Sustainability - March 2022

March 2022 | sustainabilitymag.com

Our inaugural hybrid event Sustainability Live overflowed with speakers, guests, and corporations from around the world as industry leaders exchanged ideas on our new ESG world, online and in-person FEATURING:

Petronas

Delivery Hero

NTT Global Data Centers

The ‘Risk & Resilience’ Conference

2022 27th - 28th April

STREAMED & IN PERSON TOBACCO DOCK LONDON

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Watch our 2021 Showreel

Previous Speakers Include:

Aurelien Faucheux

Senior Director, Procurement Performance, Systems & Excellence

Charlotte de Brabandt Technology and Negotiation Keynote Speaker & Host

Aston Martin

Lufthansa

AMAZON

Ninian Wilson

James Westgarth

Group Procurement Director Vodafone Procurement

CPO

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The Sustainability Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

BLAISE HOPE

DEPUTY EDITORS

TOM SWALLOW EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

PHILLINE VICENTE JANE ARNETA ELLA CHADNEY

PRODUCTION EDITOR

JANET BRICE CREATIVE TEAM

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

ASHLEY KIRBY GLEN WHITE

EVELYN HUANG HABBIE AMOS JACK NICHOLLS MARTA EUGENIO ERNIE DE NEVE

MEDIA SALES DIRECTORS

MOTION DESIGNER

MANAGING DIRECTOR

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON JORDAN WOOD CALLUM HOOD

TYLER LIVINGSTONE

LEWIS VAUGHAN

MARKETING DIRECTOR

JORDAN HUBBARD

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGERS

GRETA ANDREJEVAITE

KIERAN WAITE SAM KEMP

ROSS GARRIGAN

MARKETING MANAGER

PROJECT DIRECTORS

BEN WIGGER

GLEN WHITE MARK CAWSTON

EXECUTIVE ASSITANT

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

Coming together to end the northern winter with Sustainability LIVE Sustainability business leaders came from across the world and thousands more tuned in online as London played host to a live event bursting with ideas, companies, and technologies that are bringing in the era of regenerative business.

“Our spring will now begin with the knowledge-sharing of an industry brimming with the confidence”

SUSTAINABILITY MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

The start of this year was defined by sustainability’s charge to the top of the corporate agenda. We saw a surge in interest in the practical applications of ESG metrics, initiatives, and platforms, as executives and managers prepared to take action. Our spring will now begin with the knowledge-sharing of an industry brimming with the confidence of a business case put to bed, and with the board-level, public, and private backing it has spent much of the past decade seeking.

Sustainability Live 2022, held at Tobacco Dock in London at the end of February, had speakers who were advocates of business ideas now in the spotlight when they fringe concepts. Mainstream business stars who saw this day coming 10 or more years ago and now, rightly, bask in the joy that the day is here.

Global sustainability leaders like Schneider Electric, transformative supply chain platforms like Interos and its real-time threat assessment and transparency visualisation product, or Suppeco’s relationship enabling tech: companies whose founders and executives are seeing the culmination of plans laid many years before.

In this issue we have big ideas from all corners of the sustainable agenda, from embedding social value in procurement to changing organisation culture at scale.

We even have Iain Anderson, the global leader for LGBT business, sharing his insight. We are all a village here.

BLAISE HOPE

blaise.hope@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 12 Big Picture 14 The Brief 16 Timeline: The Rapid Incline in EV Adoption 18 Trailblazer: Rob Symington

38

Petronas

On Achieving Net Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050

24

Event Review

Sustainability Live: A Diverse Approach to Decarbonisation

48 ESG

Sustainable Development is Driven by Organisational Culture

66

Diversity & Inclusion

56

First-ever LGBT Business Champion Iain Anderson is a Leader

Delivery Hero

Making Local Food Delivery Sustainable

74

NTT Global Data Centers Helps to Deliver NTT's Digital Backbone

86

Net Zero

Brand Power: Three Consumer Goods Multinationals on Three Continents Adding Star Power to the SBTi

94

108

How Wyoming Hyperscale Formed the World's Ideal Data Centre

How UK Public Policy Became a Benchmark for Indirect Procurement Worldwide

Wyoming Hyperscale

Supply Chain

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128

Embracing Technology in the Energy Sector

Shaping a New Era of Data Centre Sustainability

Centrica

Schneider Electric

MA RCH8.COM

IS HERE Telling the stories of driven, ambitious women in business and society...

