Lara Abrams Communications

Sustainable Brands ‘08 - Conversations with Companies

Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

Wrapping up the blog I started last week, I’m dribbling in this week snapshots from conversations I had during briefings while at Sustainable Brands ‘08…more below…

AMD – Green(er) Technology & The Greening of Data Centers
You might not know that the EPA recently honored AMD for its efforts to protect the Earth’s climate and stratospheric ozone layer. Or that the company is the Founding Member of the The Green Grid Consortium, an organization officially created in February of 2007 with 11 board members. With the support of its members, a whopping 185 member companies to date already globally, The Green Grid is creating and sharing best practices in data center power management, and developing the standards needed to advance energy efficiency in data centers and business computing environments. Last week, The Green Grid announced an MOU with the Country of Japan through METI for collaborative work around green grid standards and metrics. And last month, the company moved 3000 employees into a brand new campus that is looking like it’s on track to be LEED Gold certified, in Austin Tex.

AMD’s Larry Vertal would like to see the company penetrate more performance-per-watt products, so it’s no surprise to hear him say the company will be moving more into mobile. They’ve taken advantage of the fact that they’ve bought ATI, which has given them the option to dig into CPU and chip set design.

What I didn’t realize is that AMD, as Larry Vertal told me, started to produce a global climate protection plan back in 2001, well before most companies were doing anything of the sort. Vertal credits the company’s original founder, Gerry Sanders, and Hector Ruiz, its current Chairman, with always having a “sense of doing the right thing”, and this carrying over even today in the company’s culture. And you can tell that there’s pride in that fact: Vertal is proud of the company, and the fact that he’s been able to make such a significant contribution to it in his own right.

If you’re not familiar with the company’s technology, it can sound a bit technical, but what I was interested in was where the green aspect in the design was. As Vertal explained to me, the silicon insulator technology the company uses in its products, when you consider the company really focuses on the performance-to-watt ratio of its products, is actually quite environmentally friendly. It took making a change in substrates as well as a fundamental change in product architecture (“Direct Connect”) to help AMD make this happen, but now they can offer products that allow their clients to be far more energy efficient, while using DDR2 memory vs. fully buffered rams, which competitors, Vertal noted, are still using, in products for both the desktop and mobile processing. AMD’s latest Opteron processors and Phenon Quad Core product carries on a single chip four ‘brains’ - instead of the usual one…thereby using the same power and thermal envelope to process loads as would be processed using a single core processor, but with 4x the efficiency of the company’s previous product iteration. This capability is allowing data centers to cut down on both server footprint and server noise, as well as power costs. How the process works is as follows: Using the AMD Opteron processor, with AMD’s PowerNow! Technology, a company is able to reduce the heat in its data center. It reduces the heat in its data center because these processers require less energy to run, though they’re running at higher process speeds (technically “higher computing throughput”), so you get cooler servers, which in turn will minimize data center noise (and lower electrical load), since server fans can then be run at reduced speed, and because the cooling system has less heat to deal with, a company will also experience less noise (and lower power demands from data center air conditioners) from server air conditioners. The company’s Cool Core Technology allows a dual power chip to operate and control different power and frequency levels it’s dealing with vs. the power itself, and that change itself lowers the frequency, and therefore energy required, of a single core. AMD Quad Core Opteron processors have been out for about a year, and in full production for about six months.

By focusing on maximizing the performance-per-watt capabilities of processors used in servers in data centers, AMD has been able to create a solution that both increases performance while decreasing the amount of power, and energy, required, for companies to run data centers. Pretty cool. For more information, see this link and this link.

