Green Enterprise, Race for Carbon Neutral Energy

I was asked the other day a pretty simple question: What is a Green Enterprise? I was thinking there are so many definitions of Green; this can be a rather exhausting answer… I came up with this definition:

The Green Enterprise is using the least amount of resources possible to produce high quality products, and maximizes the use of renewable resources in that process.

=> The Green Enterprise is the Productive and Sustainable Enterprise!

There are a lot of ways to describe and define this, and granted it is a complex subject. But I thought the above is capturing the essence of what Green wants to achieve. In simple words:
It’s all about Productivity and Sustainability. And that’s not only good for the environment. Highly efficient production methods produce better balance sheets. If the amount of energy and materials used is minimal, the use of renewable sources for both becomes more practical.

I don’t think there are a lot of manufacturing companies which haven’t embraced the principle of productivity, and if there are areas of excessive use of any resource, the current economic environment will force to take action.

One element of Sustainability which is new is the desire and in some cases the mandate for Carbon Neutrality. The source of your Carbons is mostly your energy usage and where it comes from. There will be a Race for Carbon Neutral Energy, today only 2% of the US electric energy is generated by Wind, Solar and geothermal (http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/people/a_energy.html). Hydro Electric generation is about 7% and really not growing much… So if you wait too long, there isn’t any Green Energy to buy… and it will get expensive. So act now, here is how:

Three steps to Carbon Neutrality:

1. Identify your energy (energy audit)
a. Where is it used, for what
b. Efficiencies and cost
c. What sources
2. Group in three actions:
a. Eliminate
b. Reduce
c. Convert to renewable energy sources
3. Take Action
a. Create CO2 enterprise dash board
b. Identify ROI (return on investment) and TCO (total cost of ownership) on all actions
c. Develop and track deployment plan
d. Generate quick wins first

When you go through your assessment you’ll find that IT might be your biggest area of potential efficiency gains, more in my next Blog