Sustainability Reporting for Renewable Energy Companies

This is a rare CSR Reporting Blog guest post. I am usually a bit picky about guest posts. Very picky, in fact.  But in this case, I have made an exception, because my guest is not really a guest. He's more like family, in a business sense, that is. Joshua Basofin is the newest member of Beyond Business, the little sustainability consulting firm that makes a BIG impact.


Joshua Basofin has worked in the environmental field for over ten years as an attorney, sustainability expert and writer. Most recently he was the California Representative for Defenders of Wildlife. In that capacity, he partnered with businesses and government agencies to reduce impacts on wildlife and natural resources. He was also the Freshwater Program Manager for Environment Now. Joshua holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Environmental Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his law degree, with honors, from Chicago-Kent College of Law. While in law school, he earned a certificate from the Program in Environmental and Energy Law and served as President of the Environmental Law Society.

Joshua will be expanding our portfolio of environmental sustainability services to corporations around the world, including our current clients, with an offering which includes environmental strategy development; creation of policies, performance and procedures; environmental mapping and auditing; environmental risk assessment; carbon reduction strategies and carbon footprinting; environmental training; Green Office and Green Team support;  environmental data-collection for Sustainability Reporting and research and benchmarking in different environmental disciplines and for Sustainability Reporting.  Joshua has particular expertise in the renewable energy sector and will be serving clients in this fast-growing industry.

Here is Joshua's inaugural post:

Green from the Ground Up: Sustainability Reporting for Renewable Energy Companies

Should companies whose services make the environment cleaner publish Sustainability Reports?

The answer is a resounding YES! In addition to assisting users of energy to manage their carbon footprint through the supply of clean energy products and infrastructures, renewable energy companies, in order to assure their own sustainability, must manage their own impacts, reduce their own footprint and demonstrate social and environmental accountability. A few renewable energy companies have risen to that challenge.

Carbon emissions are at unprecedented levels and the scientific community has long reached consensus that climate change will affect our planet in drastic ways. Renewable energy companies have responded by developing solar and wind facilities. These clean energy sources help meet increasing demand and will soon replace coal, oil and natural gas generators.

Solar companies in particular are increasingly ramping up production on photovoltaic and concentrated solar power systems. Governments eager to assist this development have provided subsidies and expanded renewable energy transmission grids. With a little innovation and strategic planning, more communities around the world will receive their energy from renewable sources. But the industry faces sustainability challenges just like any other. And Sustainability Reporting is vital to its success.

For example, solar companies have submitted over 200 applications to build facilities in California’s Mojave Desert. On the one hand, the Mojave is a vast sun-drenched area, stretching across 29 million acres. It has the potential to accommodate much of this solar traffic. On the other hand, it is an intact and fragile ecosystem, providing habitat for rare plants and animals. The Mojave’s water reserves are located in scarce underground aquifers. And it is riddled with Native American and other cultural artifacts. The solar companies that carved out sites (some stretching more than 6,000 acres) in the Mojave must address these resource issues.

Additionally, solar companies face challenges in greening their supply chains. Tremendous amounts of energy, water and raw materials are used in manufacturing and building solar infrastructure. During operation, maintenance crews must frequently wash panels or mirrors to ensure maximum effectiveness. That means a lot of water. And workers use large machinery that disturbs air quality and erodes soil.

One solar company that has embraced the task of creating a sustainability strategy is SunPower Corporation. Its California Valley Solar Ranch is currently being constructed on nearly 2,000 acres of land in California’s Carrizo Plain. SunPower is an industry leader and commands much of the U.S. market share. Thus, it is no surprise that SunPower was the first of its peers to publish a first Sustainability Report for the fiscal year 2010/2011.

  

The report, entitled “Sustainability by Design”, is comprehensive. It lays out concrete goals in the areas of products, operations, people and communities. Under the products category, SunPower puts forward an innovative LEED-certified “poly to panel” concept to improve transparency in the supply chain and ensure that all suppliers of raw materials adhere to the same sustainability principles. This will be encompassed in an industry-wide Code of Conduct  under development in collaboration with the Solar Energy Industries Association,  covering the following categories:

• Health and safety
• Labor
• Ethics
• Environment
• Management systems

Additionally, SunPower’s “Return, Reuse, Recycle” program guarantees that solar panels will not go to a landfill after their life cycle (25 years or more) has ended. This is a great development in curbing the company’s waste stream.

SunPower tackles resource issues head on. The report affirms a commitment to minimizing the company’s footprint, including ecological impacts like those in the Mojave Desert mentioned earlier. The company halved water use at five key facilities between 2007 and 2010 and targets to reduce this even further.  SunPower also commits to responsibly treating discharges resulting from chemical use.

Suntech, another solar energy leader and the world's largest producer of solar panels, with 20,000 employees, also published a first Sustainability Report recently. It deserves an honorary mention. Of particular interest is Suntech’s whopping 87% reduction in water use from 2002 to 2010 as well as a 90% electricity consumption reduction per MW of cell production in SunTech's largest facility in China between 2002 and 2010.

