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February 2012 - Posts

Energy Savings on Lighting: Thinking Beyond Fancy Light Bulbs

Published: February 29 2012, 12:20 PM | 3 Comment(s)
by Cynthia Curtis

One of the most visible and enticing energy reduction targets that most organizations gravitate towards is lighting. Offices, factories, cafeterias, bathrooms, parking lots, garages, walkways….take a stroll around any city, office park or corporate campus and chances are you will see things lit up like a Christmas tree most hours of every day. With the growing focus on corporate sustainability and energy reduction, companies like Cree, Phillips, Digital Lumens, Solatube and many others have brought innovative low energy lighting solutions to market (LED, solar lighting, sensor-based lighting management solutions, etc.) to help business address this challenge. 

Before going down the path of wholesale replacement of our existing lighting infrastructure at CA Technologies, however, we decided to take a step back to see if we could save on lighting energy burn the old fashioned way – by using less of it. Some of the things we found and projects we executed on may surprise you and hopefully resonate with you.  They were easy to implement, generated a rapid (or very rapid) ROI, and made a significant impact in helping lower our energy consumption (kWh) and CO2 emissions.

First things first:  Perform an common-sense audit
Chances are you’ll identify a number of relatively easy ways to cut down on lighting energy burn without hardware replacement if you approach the project with some good-old-fashioned common sense. Some of the steps we took at CA Technologies at our Islandia, NY headquarters included:

•Identify areas where more light was being provided than was necessary for the work force to be comfortable and productive
•Identify areas where lighting was being provided, but that people did not require for significant portions of the day/night
•Identify areas where lighting was superfluous and not adding value to the employees or the enterprise
•Develop a list of potential projects and gather as much data about lighting-related energy burn related to those projects as we could

Once we had gone through this process, we were ready to execute on some “low-hanging fruit” projects that would provide a quick and powerful bang for the buck.This is what we did out of the gate.

Energy Savings on Lighting Project #1:  Delamping
It turns out that we were providing more light in many locations than our employees required or were asking for. Most of our office building is lit by the ubiquitous 3-tube, overhead fluorescent light fixture. We ran a small pilot project to see if there was any impact on employee productivity or perception of lighting quality if we removed one of the three tubes, and there wasn’t.

We are currently in the process of “delamping” the majority of the facility and are expecting close to a 1/3 reduction in energy utilization, cost and CO2 emissions related to those lighting fixtures. We will continue to gather data and employee feedback and if the results continue to be favorable, we are planning on deploying this solution at additional CA Technologies facilities.

Energy Savings on Lighting Project #2:  Garages and Parking Lots
Like many businesses, CA Technologies has employees working 24/7. Also like many companies, there are far fewer employees working overnight than during the day. That didn’t mean that the lighting situation in our substantial parking areas (parking lots and multiple story parking garages) reflected that reality. When we looked at the bills and the amount of unnecessary energy being used, that had to change.

Implementation was a snap. We created specially designated parking areas for all 2nd and 3rd shift employees, thereby eliminating the need to have the vast majority of our parking area lit during non-peak hours. We did need to procure some bollards and chains to allow internal facility staff to close the unutilized parking areas at night. The results have been significant. We are projecting a reduction from 358,978 kWh to 166,969 kWh used per year and with a savings of nearly $14,000 in year one. The response from employees has been very favorable and we will be deploying this solution at other CA Technologies locations going forward.

Energy Savings on Lighting Project #3:  Fitness Center Hours
The fitness center in Islandia was suffering from the same issue as the parking areas. The fitness facility was open, lit and powered up 24/7/365, yet only a tiny fraction of overall usage took place in the overnight hours and about 97% of usage took place during the week.

By delving into the numbers, it was decided to close the fitness center from 11pm to 5am on weekdays and 10pm to 5am on weekends. This allowed us to still serve 99.2% of all employees that used the facility and realize immediate and significant energy reductions. We project we will save over 170,000 kWh by closing these facilities down during times they were almost never used. It’s not even necessary to tell you about the ROI, it happened the day we implemented the new hours. For other CA Technology locations with fitness centers, this is a no brainer.

