Major corporations come together to share strategies and opportunities for energy efficiency

As new technologies converge and interest in corporate sustainability grows, many major business centers are taking a closer look at energy management strategies.

The trend was evident at the Sustainable Business Summit 2016, hosted in New York in October by Bloomberg BNA. The event brought together businesspeople, investors and other decision-makers to discuss how corporations can drive growth and profit opportunities through sustainable business practices, with energy as a key area. Representatives from giants such as The 3M Company, JetBlue Airways Corp., Xerox Corp. and Tiffany & Co. were present. share ideas for their own strategies.

For many organizations, the increase in cloud-based information storage and the creation of data centers, which consume large amounts of energy to process this information, also generates the need to mitigate the impacts of this consumption through energy efficiency and renewable sources. This is already a reality for technology giants like Microsoft, but it is likely to reach all types of sectors in the coming years, said Rob Bernard, responsible for Microsoft's environmental strategy during the event.

Bernard, together with the CEO of Stuffstr, a startup that created a sharing economy application, mentions that cloud storage has been largely responsible for the focus on energy. This challenge is compounded by pressure from consumers, employees and investors across all types of organizations for greater transparency about their environmental impact, and energy consumption is often the first place to start.

Tiffany & Co., for example, hired its first sustainability manager, Anisa Costa, in 2015. Costa said the company’s investors are more interested in environmental initiatives than ever before. Tiffany, which plans to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, has already implemented energy efficiency initiatives to meet its goal: Between 2014 and 2015, the iconic New York jeweler retrofitted about 100 retail stores with LED lighting, both in-store and on-display specifications.

While many more companies have begun to make more informed changes to their energy consumption and become more strategic about their energy management programs, it has not yet been possible to create an integrated plan, said Alan Shurr, president of Edison Energy—a subsidiary of Edison International—of the organizations it has worked with. “In our view, most companies need a partner to make this happen, because energy is not their core business.”

All of this shows that companies of all types are seeking more incisive measures in energy management at a time when the energy market itself is undergoing rapid changes.

There is still no single path to follow, according to Shurr, although the initiative is already taking shape. Also during the event, he stated that some corporations are already imagining a “high-performance system in all dimensions” of energy management, including cost management and system failure.