At-a-Glance:

Apple, Microsoft and Amazon are just a few of the many companies that have gone public with major climate commitments in the last month alone. Meanwhile, companies are recognizing that sustainability can build resilience, brand loyalty and their bottom line — all at the same time. But while making a commitment is good, it’s only the start of what can be a complex, challenging journey. Creating a plan to achieve that goal is where the hard work comes in. To learn more, read “Six Mistakes Companies Make When Building A Sustainability Plan.” 

Key Takeaways:

  1. Setting goals before properly assessing your impact: The first step to building a sustainability plan is to take stock of the environmental impacts of your company’s operations up and down its entire supply chain.
  2. Failing to identify the right do-ers and deciders: The information you gain from your assessments is required to define meaningful impact-reduction goals, but you still need to identify key stakeholders to make your plan work.
  3. Not effectively measuring progress towards your goals: Successful sustainability plan goals should be ambitious, scientific, aligned with core business goals and measurable.
  4. Using sustainability only for PR: If your organization hasn’t historically had a sound environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategy, then developing your sustainability plan presents an opportunity to change company values to enhance both your brand and your bottom line.
  5. Failing to test strategies before applying them at scale: To help minimize risk, you should generally test your sustainability plan with pilots before implementing projects at scale.
  6. Not asking for help: If you need help when you’re working on your plan, don’t hesitate to recruit additional expertise.

Path to 100% Perspective:

The Pathway to 100% develops the most cost-effective and realistic scenarios for nations, states and communities to reach 100% renewable generation. This blueprint  promotes policies that enable rapid reductions in fossil fuel use and rapid increases in renewable generation in the electricity sector and steers electricity-sector decisions about investments, infrastructure and technology toward decisions that quickly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pave the way for a 100% renewable energy future.

 

Photo by Mariana Proença on Unsplash