Corporations Get Serious About Environmental Goals
If you were looking for a poster child for high energy consumption, you couldn't do much better than Hopkinton-based EMC. As a giant data storage company, by nature its buildings are filled with servers holding customers' data, R&D sites developing new products, and cooling systems keeping all that technology from overheating.
“Density of energy use in our buildings is extreme,” said Paul Fitzgerald, senior director of EMC’s North American facilities.
Getting Audacious
But EMC is doing its best to make sure it’s also a poster child for responsible energy consumption. The company has been working to reduce its use of electricity since its start in 1979, and it recently set what Fitzgerald calls the “big, audacious goal” of getting half its electricity from renewable sources by 2040.
Yet, looking at major companies based in Central Massachusetts, EMC stands out less than you might think with this effort. Around the region, it’s now standard operating procedure for big companies to create teams of employees focused on energy issues, devote multiple pages on their websites to their environmental efforts and make sure new any buildings they add can be LEED certified.
To the casual observer, it might sound odd that any company would make a major effort in pursuit of any goal except delivering products to its customers and profits to its shareholders. But green energy goals often work together seamlessly with those bottom-line concerns.
Most obviously, conservation measures that save energy also save the money it costs to buy energy.
At UMass Medical School in Worcester, Sustainability and Energy Manager Melissa L. Lucas says significant energy savings have come from a simple, nearly free employee awareness campaign. The school encourages workers to shut their computers down at night and to take conservation into account in deciding when lab equipment can be turned off.
“They really are the ones that understand the most about their surroundings,” Lucas said.
Payback Time
When it comes to more costly measures, like retrofitting an old building with new lighting systems, a company’s first concern is typically how long it will take for the improvements to pay for themselves. But Lucas says this is more complicated than it might look.
For example, modern lighting technology doesn’t just require less electricity than the systems it replaces, it also lasts longer. That means maintenance staff can spend less time changing light bulbs and replacing fixtures.
Fitzgerald said a few years ago, EMC’s rule of thumb was that energy improvements should pay for themselves in five years or less.
Today, he said, it’s more focused on conservation and will sometimes stretch that time frame, especially in buildings where the company knows it will remain for many years. Leased buildings, or those with less long-term value for the company’s business strategies, demand a quicker payoff.
Of course, not all energy consumption takes place in buildings. Staples, the Framingham-based office supply giant, says it saves about $3 million a year by setting the top speed for its delivery trucks at 60 miles per hour and setting their engines to shut off if they’re allowed to idle for three minutes.
“Beyond that we’re looking really to the future, and how can we integrate new technology into our fleet to cut our use of fossil fuels,” said Jake Swenson, Staples’ sustainability manager.
Peer Pressure
Along with direct financial savings, there are other, more subtle ways that green efforts can contribute to a company’s bottom line.
Fitzgerald said EMC pays a lot of attention to positioning itself as an industry leader — and that means staying ahead of the competition — not just in terms of products but also in its environmental commitment.
Swenson said Staples takes a similar view, and is now focused on working with the federal government’s Energy Star for Retail program. The program compares retail stores’ energy use, and stores must score in the top 25 percent to be certified. Swenson said 100 Staples stores are now certified, and the chain hopes to bring that to 500 by April 2012.
Pushing to keep up with competitors can have a snowball effect. For example, Fitzgerald notes that five years ago getting LEED certification for a new building was unusual.
Today, he says, the extra cost for the measures that LEED demands have dropped from 15 or 20 percent of a building’s total price tag down to 2 or 3 percent. In fact, he said, the certification has been so successful, it may have made itself obsolete.
“I think eventually it will be replaced by something,” Fitzgerald said. “Pretty soon LEED will be the standard offering.”
To some extent, large companies do the same things as small ones when it comes to going green. They take advantage of utility company and government incentives, switch out light bulbs and in some cases put up some solar panels.
But being big comes with some big advantages.
Most small businesses would have a hard time building their own power plants on site, as UMass Medical School has done. Lucas said eliminating losses from transmission lines makes the gas-fired campus plant about 30 percent more efficient.
About half of the school’s electricity, as well as all of its heating and cooling, comes from the plant. A planned expansion in late 2012 will allow for coverage of new buildings on campus.
Swenson said Staples’ size matters in negotiations with energy suppliers. It has been able to work out good deals for a fuel-cell installation in California and solar arrays in California, New Jersey and Connecticut in part because small renewable energy companies want to work with companies that are household names.
“A lot of startup companies are looking to partner with big brand-name companies so they can find new business partners,” he said.
Swenson said another advantage of Staples’ size is that it can easily do pilot programs — buying a few plug-in electric trucks or adding solar arrays to one store before jumping into anything completely.
Ultimately, Swenson said, that leads to an approach that is serious about both environmental and economic impacts.
“I guess our viewpoint is these business innovations do need to make business and environmental sense,” he said.
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