Future clean energy - photo reproduced from Suntech's Sustainability Report

Both SunPower and Suntech used the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Framework as a baseline for information disclosure -  SunPower  references the GRI, while Suntech includes a partial GRI Index without declaring an Application Level (10 indicators are reported on).

As renewable energy markets grow (according to SunPower, worldwide solar capacity reached 23 GW in 2009, the equivalent capacity of more than 40 coal-fired power plants),  regulators and the public will scrutinize renewable energy generators more and more. The industry provides a great service by replacing oil and coal dinosaurs and offsetting carbon emissions. But that is not a “get out of jail free card” on other important areas of sustainability. When a solar company’s “cradle to grave” operation has minimal impacts, it will truly be green.

Kudos to SunPower and Suntech for starting what hopefully will be more than an single ray of sunshine in the rapidly expanding solar market.

***

Of course, Joshua might have made a cone award to Sunpower and Suntech, but he's not (yet) been converted to ice cream (which is not (yet) a condition of hiring at Beyond Business).

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, winning (CRRA'12) Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices  Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen   on Twitter or via my business website www.b-yond.biz  (Beyond Business Ltd, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)

En route to the Taj

In honor of my forthcoming trip to Mumbai in India this week for the World HRD Congress, where I will be presenting on one of my favorite subjects, CSR for HR, and attending the World CSR Day ceremonies as a panelist on the subject of CSR- TheWay Forward, chaired by Dr Baskhar Chatterjee, the Director General and CEO of the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs, I thought I would take a look at the Sustainability Report of the Taj Hotels, as I will be staying at the Taj Lands End. (I have fond memories of staying at the Taj Mahal Palace several years ago, so I have high expectations!- the Taj Mahal, as you may recall, made headlines in 2008 as the site of a brutal terrorist attack in which 175 people lost their lives, and the staff was subsequently commended for outstanding service beyond the call of duty, protecting guests and remaining loyal to their employer. Terror at the Taj has even become an HBS case study. Following the terror attack, the India Hotels Company set up the Taj Public Service Welfare Trust to assist the families affected).

The Taj Hotel Group recently released its eighth Sustainability Report, entitled "Beyond the Numbers". Beyond The Numbers is a way of expressing, for the Indian Hotels Company, owner of the Taj Hotel and other hotel brands, that doing business with CSR at the core is what defines the company as an organization and shapes its journey in responsible tourism by influencing every life that it touches.  The Indian Hotels Company is the largest hotel chain in South Asia, with a portfolio of 107 hotels and 12,795 rooms across 12 countries on 5 continents, selling almost 3 million room nights per year. The Company is owned by the Tata Group, one of the highly respected names in Indian industry.

The report is GRI Application Level A+, 88 pages long, with a clever design and a personal, inviting style. Each section begins with an anecdote or almost poetic story, such as how the turtle retreats to its shell for safety, as an introduction to the safety section, or the way workers spent hours fuelling a furnace or 12 hours bending over a conveyor in former times, as the backdrop to the section on how India Hotels is a great workplace, dating back to 1912 when the Tata Group introduced 8 hour shifts, the precursor to a productive work-life balance approach for employees.

This is a thorough report covering governance, compliance and risk management, with a discussion of key risks. The report does not contain a Materiality Matrix, but it does cover stakeholder engagement and offers a list of priority issues:
• Optimizing revenues
• Focusing on customer delight
• Ensuring safety
• Developing human capital
• Ensuring environmental excellence
• Creating sustainable livelihoods

The Indian Hotels Company places a strong focus on environmental protection and records energy, GHG emissions and water consumption per hotel room per night. It is interesting to note the gap between the luxury segment (with 202 kh CO2e emissions per night) and the lower-cost hotel options (18 kg CO2e emissions at the lower end). 23 hotels are ISO14001 certified. The group maintains a "War on Waste" with 16% of hotel organic waste being composted, and much of other types of waste are recycled. 3% of the Company's energy needs are met through renewable sources and 25% of water consumption is recycled water, with several hotels achieving zero water discharge.

Oddly, one thing I might have expected to read in this report does not gain air time: the whole question of human rights, child labor, human trafficking, prostitution and child sex exploitation. Just recently I caught a headline "Sex racket out of star hotels in Tamil Nadu busted", referring to arrests of pimps using local hotels to conduct their dealings. An internet report states that there are "estimated to be over 900,000 sex workers in India. 30% are believed to be children and that the number of children involved in prostitution is increasing at an estimated 8 to10% per annum. About 15% of the prostitutes in Mumbai, Delhi, Madras, Calcutta, Hyderabad and Bangalore are children and nearly half of them became commercial sex workers when they were minors. Conservative estimates state that around 300 000 children in India are suffering commercial sexual abuse."

One thing a responsible tourism player in India could do would be to become a signatory of The Code.org and establish a specific ethical code and policy regarding commercial exploitation of children, institute other measures to prevent such issues and report fully about the procedures in place. While the hotel and tourism industry may not be responsible for these issues, they certainly can be part of a solution which raises awareness, educates and ensures there is no degree of complicity in any of their activities.

In the meantime, I look forward to returning to India. It's been a while since I tasted Indian ice-cream :)


 

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices  Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my business website www.b-yond.biz/en  (BeyondBusiness, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)