[Watch On-Demand] The Rise of ESG and the Evolving Role of EHS

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[Watch On-Demand] The Rise of ESG and the Evolving Role of EHS

The term ESG is everywhere. While the concepts of operational sustainability, social responsibility, and ethical corporate practices aren’t new, recent attention by the investment community and corporate leaders suggest that Environmental, Social, and Governance frameworks are solidifying and that ESG is more than the next corporate buzzword.

This 50-minute webinar, led by EHS and ESG experts from Dakota Software and its partner Scope5, explores ESG metrics and how EHS professionals can take a leading role in their organization’s ESG programs. 

This on-demand webinar includes:

  • ESG definitions and drivers
  • Benefits of effective ESG performance
  • Overlap in ESG and EHS KPIs
  • Materiality and data management strategies
  • Leveraging technology for improved analytics and reporting

Watch On-Demand

Scope 5 & Dakota Software Partnership Transforms ESG Management

Scope 5 is excited to announce our partnership with Dakota Software. Read the press release below.

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New partnership brings together EHS and Sustainability software leaders to transform ESG management through proactive compliance management and real-time data collection, analysis, and reporting.

CLEVELAND, OH – Dakota Software, a leading provider of Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) management software, today announced the new partnership with Sustainability software provider, Scope 5™.

Scope 5 is an industry leading provider of Sustainability management software and consulting solutions. Their cloud-based application is used by global organizations seeking to better understand their sustainability footprint and drive responsible business decisions. The new Dakota Metrics application, powered by Scope 5’s technology, facilitates collecting and tracking fine-grain Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) data. Built-in analytics make it easy to identify opportunities for improvement and support forecasting impacts of projects and setting targets. Reporting features make it easy to respond to stakeholder ESG queries, generate reports in compliance with CDP, GRI, DJSI, and others, and to communicate progress via various dashboards.

“By tracking emissions and sustainability data and revealing opportunities for better resource use, any business can drive valuable action. Organizations of all sizes are already using Scope 5 sustainability data management solutions to get powerful answers that save time and money in ways that are good for the planet and good for the bottom line.” Says Yoram Bernet, Co-Founder and CEO of Scope 5. “With the rapidly increasing adoption of ESG metrics alongside EHS metrics as key operational corporate KPIs, we recognized in Dakota a synergistic partner with valuable experience in the EHS space.”

ProActivity® by Dakota Software helps organizations ensure EHS compliance by centralizing their regulatory requirement & related compliance tasks and documentation. It features a constantly updated regulatory library that guides users in the creation of facility-specific compliance calendars and ensures that audit protocols are always up to date. Its patented Parametric Filtering™ uses interactive dashboards to help clients proactively identify areas of operational risks.

“Our clients, who tend to be large, global, industrial companies with complex regulatory requirements, value our compliance management products because they create a foundation for their ESG programs.” says Reg Shiverick, President of Dakota Software. “We have partnered with Scope 5 to expand our overall capabilities and support our clients in reporting on their ESG programs and improving their operational efficiencies.”

The Dakota Software and Scope 5 partnership further builds upon Dakota Software’s vision of becoming vital to the day-to-day activities of the global EHS community helping to make the world a cleaner, safer place. Both organizations have been recognized by independent Analyst firm Verdantix; Scope 5 in the Smart Innovators: Sustainability Management Software publication and Dakota Software in the Green Quadrant: EHS Software study on most prominent vendors.

About Scope 5

Scope 5 is an award winning provider of software and consulting solutions to streamline ESG reporting and data collection, and reveal actionable insights to drive impactful sustainability programs. By combining professional sustainability consulting, data management expertise, and our cloud-based software, Scope 5 empowers companies to quantify their resource use and emissions while uncovering opportunities to reduce waste and resource use across their organization. For more information, visit www.www.scope5.com.

About Dakota Software

Founded in 1988, Dakota Software introduced the first software product specifically designed to support EHS compliance. Their ProActivity Suite is the only software solution that includes an integrated library of curated regulatory content. This unique content integration allows users to easily determine which regulations apply to their facilities, notifies users of relevant regulatory changes, and provides guidance and clarification on complex subject matter. For more information, visit www.dakotasoft.com.

5 Common Pitfalls of Sustainability Reporting

More than ever, stakeholders want to know about an organization’s sustainability performance. They want to know that information appearing in a company’s annual sustainability report is accurate, supported by evidence, and tied to actions that produce results. If you’re embarking on this process for the first time, or are looking to improve processes already in place, there are five common sustainability reporting pitfalls to be aware of.