Nobody likes cool sustainability technology more than I do. I love to learn about new, cutting edge solutions that are making a difference. But when it comes to lighting, the first thing I would recommend is walk around your business for a few hours during daylight and then again when it’s dark out.  You’ll be surprised how many ways you’ll identify that will make a difference.

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By: Cynthia Curtis
As vice president and chief sustainability officer, Cynthia oversees the CA Technologies Office of Sustainability and is responsible for global sustainability strategy and initiatives for the company. Cynthia also meets with customers looking to use IT management solutions to further their sustainability...
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How to Eliminate Styrofoam Cups in the Enterprise

Published: February 21 2012, 04:07 PM | 1 Comment(s)
by Cynthia Curtis

I don’t know about you, but styrofoam cups make me a little crazy.  Everytime I use one I think, “Wow, that’s going to sit in a landfill for a looooong time.” So when I started as Chief Sustainability Officer at CA Technologies and realized how many styrofoam cups we were still using in cafeterias and break rooms, getting rid of them went right onto the list of projects to consider. 

It turned out I wasn’t alone. When we distributed an employee survey to judge reaction to potential sustainability projects, eliminating styrofoam cups was a very close #2 in North America (where the vast majority of styrofoam was being used) with some enthusiastic internal proponents. Seems like an easy project, right? Not so fast. Although we worked hard to plan effectively and the project was ultimately a success, we hit some bumps in the road along the way. Here’s how we did it, some (painful) lessons learned and, ultimately, some pretty impressive results.

Strategy
Our goal was to eliminate use of styrofoam cups entirely in North America, the region with the greatest use. The initial discussion among stakeholders and employees were so positive that we decided to expand the scope and use this as an opportunity to eliminate all disposable cups.  A tall (or potentially Venti) order. To do this we planned to:

●Give every employee their own CA Technologies branded mug
●Provide mugs and additional reuseable mugs and tumblers in the cafeterias and disposable cups in the pantries for use by visitors
●Put each employee in charge of washing and maintaining their own cup
●Effectively communicate - in conjunction with marketing - to employees through multiple channels to announce the initiative
●Work closely with facility management to implement
●Use metrics and employee feedback to gauge success and define areas for improvement or modification

Launch
Making sure that employees were prepared for this shift required careful planning. We also got lucky. CA Technologies was going through a re-branding exercise and we worked with marketing to coordinate our efforts. The CA Technologies coffee mug actually became an important part of the internal re-branding effort and each cup came with one of our four core principles printed on it. 

We also worked to include the news in departmental newsletters, did blog posts, put signage in place and distributed details with the mugs as they were distributed. You can’t over communicate on this. Everyone loves their morning cup of coffee and you are bound to ruffle some feathers when you change their daily rituals.

Logistics
In order to deploy the reusable cup strategy, and eliminate styrofoam from all locations, we worked hand-in-hand with facility management as they are responsible for stocking pantries and cafeteria management at our locations.  With their help we made sure there were extra mugs and tumblers available at all locations, clear signage was put in place describing the effort and employees responsibilities, and that all disposable cups were taken out of circulation.

Lessons Learned
●Don’t eliminate all “to-go” cups at once:  It turns out that styrofoam and “to-go” are not the same thing. When we decided to eliminate all disposable cups, we bit off a little more than we could chew. There were situations where visitors could not find an available mug for their coffee, and employees heading out for meetings or to the airport had no way to grab a cup of coffee or water for the road. I heard of one guest who was using a soup bowl for coffee. Ouch!

We have since reintroduced a limited number of disposable cups at each location. They are made from recycled materials and are compostable, and since the team has become used to using mugs we are using substantially fewer disposable cups than previously.