V I SIT NOW

E D U C AT E • M OT IVAT E • E L E VAT E

VI SI T NOW

BIG PICTURE

Shipping industry sustainability is under the spotlight Global

The coronavirus pandemic highlighted just how critical the shipping industry is to global supply chains. But, as one of the largest pollutants, and the global emphasis on netzero and emissions reductions, the shipping industry relies on innovation in technology and greener fuel production methods to drive its sustainable transformation — a critical step to decarbonise the industry.

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Michele Ursi Getty Images

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THE BRIEF “PETRONAS is there to support the economic development of Malaysia, progress of society in general”

BY THE NUMBERS

The sustainable packaging initiative valued most among UK consumers (by % of respondents to a Deloitte survey)

Charlotte Wolff-Bye

Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer, PETRONAS  READ MORE

“The biggest drivers of our footprint are packaging and the vehicle emissions from delivery”

69%

64%

Food and non-alcoholic beverages

Everyday household items

Jeffrey Oatham

Senior Director of Sustainability, CSR and Safety, Delivery Hero  READ MORE

“One of the things I'm trying to do is move this conversation from, purely the diversity and inclusion piece into the ESG conversation” Iain Anderson

Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Cicero/AMO  READ MORE

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March 2022

How will mushrooms make Mercedes-Benz sustainable?

A circular economy can be heralded as the key to waste management in many industries, which is an initiative that is being adopted more often by the automotive industry.

Find out more 

READ MORE

Kering and its goal to become an eco-conscious fashion giant French luxury conglomerate Kering has made major changes across its supply chain to set an example to the fashion world as well as a message to the wider fast fashion and fast-moving-consumer-goods sectors.

Find out more 

READ MORE

The IMPORTANCE of a sustainable brand 88% of respondents to a McKinsey survey said that more attention should be directed towards reducting pollution from the fashion industry, and therefore businesses are responding with consumer transparency.

Consumer agendas are changing and so should those of businesses. As the general customer mindsets shifts toward more sustainable purchasing and lifestyle, companies are now making the necessary changes to adapt.

We have often spoken about circular economies and company initiatives to offer more eco-friendly and inclusive products that create less waste or will utilise materials that can be recycled back into the industry.

A prime example of the increased consumer sentiment can be found in the fashion industry. More and more businesses are reacting by publicly sharing their sustainability credentials and providing more insights to consumers as they shop — whether that is online or in stores.

 EVIATION AIRCRAFT The Israeli aviation company, Eviation Aircraft announces engine testing for the world’s first all-eletric passenger plane

 BENTLEY MOTORS Bentey Motors carries out a successful test drive of a fleet of nine Flying Super Hybrid models, representing its latest step toward net-zero emissions

W I N N E R S MAR22

 WWF Plastic pollution still affects around 88% of marine life and the WWF calls for an international treaty to tackle microplastics

 US CONGRESS Questions remain regarding the sustainability of cryptocurrency as the US Congress further investigates the environmental impact of blockchains.

L O S E R S

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TIMELINE E N I L C N I D I P A R THE

N O I T P O D A V E N I

We’ve featured some exciting company names in Sustainability Magazine of recent. With so many global innovations in e-mobility, we take a look at the history of electric vehicles, championed by sustainable startups and some of the leading automotive organisations that are leveraging modern electric car manufacturing — the main focus for automotive giants along with renewable energy adoption.