DOMANI - On Sustainability
I had a chance to talk to Will Sarni, DOMANI’s Founder & Chief Executive Officer, at SB ‘08. Sarni is a member of the Environmental Compliance Committee of the Chicago Climate Exchange, active with the Conference Board, authors a green business colum for Venture Magazine and provides editorial comments for the Sustainable Life Media Climate Change Management Weekly newsletter. Over a glass of water on a hot day, Sarni is mellow, down-to-earth, and humble. I ask him who’s on his wish list of clients. The oil and gas sector needs an opportunity-focused climate strategy, says Sarni. There are also a few private equity firms out there who could use a hand in developing their sustainability investment strategies, too, he says. Already among the firm’s client list? Cherokee Fund, http://www.cherokeefund.com/, a fascinating company, as well as Alcoa, BASF, The Coca-Cola Company, Grosvenor, Wrigley and several confidential Fortune 500 clients. Denver-based DOMANI, in case you didn’t know, is a wholly owned subsidiary of ENR 200 environmental consulting firm Roux Associates [http://www.rouxinc.com/clients.asp], a company not without it’s own impressive list of clients.

DOMANI’s own track record speaks to things like educating senior executives in Moscow on the Equator Principles on how environmental and social performance would potentially impact their business operations, and providing advisory and technical solutions to companies such as Cisco Systems. It’s obvious that DOMANI is one of the sustainability strategy companies that companies are listening to these days. For a company started only 10 years ago, focused initially on climate change and educating executives about the fact that climate change was going to be a risk (or opportunity) to their businesses, the company is today, not surprisingly, working on much more: sustainable development and planning (brownfield redevelopment and sustainable remediation, for example) as well as resource reduction (energy, water, materials), and green strategies, products and markets opportunities for its clients.

DOMANI’s approach identifies and creates opportunities to decrease costs and risk in resource consumption, land, air and water impacts, as well as waste management. Areas of opportunity for clients include climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, energy and resource efficiency, and sustainable building & development, so the company today provides a range of services to address client needs, from straight forward advisory services, education and training, to strategy development around compliance/environmental management systems & their implementation, sustainability brand planning and communications, corporate social responsibility programs & reporting, to sustainable building development & design.

Under the company’s Climate Change & Greenhouse Gas practice area, for example, DOMANI provides clients with a carbon footprint evaluation, carves out for those who need it retail offset strategies as well as emissions mitigation planning, including GHG inventory management support. So let’s say I’m a client; that means I can request support for supply chain GHG Data Management as well as how to green my supply chain. I can also get an energy audit, in addition to an entire range of services to help me plan and design a sustainable development.

You should know that Sarni’s busy working on a book, entitled “Greening Brownfields: Remediation through Sustainable Development”. I’d expect to see it on a few companies’ bookshelves once published. Make sure you look for it. And if you’d like to talk to Will about your company’s sustainability strategy, email him at wsarni@domani.com.

Umbria On the BlogSphere
Umbria’s a really interesting little company. Unlike custom-developed research polls, Umbria’s technology monitors the spontaneous, unsolicited input that one finds in the blogsphere. Started in 2004, Umbria’s been mining data from the blogsphere – collecting, cleansing and analyzing the results, clustering consumer segments around topics of conversation, using algorithms to help predict age range, sex, and sentiment of bloggers. Why is this interesting? Why wouldn’t it be? Uncovering drivers of intent, sentiment or purchase behavior is of course of interest to big companies with products to sell to consumers. Today Umbria’s processing millions of blogs per week, and it doesn’t collect and keep blogger identities. Consider the numbers (from Umbria): a quarter of adults blog frequently or occasionally today. 60% read blogs in the U.S., while 75% do worldwide. 34% of bloggers opine on products. And half of bloggers are older than 30. Sustainability continues to be a very hot topic amongst bloggers, (75%) with more than 70% talking about energy and fuel, an increasing number talking about autos (42%) in one form or another, and food and beverage showing a 10 point + jump, comparing ‘07 conversations to ‘08 conversations 37%). Transportation and travel comes about 24% of conversations between bloggers. And, not surprisingly, news travels: 64% of bloggers are talking about news topics, while conversation in general has shifted from bloggers simply debating the issue of climate change and global warming to debating the solutions for change. 63% of authors are female, with 33% of those being Gen-Y. For more information contact Umbria at www.umbrialistens.com.