●Overestimate cleaning supply needs: With thousands of employees suddenly responsible for washing dishes in the sink every day, we found that ensuring the sink area was properly stocked was a challenge. Be sure to order more sponges and dish soap and put a process in place for refreshing them consistently. Nobody likes cleaning their coffee cup with a nasty old sponge.

●Listen for employee feedback:  As with any sustainability initiative, it is important to pay attention to feedback from the team. While some criticism will always be expected, legitimate concerns will turn into themes, and those should be acted upon.

Results
Almost 36 Sears Towers.

That’s how tall the 1.236 Million styrofoam cups we have not used in the first 10 months of this initiative would reach if we stacked them one on top of another. We’ve also eliminated over 2070kg of waste that would otherwise go to a landfill.  Finally, we’ve eliminated that nagging voice in the back of your head reminding you that the styrofoam cup you just threw out is going to be around for another million years.

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By: Cynthia Curtis
As vice president and chief sustainability officer, Cynthia oversees the CA Technologies Office of Sustainability and is responsible for global sustainability strategy and initiatives for the company. Cynthia also meets with customers looking to use IT management solutions to further their sustainability...
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Corporate Sustainability News Roundup

Published: February 16 2012, 04:57 PM | no comments
by Cynthia Curtis

In my role as CSO, in addition to my day-to-day responsibilities, I read.....a lot.  I am always on the lookout for interesting stories that affect corporate sustainability. Whether they cover trends in the economy, how other businesses are going green, best practices, new government legislation, or technological innovation, I have to admit I am a bit of a sustainability junky. Every month I stumble across insights that I believe are important to the future of green business, and I’m planning on sharing some of those with you going forward. Here are a few from the last month that caught my eye.

Sustainability seen as a competitive necessity 

A recent report from MIT Sloan Management Review and The Boston Consulting Group claims that sustainability has broken through into the mainstream of corporate strategy, with most survey respondents saying that sustainability is on their companies’ management agendas to stay. And that is more than just lip service. As Forbes recently reported:

The study, Sustainability Nears a Tipping Point, found that two-thirds of companies see sustainability as a competitive necessity in today’s marketplace, up from 55 percent a year ago. In addition, 31 percent of companies say sustainability is boosting their profits and 70 percent report that sustainability has a permanent place on their management agenda. Two-thirds of the respondents also said that managers are paying more attention to sustainability, and investing more in sustainability, than they were a year ago.

The data, which include responses from 2,874 executives in 113 countries, “suggests that the sustainability movement is nearing a tipping point, the point at which a substantial portion of companies are not only seeing the need for sustainable business practices, but are also deriving financial benefits from these acts,” the report concludes.

Those are a couple of powerful paragraphs. Competitive necessity, boosting profits, management buy in, financial benefits!  The one that catches my eye the most is that businesses are “investing more in sustainability than they were a year ago.” This is a theme I have seen recurring in many news sources and is especially heartening, given the difficult economic times. 

Sustainability Investments by Corporations Not Slowing Down

So why are investments in sustainability continuing to gain momentum in the face of economic uncertainty? Is it concern for the environment?  Pressure from customers and supply chain partners including sustainability in their RFP’s?  Employee enthusiasm? All of those are important and certainly having an effect.  However, TriplePundit makes a strong case for the straightforward return-on-investment potential of energy efficiency projects. They claim it is just a more productive way to invest dollars in today’s market.

The Return On Investment (ROI) on US 10 year bonds is 2 percent and the 2011 Standard and Poor 500 stock index closed the year with zero appreciation. Energy efficiency investments now offer 10-50 percent ROIs making them the superior investment available today in the United States.

In response to electricity price inflation, 52 percent of US companies report targeting a 25 percent reduction of their electricity consumption by 2014.

If they succeed, that would represent a cut in electricity consumption by US corporations of 13% in the next two years. That is a lot of money dropping to the bottom line. And it is not just US corporations that are upping their investments in sustainability. As GreenBiz reports:

Sustainability spending by major firms in the United Kingdom is expected to grow 12 percent this year, 20 times faster than the country's GDP, according to a forecast by Verdantix.

