayors is the world’s largest coalition of city leaders addressing climate change by pledging to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, tracking their progress, and preparing for the impacts of climate change. The Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance is a collaboration of international cities committed to achieving aggressive long-term carbon reduction goals.
While the above-mentioned programs are typically adopted by larger cities, most smaller local governments have participated in the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) program. The CCP program was sponsored by the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), which wanted to drive the development of greenhouse gas action strategies for corporate as well as community greenhouse gas emissions.
Local governments participating in the CCP program started to actively monitor, manage, and report on their carbon emissions on the basis that one cannot manage what one does not measure. They were also looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint and thus their energy consumption.
In my work with local governments, I have found that the Councils that commit to a 100% goal have been early participants in this program. They see making the ambitious commitment as a logical extension of the original program and use this goal to help meet their carbon reduction commitments.
However, it is not just programs like the CCP that drive the sustainability agenda of local governments. Whilst boards of directors influence businesses, the direction of municipalities is affected by their elected councils which, in turn, are influenced by their residents.
Lismore City Council, in Australia, for example, undertook an extensive consultation of their residents in 2012 and 2013 to determine where it should head in the medium and long terms. Council was not actively looking for an environmental mandate, but the results of the community engagement were astounding: the residents wanted council to be ‘a model of