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Going Green: How Sustainability Can Work for a Company

1. Introduction: What is Sustainability... Really? -- by David E. Kepler of The Dow Chemical Company

2. What “Going Green” Means for Us -- by Darren Hammell of Princeton Power Systems, Inc.

3. Going Green: What It Means for Our Industry and Organization -- by Raju Boligala of HerbThyme Farms, Inc.
4. Conclusion: Ideas to Build Upon & Action Points
5. About the Authors

What “Going Green” Means for Us

By Darren Hammell, CEO, Princeton Power Systems, Inc.

Our company works in the energy market, which plays a critical role in the environmental problems that we are facing as a country and global society. Our ideas about “going green” therefore address the energy supply, especially in the U.S. At Princeton Power Systems, we work on increasing the adoption of renewable energy sources, particularly solar and wind power, as a way to “green” the energy supply by producing less pollutants and causing less environmental damage. We focus on making these systems more efficient as well as improving their overall economics. By doing that, we can encourage much broader-scale adoption of renewable energy, which, for us, is the home run of going green. Ultimately, having more people and companies adopt renewable energies and solve interrelated problems that come from producing power using coal or other fossil fuels is very important to us.
Our definitions of sustainability and being green have not changed over time. However, the popular definitions of going green have changed, so we have had to adapt to keep up with the changing economics and other factors in the marketplace. When we started in 2001, we were looking at solar and wind power, but there were very few other companies that were working in those areas, at least on a broad scale. Today, there is a lot of hype out there about green power and sustainability, and we have seen a lot of buzzwords creep up. Some of them are ideas that are not new, but are being touted as new, and some of them are ideas that seem good but require a more technical understanding to get beyond the hype and really understand what they mean. These days, people and companies will describe something as being a “sustainable practice,” but in order for people to judge for themselves, we have to ensure that they are really educated about what these terms mean and understand the big picture of what we are trying to accomplish with sustainable practices.

Nurturing Environmentally Friendly Practices: Sustainability Efforts Where We Are Involved

We have installed two solar arrays at Princeton University for research and development purposes primarily to see how efficient we can make these systems (especially in the unique climate of New Jersey) by tweaking their designs and technologies. We also recently installed a combined wind and solar system in Bermuda, where they have unique issues with their electrical infrastructure. As an island, it is more difficult to create a redundant electrical grid that can be relied on if a big hurricane hits, for example. By installing small renewable energy systems on homes, we can provide people with backup power that can last for several days or weeks during a prolonged grid outage.
These projects are great examples of initiatives that we have recently taken to promote green power on a broader scale. Bermuda just went in recently, but we have already had positive feedback, and it is a good example of a system that provides even greater value than just emission-free electricity. Installing these systems more broadly would allow great savings on fuel costs, and provide independence from reliance on imported energy sources.
The installation at Princeton has been up for several months and we have already attained some good data that we are starting to share with people. We have been able to get Princeton involved and have made students and professors more aware of the issues and the technology out there. Princeton is doing world-class work on sustainability, primarily addressing the big-picture issues from a policy and technical point of view. We wanted to match that with a practical, hands-on example of the technologies that exist and are being used today to help address these problems.
We are also involved in educating people about environmentally friendly practices, and we encourage our employees to stay up to date on technology changes and to learn our customer applications so that they can look for ways to innovate. Through education, people develop a personal feel for what they need to do to be more sustainable. They also become able to “cut through the weeds” and differentiate between truly sustainable solutions and some of the buzzwords.

Best Practices for Creating a Sustainable and Environmentally Friendly Culture

Focusing on the basics like ensuring that our employees understand the details of what our company is doing to practice sustainability is important. We want to look at the whole picture and take everything into account as opposed to latching onto the “next big thing” and blindly following trends. Because the reality might not be quite what it looks like on the outside, our best practices are making sure our employees and the people that we work with understand the fundamentals. The fundamentals tend not to change quickly, and having a good grasp on them allows people to make intelligent decisions about all sorts of seemingly unrelated issues.