1996 General Motors takes to electric With multiple vehicle brands roaming the roads, General Motors was responsible for a significant stage in the EV industry. The release of the EV1. The production line was very small with only 2,500 of them produced and sold to customers in California and Arizona, US 16

March 2022

2003 The Tesla makes its debut In 2003, Tesla revealed its EV offering, the Tesla Roadster.

The model was unveiled in Santa Monica, California and production began soon after in 2008 with 10 of the cars reaching customers in the state

2011 Nissan brings lowerpriced EVs The release of the Nissan Leaf was perhaps a more noticeable development for consumers as, compared to Tesla, it catered for customers with lower budgets. The company went public in 2011 and has since sold more than 31,400 of the model. Nissan began selling the Leaf alongside Chevrolet, as its Volt model entered the market

2022 2018 Electric vehicles reach sales milestone With EV adoption increasing among consumers, sales reached one million units in Europe during the first half of 2018. This was slightly later than the global figure for vans as sales exceeded one million in 2016

Electric vehicles reach sales milestone Following the commitments made by automotive manufacturers, their are now many more EV options on the market. In February 2022, the EVs and hybrids made up around 27.5% of the global automotive market, with EVs responsible for an 11.6% market share

TRAILBLAZER

Bringing sustainable practice to the world’s mountain vineyards

ROB SYMINGTON R

ob Symington leads Symington Family Estates, a 140-year-old family business based in Portugal and one of the world’s biggest producers of premium port.

The family firm is a B Corp, the biggest vineyard owner in the Douro Valley, and a leading Portuguese wine producer Along with the drinks design and sustainability experts Denomination, Symington is at the front of sustainability practice in the sector by sourcing 100% recycled glass bottles and packaging stock for Cockburn’s, one of its bestknown brands.

Denomination’s Futureproof Programme finds gold-standard measure to apply at every stage of the supply chain. With Symington, for example, they are changing the association of quality with heavier glass to instead bring in lighter, recycled glass.

Symington’s commitment goes beyond packaging and into setting trends for global viticulture. The fifth generation of his family to work in port, he presides over estates including large operations as well as smaller, community growers in 26 properties and over a thousand hectares.

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“We are completely embedded and committed to the region,” says Symington. “It's a monoculture, the economy is grapes and wine, and we've always been aware of the social responsibility that comes with the fact that we are one of the bigger economic players in the region.”

Prior to his return to the family business, Symington spent a decade in the United Kingdom helping build Escape the City (ESC) that ended up being one of the founding B Corps in the UK. “When I came back to join my family business, I was concerned that I might be stepping into a very old fashioned work environment, and one of the dealbreakers to leave my own business in the UK and go home to Portugal was, do they get it, do they understand the imperative of leading and taking responsibility in this area?” says Symington. “Fortunately, they did.”

Symington took a determination to bring sustainability with him when he came home to the Douro Valley.

After pitching B Corp certification internally, he was pleasantly surprised to

SYMINGTON FAMILY ESTATES IS A

YEAR OLD FAMILY BUSINESS

TRAILBLAZER

find it had immediate backing. “It's not just a nice certificate,” says Symington. “ It’s a commitment to change how you see yourselves as an organisation. I was really pleasantly surprised that following a B Corp presentation to our group of 45 Senior Managers, our CEO Rupert Symington, agreed that B Corp was exactly the type of framework we should commit to, that we’ve been looking for.”

“We're completely dependent on a stable climate and a healthy environment for our products,” he says.

“The gods of wind, rain, sunshine, and temperature totally determine what we're able to do in our region. We are one of the drier wine producing regions and we have some particular challenges from our topography.”

The Douro Valley is home to over half of the world’s mountain vineyards and no company farms more mountain vineyard than Symington Family Estates.

This leave them open to the risks from heatwaves and drought.

As part of efforts to stay on top of climate risks, the company has an R&D director monitoring two control vineyards planted at each end of the valley, which includes 53 different grape varieties and forms part of a multi-year study.

“The idea is that we have an incredible indigenous bank of genetic material,” says Symington. “We believe some of these varietals [these relate to a single type of grape] have a much greater potential to withstand climatic changes.”

Survival is not the only criteria: “Since 2013 we’ve been doing a microvinifications of each varietal every year: It’s obviously not just about resilience. If they produce bad wines, there's no point in banking on them.

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“We're looking for the sweet spot between resilience and quality. Some of these varietals have fallen out of favour because farmers will plant the crops that give them high yields, but that's no good in a future completely compromised and transformed by climate change.”

The company’s first formal paper on this work will come out shortly.