5 Common Pitfalls of Sustainability Reporting

Sustainability Reporting Pitfall #1: Incorrect Sustainability Data Leads to Trouble

In the early days of sustainability reporting, so-called “greenwashing” could result in bad PR and a loss of consumer confidence. But now the stakes are higher. Today sustainability data is used to drive business decisions. If the data is not reliable, then wrong decisions can get made. For example, more organizations are putting a price on carbon, so errors in greenhouse gas accounting (GHG) may have real financial consequences.

77% of institutional investors believe building environment, social and governance initiatives, or ESG, into a company’s business model is a smart business decision, according to public relations consultancy Burson-Marsteller. Investors want sustainability information to include how sustainability data is tied to business impacts.

This means companies need to back up performance claims with data and transparency. Things can go wrong if they’re not. For example, power group ABB over-reported sulfur emissions by a factor of 1,000 by using kilotons instead of tons three years in a row. Staff at a Swedish conglomerate did not know that the company owned a paper and pulp business that was the subsidiary of an acquisition.

Modern cloud-based tools for managing sustainability data incorporate error checking and warn of outlying, missing, or duplicate data. Other capabilities like automatic unit conversion eliminate a common source of errors. Advanced sustainability reporting applications like Scope 5 quantify the quality of the data so that the user can decide whether he or she can be confident in the information provided.

Sustainability Reporting Pitfall #2: Curse of the Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets suffer from a lack of flexibility and control.

For example, rolling up spreadsheets from tens or hundreds of facility managers for year-on-year analysis or facility-by-facility comparison is time-consuming and error-prone. These problems get worse fast when one or more of this same group changes a copy of “the spreadsheet” arbitrarily to suit their needs.

When a different type of data is required such as launching a new project to track water and waste use at the same facilities, a new spreadsheet must be designed and re-circulated.

The viable solution needs to be flexible within reasonable constraints like adding facilities or new resources tracked. Cloud-based sustainability software lets users work on the same copy of the application. As a result, data structure and consistency are assured.

This approach also makes fine-grain analytics possible. A user can instantly chart their facility’s electricity and fuel use relative to other facilities. If the application stores the area of each facility, the user can chart energy intensity, or energy per square foot for each facility. Such a chart reveals facilities that are using more energy per square foot than the average, or less. Opportunity to save are revealed.

Sustainability Reporting Pitfall #3: Thinking “Big Software” Solves Everything

As sustainability reporting has increased, so has the number of software tools. All purport to help companies reduce the burden of collecting, standardizing and reporting environmental data. But beneath the surface, there are two choices: purpose-built, cloud-based solutions like Scope 5 and so-called “big software” like Enviance and SAP.

“Big software” is typically an on-premise system geared towards environment, health and safety (EHS) scenarios. These systems are useful when trying to track complicated regulatory requirements. But they have their limits. For example, there are large “hidden” costs like systems integration and IT support.

If you are considering a sustainability reporting solution, especially if greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories are important, and even if you already have a large EHS system with a sustainability “bolt-on,” a cloud-based alternative still makes sense.

Why?

The reason is buying, deploying, configuring and maintaining that “bolt-on” costs a lot more than buying, deploying, configuring and maintaining a sustainability software solution that was built from the ground up for sustainability reporting. Coaxing the EHS “bolt-on” into producing a GHG inventory is tedious, error-prone work that requires significant effort from IT specialists.

Data and analysis are often not readily available with “big software.” Users must go to their IT staff for answers to every question and each report. This makes the EHS “bolt-on” less useful for a broader set of strategically valuable needs like tracking progress, revealing waste and driving action.

Sustainability Reporting Pitfall #4: Not Asking Yourself Why

Before you consider either launching a sustainability initiative, or getting an existing initiative to the next level, ask yourself some basic questions that focus on materiality. Many companies make the mistake of focusing purely on the data instead of thinking about what internal and external stakeholders consider important.

For example, who is this for, and how important is it? Will sustainability data be used as decision-support for internal efficiency initiatives, compliance with supply chain requirements, or external schemes such as CDP, GRI or the Dow Jones Sustainability Index?

A company might decide to track emissions related to air travel, but does this relate to issues that interest stakeholders? Is there a mismatch between what is material to the organization, or its strategic goals and objectives?

Take for example the water risks for a drinks company. In this case, you might look at the process they are going through to identify those risks for manufacturing in high water stress areas where there is a risk for future water supply. This may be more important than looking at water use data for the previous year.