Steelcase - Sustainability From Within
Steelcase’s story is one that demonstrates well the kind of process ‘best in class’ performers in the trenches of sustainability are undertaking. Angela Nahikian, Director of Global Environmental Sustainability at Steelcase, calls the process they’ve been through “the house of seven doors”, and rightly so. The learning process doesn’t stop. For a firm that deals primarily with the F500, Nahikian has seen RFPs requesting information on sustainability go from being 30% of the pile a couple of years ago to 80 and 90% of the pile today. And Nahikian is quick to point out how much more sophisticated the RFPs are that are coming through the door. “We’ve gone from questions like ‘do you have an environmental statement’? to progressive companies asking us ‘can you tell us if you have any of these chemicals in your products? Nahikian’s been known to tell her team that “our job is to work ourselves out of a job – because the minute no one calls with a question or needs clarification, we’ve done our job.”

Steelcase embraces a Designing for Environment program composed of three legs - Materials Chemistry, Lifecycle Assessment, and Recycling & Reuse otherwise known as [MC + LCA + R(squared)]. Ultimately these platforms have allowed Steelcase to Cradle to Cradle (C2C) certify their products. Materials Chemistry is the foundation of the work. To date Steelcase has gone back and assessed over 400 categories of materials in North America. The company is now working on assessing its international portfolio of materials, exiting any materials of concern, like PVC, internationally, as it has done with its domestic portfolio. To give you a feel of what that kind of undertaking has been like, Nahikian told me that about 30 suppliers and about 1500 parts are involved just to get rid of PVC, which will be phased out of the company’s product lines by 2012. Something as simple as eliminating an edgeband can involve changing 12 different profiles offered on various worksurface shapes and finishes. Every one had to be color matched, and laminates and edges had to be redone and coordinated concurrently – and that’s just to take the PVC out of each part of the wood product. The entire process includes research, testing, and then proof of concept — performance testing to make sure that material changes could run at large scale in the manufacturing process. Steelcase started with PVC because it is not allowed in C2C certifications. How is Steelcase getting it out? “It’s really an opportunistic and strategic approach we’re using – what doesn’t need to be fit and finished is where we started first,” says Nahikian. So, for example, PVC will be replaced by propylene. The company’s C2C process is accepted as a LEED innovation point currently, and Steelcase has also gone so far as to develop a C2C tool that is being piloted with the University of Michigan as an upfront tool for developers and designers who are inhouse, designing and developing products.

Perhaps it’s my age, but I was completely surprised to learn that already 15 years ago Steelcase had developed a compost-able DesignTex fabric. An eco-intelligent fabric 15 years ago? That probably wasn’t news you recall making headlines back then, but today that’s just the sort of thing that would make headlines.

Interesting products from the company? ‘Answer’ and ‘Think’. ‘Answer’ is a Steelcase system that received the first C2C certification and ‘Think’ is a chair in Steelcase’s seating line that is comprised of 99% recycled content). ‘Think’ is Steelcase’s largest selling seating product globally. ‘Answer’ is the company’s largest selling furniture systems product globally. [http://www.steelcase.com/na/steelcase_answer_workstation_r_News.aspx?f=21532] the first C2C certified product, aside from their compostable DesignTex fabric.

Nahikian’s advice to companies seeking to improve their sustainable performance? “Think big.” Makes sense. That’s what Steelcase is surely doing with what it’s undertaken.

The Designers Accord - “The Kyoto Treaty of Design”
I didn’t have a chance to talk to Valerie Casey about this, but John Creson told me during our interview that Designers Accord wants to change consumption habits, and so I sat in on Valerie’s talk at SB ‘08 to learn more. Perhaps singularly indicative of how quickly the mainstream design market has moved green, this “Kyoto Treaty of Design”, the Designers Accord, has seen its membership skyrocket, globally. From an idea conceived by Valerie Casey (who heads the global sustainability practice for IDEO) the Designers Accord today has seen its membership go from few to many, from 3500 designers from various disciplines around the world joining in by January ‘08, to seeing 100,000 designers from 100 countries around the world, representing all design disciplines, joining as members by June ‘08. 3500 to 100,000. That is something. Btw - 70% of the 100,000 designers are from OUTside the U.S. The guidelines set by the Accord, and adopted by these 100,000 members are as follows: http://www.designersaccord.org/da_guidelines.html. If you don’t know about it – it’s worth reading up on and familiarizing yourself. The Design Accord commits corporations, educational institutions and designers to - instead of project by project commitments to sustainability – to general principles of sustainability. Members must publicly declare participation in the Designers Accord; initiate a dialogue about environmental impact and sustainable alternatives with each and every client; rework client contracts to favor environmentally responsible design and work processes; provide strategic and material alternatives for sustainable design; undertake a program to educate their teams about sustainability and sustainable design; measure the carbon/greenhouse gas footprint of your firm (includes operations and client engagements), and pledge to reduce their footprint annually; and advance the understanding of environmental issues from a design perspective by contributing actively to the communal knowledge base for sustainable design.

