1.Energy efficiency
Companies, countries and society have already figured out that tackling the negawatts is usually the most profitable way of cutting carbon. 2011 will the year where inneficiencies will be tackled in an impressive variety of ways. From companies profiting from selling innovative solutions to consumers, other companies and governments to green deals from governments. Even in Russia where climate change is not a popular topic, energy efficiency is one of the biggest topics for the year.
2. Full transparency will show up the true impacts
After the previous decade, people have had enough of carbon geezing, the term I use to include things such as companies saying they are carbon neutral even if it’s not the point, the abuse of offsets standars, the thousands of magic labels, etc. Full transparency (publishing all the impacts of all the life cycle stages of all your products) will be the only way your customers will trust you.
3. Legislation: leading companies will say ‘bring it on’
Tired of minimum-common-denominator business-association-led type of lobbying and advocacy, leading companies will tell governments yes to smart legislation. Yes, to efficiency standards, to a reasonable carbon price floor and well crafted bans (eg our wish of a ban on carpet landfill). Governments are realizing of how tiring and useless are voluntary agreements if there is no stick or threat attached to it. But smart legislation wont mean going back to the old school green legislation using the environment as an excuse for taxation.
4. The come back of the environmental geek
Companies will start hiring more people with ability to do proper LCAs because they need to understand their impacts at product life cycle level. And they will hire less in green spin doctors because the LCA facts will speak by themselves
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Added to your list I’d love to have seen C-level staff having strategic dialogue about how to integrate sustainability as a core driver for short, medium and long term success.
If they can begin to challenge some of their traditional business orthodoxies and begin to engage businesses in real sustainability change then we have some hope (and they have viable long term businesses..). This needs to go far beyond incremental and specific impact areas into understanding the systemic relationship of business and its social and environmental spheres. Added to this the opportunities of organisations to use sustainability as a collaboration tool throughout their value chains then great progress can be made.
Maybe this is already on your 2012 prediction list..?
Simon.
http://twitter.com/simontgoldsmith
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Theres a growing school of thought that unfettered information about the environmental impacts of our world will smoke out the bad guys and help the good guys win…I wish it were that simple. But Im more skeptical than Goleman about how willing and able consumers are to actually harness such information to make changes in the way they shop and live.
Hi Monex,
I am also very skeptical about my mom and 95% of my mates going to the supermarket and choosing products based on environmental information. They barely look at the nutritional facts!
But the purpose of full transparency is not that all consumers will choose. It’s much wider and much more transformational.
1. If companies were exposed to publish this information, they will reduce the impact of products. They will be forced to set targets and show progress. This is what happened with sustainability reporting.
2. The retailers would be able to edit choice and nudge suppliers to improve their impact of their products
3. Perhaps only 5% of consumers would care but perhaps enough to change things. Look at organic…
4. The government would have full visibility of product impacts and could enact regulation and levies / discounts for bad or green products (based on proper LCA info)
5. NGOs would have full data so they could pick some bad product categories and put pressure for improvement