Sustainability Reporting Pitfall #5: Procrastination

Leaving sustainability reporting to the last minute is never a good idea. By starting early, you will get much more value out of the process. You should be asking yourself early on, what do we want to track? How does that influence the expertise needed to do the work? Then you can work internally to decide what you need.

Another point worth mentioning in this pitfall is the “once-a-year-lift” many organizations go through. A more frequent data collection and management rhythm would make it easier to identify and react to trends more quickly, and make data readily available when you need it.

Get Started With Sustainability Reporting

As a leader in helping organizations turn sustainability data into outcomes that matter, we know that what isn’t measured can’t be improved. Using data can reveal previously hidden opportunities like reducing electricity, lighting, fuel, and waste among others.

If you are looking to improve economic and environmental impacts, Scope 5 is committed to sharing best practices learned from working with leading companies and organizations. So, whether looking to get started, or advance to the next level, we can help.

Leadership Styles and Saving the World

Few would debate the need for radical social change (RSC). It feels that we’re facing myriad problems, as a global society, that, while RSC wouldn’t be sufficient to solve all of them, it is necessary to solve all of them (ambiguity acknowledged).

I come to this through a lens of climate change. In my opinion, technology is an important part of the solution and we have all the technological know-how and capacity that we need to move rapidly to carbon-free world. So, the challenge at this point is not technical. This problem is ‘solvable’ (ambiguity acknowledged). The challenge is swaying hearts and minds to make the RSC we need to make.

I think that we’re seeing some organic, grass-roots RSC but that won’t be enough to solve climate change. We need leadership to inspire broad-based RSC. We’re facing a threat far more existential than WW-II and yet our willingness to make change in the face of this threat pales in comparison to the civic-engagement and the willingness of the masses to make sacrifices during WW-II (think the Victory Garden Movement or Rosie the Riveter). We need leaders.

Which leads me to contemplate leadership styles. I want your help here, dear reader, in thinking through a specific question on the relative merits of two leadership styles; I’ll call them the AG style and the GT style.

Both AG and GT leaders are equivalent in terms of their morals, their sense of service and commitment, and their understanding of the science of climate change. We’re making no judgment as to their relative moralities, we’re just evaluating the capacity of their leadership to inspire global RSC.

Here’s how their styles differ:

  • AG leaders will not hesitate to hop on a private jet to fly from (say) Virginia to Oslo to attend important meetings on climate change. In so, they incur quite a bit more carbon emissions than they might do had they chosen alternate modes of travel.
  • GT leaders will choose to sail from Sweden to the Americas to attend important meetings on climate change. While their chosen mode of travel is practically carbon-free, it’s time-consuming and effortful.

Which style will be more effective in inspiring the RSC that we need?

I don’t think that this important question has one right answer but in contemplating it out loud, I’ve come across the opinion that the leader must lead by example. This opinion often leads to disqualification of the AG style, in favor of the GT style, often with a hint of judgment.

I struggled with the conclusion that the AG leader should be disqualified. Should he or she be disqualified? Even if we may find the style hypocritical or morally problematic, is that grounds for disqualification?

Now the answer is pretty simple. When we look back in 50 years, either the leader’s actions, regardless of the carbon costs of their lifestyle choices1, will have been credited with inspiring the RSC needed to save the world or not. If the AG leader’s work clearly succeeded in saving the world, then their actions and leadership style are entirely justifiable.

While the AG model may be justifiable, and even perhaps required, I do admire and respect the integrity of the GT style – so much that I often choose that style. But – we must be careful to not let the moral appeal of the GT style dissuade us from also supporting a different style that might ultimately, save the world.

What do you think?

1 For the sake of this discussion, we’ll assume that while one leader may make more extravagant lifestyle choices than the other, neither leader will contribute enough CO2 emissions through their lifestyle choices to significantly impact the fate of the planet.

BEF’s Water Restoration Certificates

BEF (Bonneville Environmental Foundation) started its Water Restoration Certificate® (WRC) program a decade ago. Inspiration for the WRC product was based on BEF’s experience from a decade earlier when the organization created “Green Tags” now known as Renewable Energy Credits (RECs). The idea for WRCs was two-fold:

  • Provide organizations with a simple way to balance a water footprint
  • Provide a solution to rivers and streams in the West that were suffering from chronically low flows and / or running dry at certain times of year

The first WRC projects were in Oregon’s Middle Deschutes River and Montana’s Prickly Pear Creek. These initial projects focused on working within “use it or lose it” water law in the West. Laws such as these essentially viewed any water not being used for human benefit to be “wasted,” thereby incentivizing water rights holders to use more water than they needed in order to retain their valuable water rights. Many of these early projects worked with water rights holders to designate any unused water left in stream as “beneficial use” for the environment. Meaning, water rights holders could now be incentivized to use only the water they needed (to irrigate, farm, etc) while leaving the remaining water in stream. This water left in stream was designated as “used” by the environment, allowing them to retain their valuable water rights. The water rights holder then received payment for leaving this water in stream and the first WRCs were created.