Ways Our Company Has Gone Green in the Past Two Years

The number-one way we have gone green is by putting up solar installations with some of our major customers. While these installations don’t directly affect our headquarters, they are in the same town and very visible. Because our industry is still in the state of development, public awareness is one of the most critical issues we can tackle. On a practical level, we have added fluorescent lighting in our headquarters, which has cut energy costs. We specify that a percentage of the energy we buy from our utility needs to come from wind power. Many utilities throughout the country have programs where you can actually submit a form that says you want 30 percent of your power to come from wind and other renewable sources. You usually end up paying a little bit more, but it encourages the development of wind farms, solar arrays, and other sustainable power plants.
We have also developed some energy-efficiency initiatives. We build some very high-power pieces of equipment, and in the testing of that equipment, lots of energy can be wasted. We have innovative ways to recycle the power back into the grid so that we are not wasting much energy.
It is important not to tell people what to do, but rather to expect them to make their own decisions based on a solid understanding of the fundamentals. I like to make sure that they learn about things first, and then give them the ability to provide feedback on everything. Once a person is educated about issues, he or she tends to make rational decisions.

We have weekly meetings about each of our projects. We gather the whole team together and make sure that everybody understands — even if they aren’t working on a project — the fundamentals and steps we are taking. They are encouraged to learn and offer ideas for projects that they normally would not be involved with — a process we encourage more than other places might. It gives people a chance to innovate and come up with ideas that we can later use.

Promoting Environmentally Friendly Practices

Within our company, my role in promoting green initiatives is primarily on the communications side. I share trends that I see happening in industries and disperse that information throughout the organization to ensure that people know what is going on. They can then do what they want with it. We also encourage everybody here to think about what is going on globally. It’s sometimes easy for engineers to come to the office and work on their projects without looking at the big picture or taking outside factors into account. Ultimately, one of the most important things I can do is encourage employees to look a little bit beyond their immediate task.
In asking people to look at the bigger picture, the risk you run is getting some back pressure, which is entirely understandable. People have jobs they need to do, and the reason they focus so specifically on those is because that is where the pressure from their managers or colleagues is coming from — and that is where their motivation lies. If I asked them take time to educate themselves about other issues, they would probably tell me that they do not have enough time. I have found that if you can get people excited about something, they tend to make the time for it and still accomplish everything they need to do.

Measure the ROI for Going Green

For us, measuring ROI with regard to our environmentally friendly initiatives is easy because it directly relates to our sales. If we can be innovative with our technology and come up with ways to be more sustainable and present that to our customers, we can generate sales and profits. In presenting ideas to our customers, we come up with a ROI that takes into account our customers’ investment and their unique payback situation. If we do this successfully, then that is a sale for us, and it goes straight to the bottom line. For our customers, it really depends on their geographical location, the economics of their power supply, and their ability to procure investment capital. New Jersey and California, in particular, offer great incentives to put up solar systems where the state government will pay for a large portion of the system. Based partially on those subsidies, we are able to put together a very attractive ROI for our customers in these areas.
It is difficult to measure how the ability to cultivate a culture that will excite and motivate people to work relates to our sustainability efforts, but it is clear that it plays a major role. These days, it is easy to get young people motivated about this topic, so recruiting is heavily affected by our company’s inherent focus on sustainability. While it is tough to measure acceptance rates and job turnover linked to sustain-ability efforts, companies that are proactive in these areas tend to have happier employees and an easier time recruiting good people.

Differences Between “Green,” “Renewable,” and “Alternative” Energy Sources

There is a lot of hype these days surrounding green, renewable, or alternative energy, and it is important to be able to distinguish between these terms. Something like clean coal could be considered an alternative energy source, but it is certainly not renewable since we will always need to keep digging for more. It is also difficult to call nuclear a green technology due to the waste issues involved. However, both coal and nuclear have the advantage in the U.S. of being abundant, which keeps our demand for imported energy lower and can make economic sense.
Solar and wind power, on the other hand, are both green and renewable. In our minds, these are clearly the best technologies for a sustainable energy solution with minimal environmental impacts. Of course there are many problems that need to be worked out, including lowering the cost and improving the integration of these sources with the existing electric infrastructure, but we see a future where these sources of energy are much more prevalent, and this will be our society’s primary path to a sustainable future.

3. Going Green: What It Means for Our Industry and Organization -- by Raju Boligala of HerbThyme Farms, Inc.
4. Conclusion: Ideas to build upon & Action Points
5. About the Authors

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