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 2016 Sustainable Business Summit, hosted in New York in October by Bloomberg BNA. The event brought together businesspeople, investors and other decision-makers to discuss how corporations are driving 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. shared insights into their own strategies.

For many organizations, the rise of 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 impacts through energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. This is already a reality for tech giants like Microsoft, but it is likely to spread to all types of industries in the coming years, Rob Bernard, Microsoft's head of environmental strategy, said during the event. Bernard, along with the CEO of Stuffstr, a startup that created a sharing economy app, mentioned that cloud storage has been a big driver of increased focus on energy. This challenge is compounded by pressure from consumers, employees and investors from all types of organizations for more transparency about their environmental impact, and energy consumption is in many cases the first place to start. Tiffany & Co., for example, hired its first sustainability manager, Anisa Costa, in 2015. Costa said that the company's investors are more interested than they are in environmental initiatives. Tiffany, which plans to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, has already implemented energy efficiency initiatives to achieve its goal: Between 2014 and 2015, the famous New York jeweler retrofitted approximately 100 retail stores with LED lighting, both in-store and display specifications. As for energy management, it has not yet been possible to create an integrated plan, said Alan Shurr, president of Edison Energy – a subsidiary of Edison International – regarding the organizations they work with. “In our view, it takes a partner in most companies to make this happen, because energy is not the core business for many of them.” Also during the event, he said that some corporations are already envisioning a “high-performance system across all dimensions” of energy management, including cost management and system failure.