Symington hopes his work will spur more change in the wine industry: “The wine trade as a whole is conservative. You do still have a bit of a dinosaur mindset where people see sustainability as a PR exercise.We're part of international

“We're looking for the sweet spot between resilience and quality” wineries for climate action, IWCA. We are a founding member and have to do endto-end carbon emissions inventories every year. They have to be certified by an auditor and cover Scopes, 1, 2 and 3. We have to commit to science-based reductions targets in line with global standards.

“I had a conversation with the CEO of another wine company, and they said ‘Rob, no board is going to sign up to carbon emissions reductions goals they don't know they're going to hit. I was just staggered. So our approach is - we're not prepared to talk about things if they're not backed up with action.” sustainabilitymag.com

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DISCOVER WHO MADE THE CUT. Top 100 Companies in Sustainability Read Now

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities

EVENT REVIEW

24

March 2022

LIVE:

a diverse approach to decarbonisation BizClik Media Group brought a diverse group of business leaders and industry insights to its inaugural Sustainability LIVE event at Tobacco Dock, London

F

WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW

ollowing COP26 and the constant emphasis from the media, it would come as a shock to find a business leader that isn’t thinking about sustainability. As a subsidiary topic at BizClik Media Group’s (BMG’s) 2021 events, sustainability applies to all industries and it’s clear from the success of Sustainability LIVE that companies understand the significance of environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices, net-zero initiatives, diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I), and renewable energy application.

But why are businesses focused on this?

We get a lot of comments about protecting the planet and decarbonising supply chains, but the underlying motivation for many of the speakers at Sustainability LIVE is the future that lies ahead for younger

generations. They do what they do to improve the lives of others, particularly those who will live beyond their time.

Walking the event — hosted by Sustainability Magazine — at Tobacco Dock, London, the whole team at BMG could sense the excitement around the subject, which was discussed in great detail during speaker sessions, fireside chats, and panel discussions — not forgetting the networking sessions.

Data will enable true net-zero transparency When it comes to the urgent need to reach net-zero emissions, feelings are mutual among sustainability leaders, but the first step in any initiative is always the most critical. Almost as common as the topic of sustainability, data was mentioned in great sustainabilitymag.com

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DIAMOND SPONSOR

THE ECONOMIST GROUP TAKES GROUP-WIDE CLIMATE ACTION WITH PLANETLY BY ONETRUST

E

nvironmental sustainability is fully integrated into the Economist Group’s business strategy. Alongside The Economist’s editorial coverage of the climate issue and the impact it delivers through initiatives with clients and partners, the company is committed to holistically managing and reducing its own carbon footprint.

Planetly by OneTrust calculated The Economist Group’s global carbon footprint for the reporting year 2020/21 in accordance with the international reporting standards of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. The calculation accounts for all emissions (Scopes 1-3), including core business activities (e.g. buildings, employees) to the print production of The Economist, logistics and travel.

THE ECONOMIST GROUP TAKES ACTION TO REDUCE EMISSIONS GLOBALLY The Group’s ambition is to reduce its emissions by at least 25% by 2025, using

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FY20 as a base year. This target has officially been validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) as aligned with the most ambitious aim of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

To reach this reduction target, the Economist Group’s strategy includes a stronger focus on digital product formats and significant reductions in travel.

The Group reduced its commercial business travel by approximately 40% from pre-covid levels and will continue to reduce bulk circulation, improve on the environmental impact of its print publications and encourage more digital consumption of its products.

The Group is also investing in renewable-energy certificates to reduce carbon emissions for all its offices and for the print production of The Economist.

Leveraging innovative sustainability technologies, including Planetly by OneTrust automated carbon management software and Climeworks’

ONETRUST

Group-wide Climate Action with Planetly by OneTrust

“Planetly by OneTrust Climate Impact Manager provides us with actionable insights drawn from our emissions data - allowing us to focus on strategic initiatives and climate action” EMILY JACKSON-KESSLER SVP SUSTAINABILITY AT THE ECONOMIST

direct air carbon capture technology, is also an integral part of the Group’s strategy.

Sustainability has been embedded in the Group’s Leadership Team’s key performance indicators, which monitor the Group’s emissions and progress on reduction targets through Planetly by OneTrust carbon management tool.