BEF worked with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) to establish a set of rigorous environmental criteria for WRC project selection. BEF provides all project documentation along with independent third-party review of the project to the Markit Environmental Registry where WRC inventory is generated and retired (the same registry used for carbon offset retirement). Each WRC represents 1,000 gallons of water restored.

Early adopters of WRCs were breweries in the Pacific Northwest and a handful of purpose driven brands, including WhiteWave Foods (now part of Danone North America). Early support for WRCs enabled BEF to expand its project portfolio to incorporate multiple different types of restoration projects to address unique watershed challenges in different regions. Project types range from improving efficient use of water in agriculture, to meadow and wetland restoration, groundwater replenishment and much more. Our current Project Bank provides a portfolio overview.

BEF began to become a resource for companies seeking to address their water footprint in regions where their companies have operational or value chain water risk. As BEF partnered with companies, the organization served as a critical bridge between companies and on-the-ground project partners (typically other nonprofit organizations). For companies seeking a volume-based quantification of water improved or restored, BEF worked with other industry organizations (such as LimnoTech, WaterCourse Engineering and others) to translate the benefits from such projects into volumetric estimates that could be claimed against a water footprint.

The WRC evolved during this time to become a tool for smaller companies and / or entities seeking points to earn against certifications such as LEED®, B Corp, or the Alliance for Water Stewardship. These reporting standards accept BEF’s WRCs as a market-based tool to balance a water footprint.

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Global Risk Report has declared water crises among the top-five risks in terms of impact for eight consecutive years. Alongside the WEF declaration, BEF witnessed the evolution of corporate environmental water stewardship from considerations such as “what is a water footprint and how do we address it” to “we have identified our water footprint, we know our key geographies at risk for water stress, and we want to not only balance our own water footprint but we desire to collaborate with others to address shared challenges at the watershed level.” Companies understand they cannot operate in locations without a secure water supply – not only from an operational standpoint, but also from the standpoint of quality of life for their employees.

BEF has also participated in the evaluation of other water credit products as well as the development of Volumetric Water Benefit Accounting (VWBA) – an industry collaboration that provides corporate water stewardship practitioners a standardized approach and set of indicators to estimate and communicate the volumetric benefits of water stewardship activities. Because providing a volume of water alone does not guarantee shared water challenges are reduced, VWBA also provides activity guidelines to increase the likelihood of generating social, economic and environmental benefits of solving shared water challenges in the catchment, and complementary indicators to measure non-volumetric outputs of investments.

In light of the sobering news about water stresses around the world, there’s an opportunity for more businesses, large and small, to promote and invest in water-smart policies and programs. The business sector can be a transformative leader in ensuring our communities have plentiful clean water for generations to come. The possibilities are endless. And the time is now.

Val Fishman has over 10 years’ experience leading sustainability partnerships to support water stewardship programs that include public and stakeholder engagement. Val is a corporate sustainability authority, educating businesses and consumers on energy and environmental water stewardship.

Welcome Fellow Solution Provider!

I read the recent announcement from Salesforce on their launch of Sustainability Cloud with great interest. Launching in 2011, we built Scope 5 to solve similar problems. As I read further, I was struck by the similarities.

From the Salesforce post announcing the product:

“you’re ready to make a difference — and you’re looking at…old spreadsheets. And constantly bugging stakeholders to send updated data for those spreadsheets. You’re overwhelmed by the data you’re looking at because it’s mostly incomplete.“

From an early Scope 5 post:

“the blending of the spreadsheets is turning out to be a nightmare, requiring endless version management and email correspondence… respondents have sent revised spreadsheets after the first, with highlighted cells that contain corrected (or previously missing) data“

This is about as great a market validation as we could hope for – a sign of the times – of the rising tide behind the move to hold ourselves accountable for our impacts on this planet! 

Yes – it’s competition, from a respectable company. And, at Scope 5, we’ve been doing this for a long time, and we’ve been learning and honing our product based on feedback from the large multinational enterprises that have been customers of ours for years. 

We welcome competition. The more awareness there is in the market regarding the expertise and tools available to organizations who want to improve their sustainability, the better.

Bring it on Salesforce! We’re all in this together!