Case Study: From Neutral to Positive

Human-induced global warming and climate change have become the defining challenges of the modern era, possibly the most significant hazards our ecosystem has endured since the immense meteor that may have precipitated the last great ice age. Concern has finally translated into action to slow and counteract the effects of greenhouse gases accumulating in our atmosphere. Governments, businesses, organizations and citizens are starting to take this challenge seriously, but not without controversy around carbon offsets and carbon neutrality about what is meaningful, proper, and verifiable. This, however, is a success story about how one company - Jacques Whitford - managed to create a process of carbon neutrality that addressed these concerns.

Jacques Whitford is a Canadian-based and internationally recognized leader in environmental and earth sciences, engineering and planning with 1,600 employees in 46 Canadian, American and international offices. In 2006, the company made a significant commitment to sustainability, making the principles of sustainability the cornerstone of its mission. In a nutshell, Jacques Whitford focuses on doing business in a way that protects, enhances, and ultimately restores the environmental, social, and economic fabric of our world.

One of the first challenges set by the leadership team to "walk the talk" of sustainability was to become carbon neutral.

The company's executives and consultants wanted to offer sustainability services, and the company concluded that going carbon neutral would demonstrate to its employees and clients that it was committed to an environmentally sustainable future by taking action in a meaningful and practical way. Although Jacques Whitford understood that carbon offsets weren't sufficient responses to the situation at hand, they did recognize that it was an important part of a longer-term strategy for energy efficiency and climate change responsibility.

To move forward, the company had to figure out how to properly calculate its carbon footprint. Using JW expertise in atmospheric sciences, energy, and climate change, JW was uniquely positioned to address its carbon reduction strategy internally by to developing a strategy based on their evaluation and interpretation of previously developed protocols, methods and approaches.

The first step was to examine the company's operations and scrutinize all aspects of the business. Through this process, they were able to identify three main sources of greenhouse gas emissions: buildings, vehicles, and flights. Once these main sources were identified, the company created a toolkit that allowed them to first calculate the carbon footprints of three representative offices, and following refinement, the other 43 offices and labs.

With the ultimate goal of carbon neutrality, Jacques Whitford first focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions through conservation efficiencies and sustainable business innovation. They started with the easy stuff: switching to compact fluorescent lighting, turning off lights when they weren't needed, encouraging carpooling and cycling to work, and coming up with aggressive long-term emissions targets measured on a monthly basis. Being a company of scientists and engineers, the quantification of results became very important to the employees of Jacques Whitford, and allowed them to establish a baseline of its carbon emissions to ensure ongoing reduction targets and conservation initiatives were being met.

Each office started including its specific, comparable, and quantifiable targets into their core business plans and key performance indicators. The company has since expanded this same approach to a myriad of environmental factors including waste, water, and material use.

A major part of this process was creating a culture of conservation at all levels of the company to match the technical work being done by the sustainability teams. It launched a comprehensive, companywide education and engagement program on sustainable practices with monthly themes using a variety of tools and techniques ( including webinars, discussions, plug-and-play presentations, and games), and at the same time, they established policies and guidance on a number of sustainability parameters, including energy efficiency and transportation policies. Jacques Whitford's practices and policies continue to evolve as more information about carbon emissions and environmental concerns becomes available.

As part of its carbon neutral strategy, Jacques Whitford, after developing and applying defensible selection criteria to a number of options, purchased carbon offsets from U.S.-based Carbonfund.org, which invests in carbon-reducing projects such as renewable energy, alternative energy, and energy efficiency in Canada and the United States. In response to criticism suggesting carbon offsets merely enable companies to be wasteful and buy their green status, Jacques Whitford has pointed out that purchasing carbon offsets is something companies can do to encourage new research and development of renewable energy sources and give economic incentive to achieve results. However, Jacques Whitford also cautions that carbon offset purchases must be done in tandem with a strategy to improve operations, such as the one they follow, Jacques Whitford's strategy worked, and on June 1, 2007, Jacques Whitford became officially carbon neutral. However, the story doesn't end here. JW is currently in the process of evaluating progress and establishing current footprint - and offset-options in order to renew their status as a carbon neutral company on June 1, 2008. This time, the focus is on direct investment and partnership with innovative clients.

Taking on something new is a challenge in any organization. The key is to be clear about what you're doing and why, to discuss and communicate objectives throughout the company, and then to go about the transition in a transparent, step-by-step fashion, learning and improving as you go. Executives at Jacques Whitford were surprised and delighted by the positive response to the project. Being carbon neutral and committing to substantial emission reductions has been popular with its clients and staff, and has become a noticeable factor in its ability to recruit and retain the best people in its industry. Being carbon neutral has also set the company apart from its competitors and set a standard that it is proud to pioneer.

Sustainability services are driven by market demand, and consumers are increasingly demanding environmentally responsible companies. Sustainable strategies present enormous opportunities to improve operations, and redefine and reposition businesses to prosper in the coming carbon-constrained era. It's time to get serious, get organized, and become carbon reduction leaders.

*Footnotes