The independent analyst firm also forecast that green spending will grow steadily, averaging 16 percent a year through at least 2015.

"Despite the sluggish economy, spending by large firms in the UK on energy, environment and sustainability initiatives is set to increase by 12 percent in 2012,"  said Verdantix analyst Susan Clarke, the author of the report, in a prepared statement. "By contrast the UK economy is only expected to grow by a paltry 0.6 percent."

Investors Act on Climate Change

While it is heartening to see so many businesses looking at sustainability as an opportunity and in investment in their future, it has also been fascinating to watch the institutional investment community assess the risks and opportunities provided by climate change.

I was recently in New York with 450 global investors controlling tens of trillions of dollars from four continents when they gathered in January at the United Nations for the Investor Summit on Climate Risk & Energy Solutions. As Ceres, the non-profit group that has organized the international summit, reports:

Climate change creates enormous economic risks, but investors know it also represents one of the great financial opportunities of our time. And they are not waiting for governments to start moving on their own toward action.

“Climate change is certain to be a major factor in investments for the foreseeable future—perhaps the biggest investment factor of our lifetimes,” said Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Asset Management. He announced that although the pace of climate policy momentum slowed in some countries, the trend nevertheless remained strongly positive with 45 new, carbon-reducing policies adopted globally in 2011 compared with only four negative policy actions.

Investors signed onto an action plan calling for greater private investment in low-carbon technologies and tougher scrutiny of climate risks across their portfolios. Investors also announced new guidelines on how companies should be boosting their attention to climate risks and opportunities – and promised much closer scrutiny of companies that ignore them.

With investors representing this much market clout, you can be sure that their voices will be heard in the months and years to come.  To hear from them first hand, watch this short video interviewing several of the attendees at the conference.

 

So to sum up:  The large majority of businesses now see sustainability as a competitive necessity, they are continuing to invest in it even in an economic down cycle, and the world’s largest investors see climate change as an ever more important investment indicator.  These are some powerful trends.  What are you seeing?  Are there trends that you are following?  Let me know and let’s keep the conversation going.
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By: Cynthia Curtis
As vice president and chief sustainability officer, Cynthia oversees the CA Technologies Office of Sustainability and is responsible for global sustainability strategy and initiatives for the company. Cynthia also meets with customers looking to use IT management solutions to further their sustainability...
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Recycling Down Under

Published: February 13 2012, 03:13 PM | 1 Comment(s)
by Cynthia Curtis

When the Green Team at our Sydney, Australia office surveyed the local employees about potential  sustainability initiatives, more effective recycling was high on the list of requests. But with the request came a complaint. Why, several employees wondered, was the nighttime cleaning crew taking the recycled paper we have carefully segmented into blue recycling trash bins under our desks, and dumping it into the same bag with the regular rubbish? 

“Employees were asking us, if it’s all getting mixed together, is it even worth recycling? They were understandably upset.” says John Carey, the head of the Sydney Green Team. “We honestly didn’t know the answer to that question, so we decided to find out.” The first thing the team did was identify all of the key stakeholders and get them involved. “We reached out to our facilities management partner, Jones Lang LaSalle, Green Team members, the owner of our cleaning company, as well as concerned employees and arranged a field trip to the facility that handles all the waste from our office. We received a terrific tour of the facility from executives at the plant and had the opportunity to see the – very dirty – but effective operation in action.”

How is Single Stream Recycling Waste Separated?
After the waste arrived on site, it was processed through layer after layer of stations designed to separate and compartmentalize the waste into various reusable streams. “It was amazing to watch”, says Carey, “whether they were mechanical systems, magnets, air-jets, gravity-based, or even employees separating things by hand, the waste was evolved from a huge, co-mingled mass into neatly organized piles of cardboard, aluminum, steel, glass, plastic, paper and even plastic bags.” 