Addis Creson
While at SB ‘08, I spoke with Addis Creson Partner John Creson, and it’s obvious from the conversation that this father of 3 has found a company and business partner who lets him be himself. I’m not surprised a guy like John has ended up at an independently owned firm. He strikes me as the kind of guy who can’t do work that doesn’t matter or make a significant difference in some fundamental way, who’s learned enough about himself, and knows enough about his own value set to understand that for him, it’s about creating positive change, positive experiences, and doing work that has a positive outcome.
He’s interested in figuring out how to meeting people’s economical, psychological, and emotions needs in more sustainable ways.

Steven Addis and John Creson are today leading the helm at company that is today quietly helping to position companies like Shai Agassi’s Project Better Place, which will offer, among other things, for road trips, a network of stations from which you can swap your car battery – which you’ll pay for on a subscription basis – very much like your cell phone plan. Additional info here. Other companies they’ve worked with: Sungevity, Johnson & Johnson, Elevance, ThinkProducts, Kashi, RAB Motors Smart Car, Intel, Nano-Tex, Turn and Capital One.

Obviously, you have to be pretty good to have the opportunity to work on an idea as big as Agassi’s. And one look at Addis Creson’s client list and you understand that they have access to a deep pool of talent.

My suggestion? When it comes to talking to a firm about integrated brand strategy and design approach, it’s worth having a conversation with these guys. Especially if you want to do something really game-changing.

Constellation Energy
For Constellation Energy, to be sure, SB ‘08 wasn’t their typical audience, but that’s where I met with Constellation’s VP, Renewable Products, Carrie Cullen Hitt. Constellation Energy is a large conglomerate of power and gas and other associated services and commodities, and owns about 8300 megawatts of assets; serves 75 of the Fortune 100 companies, including many national retail brands and REITs, as well as hospitals, cities and towns. And Constellation came to SB ‘08 to take the pulse of the market because it’s seen a spike in companies asking for renewable energy packages. “We went from having 10 accounts to having 100,” Cullen Hitt told me over coffee while at the conference.

But more to the point, my conversation with Cullen Hitt pointed to something interesting: Constellation is seeing buyer roles shift, where packaging energy services for clients has become more complex in the sales cycle. It’s not just the energy procurement folks Constellation speaks to now on the client/prospect side, but also often CSR/sustainability folks. That would generally be fine, but, as Cullen Hitt notes, “These two departments, or individuals – they’re just not talking, and there’s no combined policy between the two groups internally, either, we’re finding,” she says. “The various ways in which you can today bundle energy services for customers are just plain ‘clunky’, and not very consumer-friendly at all,” Cullen Hitt told me. “[So] we’re trying to bring the combined package to consumers — energy management (for example, using demand response), and renewable energy, while also serving a clients’ total electricity and gas requirements.” That’s quite interesting insight from a company that’s not a pure-play energy company, but one that carves an existence out of managing risk and portfolios.

Constellation is a FORTUNE 125 company with 2007 revenues of $21 billion, and it’s the nation’s largest wholesale power seller. The company manages fuels and energy services on behalf of various energy-intensive industries and utilities, and owns a diversified fleet of 78 generating units located throughout the United States. The company delivers electricity and natural gas through the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE), its regulated utility in Central Maryland.

Hmm. So Constellation’s seeing a noticeable shift in who the ‘buyer’ they’re now dealing with is within sales cycles. Interesting indeed.

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