“At the end of the tour, it was clear that between 85% and 90% of all waste is recovered and re-used. As employees, we were thrilled to bring this news back to the office,” said Carey. An additional bonus from the trip was that it became apparent that by co-mingling the clean recycled paper (in those blue bins) with general waste, the paper became much less valuable. The owner of the cleaning company saw this firsthand and put new processes into place to keep all recycled paper separate upon nightly collection to avoid contamination. This streamlines the effort at the recycling plant and puts a significant amount of high-quality post-consumer waste paper back into circulation.

Since the tour, the Green Team has also instituted some additional recycling initiatives at the office, including putting recycling drop-off locations throughout the office to collect:

 •Books
 •Batteries
 •Cellphones
 •CDs and DVDs (with secure destruction options)
 •Even wine corks and wine bottle caps

With a clear success story to tell in terms of how much waste is being effectively reused, the focus now has shifted to increasing the amount of material recycled. Keep up the good work down under.

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By: Cynthia Curtis
As vice president and chief sustainability officer, Cynthia oversees the CA Technologies Office of Sustainability and is responsible for global sustainability strategy and initiatives for the company. Cynthia also meets with customers looking to use IT management solutions to further their sustainability...
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One Office's Approach to Reducing Food Waste

Published: February 10 2012, 04:23 PM | 1 Comment(s)
by Cynthia Curtis

As I mentioned in an earlier post, while I was first getting my feet under me as the Chief Sustainability Officer of CA Technologies, one of the things I did was try to get a handle on the difference green projects that were already happening in the enterprise. Different team members in offices all around the globe were executing on sustainability initiatives that were important to them. One of my favorite stories came out of our Hyderabad, India office.

Our Hyderabad office is already starting with a big leg up in sustainability to begin with. Our new building is a LEED Gold rated facility, which means it meets extremely rigorous green standards in terms of energy and water efficiency, landscape and site management, recycling, transportation and a variety of other categories (stay tuned here for more details about LEED).  

The building has a buffet-style employee cafeteria that serves hundreds of employees and guests every day and, sticking with the green theme, has a built in composting plant where all food waste is sent to at the end of the day. 

Sounds perfectly sustainable, right? Not so fast, says Sridhar Chakravarthi, the Director of Operations in Bangalore.“We never had access to information about food waste prior to the new composting plant getting up and running. So when our facility management partner, Jones Lang LaSalle, started providing us with data about the amount of food going to composting every day, and we realized it was between 80 and 100 kg, we knew something had to change.” The question for the team was how to get employees to change their habits without simply telling people to waste less food. What they came up with was simple and brilliant.

“We decided to appeal to the employee’s better nature, by providing them with data and letting them make their own decisions”, said Chakravarthi. “We put a sign up at the beginning of the buffet line every day providing two pieces of information: 1. how much food was thrown away yesterday, say 96.5 kg, and 2. how many people that wasted food could have helped, say 410.  In India, this second piece of information is near and dear to people’s hearts.” 

The team was not expecting the results to be significant, but to their surprise, the message worked.  Within three weeks there was a reduction of close to 80% in the amount of food sent to composting each day. By the end of the first month they were averaging 18.2 kg per day and it has stayed at that level for months. According to Sridhar, “Because the cafeteria is buffet-style, there may have been a tendency for employees to take more food than they were truly going to eat. By making people aware of the unnecessary waste, people made a change on their own. They are not eating less, but they are certainly taking less and it seems to have become ingrained in their habits.”

All of this results in significant materials reduction (60 to 80kg of food a day is quite a bit), which results in less food being ordered, delivered, prepared and served.  Employee engagement, lower costs, happier vendors, less waste and composting…what’s not to like about this story?  Thanks Sridhar! 

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By: Cynthia Curtis
As vice president and chief sustainability officer, Cynthia oversees the CA Technologies Office of Sustainability and is responsible for global sustainability strategy and initiatives for the company. Cynthia also meets with customers looking to use IT management solutions to further their sustainability...
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