Planetly by OneTrust CEO & FOUNDER: BENEDIKT FRANKE CCO & FOUNDER: ANNA ALEX INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY HQ: BERLIN, GERMANY

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detail by some of the speakers on both the main stage and the sustainability stage, as well as from some of the pre-recorded digital sessions in the networking area.

In particular, data and analytics are crucial for supply chain transparency a topic that was covered in depth across the stage as Claire Hulett, Director Strategic Alliances EMEA at Interos explained that organisations can never have too much visibility.

Technology and its ability to present data to companies will enable them to gain full insight into their supply chains, of which some companies will find suppliers and customers that they should be considering in their net-zero measurements.

The circular economy is a hot topic Beyond the biscuit cups and 100% recyclable aluminium-bottled water at the show, leaders were keen to discuss the importance of a circular economy.

According to Stephen Jamieson, Global

Head of Circular Economy Solutions at SAP — despite the importance of this — only 8.6% of the world is circular. But there is hope for circular practices to change the way that businesses consume items like packaging materials.

“I think there are organisations that are embedding circular systems,” says Jamieson during his talk on circularity and how packaging initiatives and data can be used to reduce the 45% share of emissions from products. He believes that circular economies will become the norm over the coming years. “[It would be interesting to see] a business that doesn’t adopt circular practices over the next 10 years,” Jamieson explains.

Decarbonisation of the supply chain is underway On the Sustainability stage, the agenda was also packed with insights from other businesses discussing similar topics, such sustainabilitymag.com

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DIAMOND SPONSOR

LEADING THE TRANSFORMATION TO REGENERATIVE BUSINESS MODELS HOW DOES SAP CONTRIBUTE TO A REGENERATIVE FUTURE?

Over 90% of biodiversity loss and half of total global emissions comes from the way we use materials today. Shifting to a circular economy reduces our impact on the planet and supports sustainable practices.

A circular economy has three key principles –eliminating waste, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems. For 50 years, companies have trusted SAP to manage their most valuable resources. We have a responsibility to help businesses be sustainable and regenerative, using our insights to provide full cycle transparency across supply chains.

Last year we launched SAP Responsible Design and Production, which accelerates global action through tailored intelligence that helps eliminate waste and design for circularity.

Sustainability is a top issue for our customers and an opportunity for SAP to drive transformative change after committing 30

March 2022

itself to net-zero carbon emissions across operations by 2030.

WHAT SAP SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS ARE AVAILABLE TO HELP CUSTOMERS?

Our responsibility is to achieve zero waste, zero emissions, and zero inequality. SAP's objective is to create positive economic, environmental, and social impact within planetary boundaries with special focus on climate action, circular economy, social responsibility, and holistic steering and reporting.

SAP Cloud for Sustainable Enterprises, alongside our industry and supporting solutions help customers embed operational, experiential, and financial data and insights that drive sustainability at scale, e.g. customers can plan supply chains to reduce emissions, ethically source materials, and manufacture with minimal environmental impact.

We continue to innovate in response to market dynamics, such as the introduction

SAP

Circular Economy: Leading Transformations to Regenerative Business Models

of Plastic Taxes in the UK. There are 400 packaging schemes in place, presenting huge complexity for Consumer Product organisations. SAP Responsible Design and Production provides a global view of material taxes and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) schemes, alongside insights into downstream impacts of material choice. This enables smart management of packaging obligations and sustainability performance.

HOW DOES SAP ENSURE ZERO WASTE, ACTION AND TRANSPARENCY?

If we can provide insight on materials while they are built into products and as they become waste, we can combine that with a product's CO2 journey.

We look at this holistically. The broader sustainability agenda is very high priority -

How do we turn this into something that's actionable? Products and materials account for 45-50% of CO2 emissions. Through our systems, we can provide transparency on global material flows and we have the unique capacity to provide that to businesses and the broader ecosystem.

SAP CEO: CHRISTIAN KLEIN INDUSTRY: SOFTWARE & TECHNOLOGY HQ: WALLDORF, GERMANY

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EVENT REVIEW

TESTIM NIALS “ It’s really great to see the enthusiasm and experts around here at Tobacco Dock” ADAM SAVITZ

SUSTAINABILITY DIRECTOR EMEALA, JOHNSON CONTROL

“ I’ve met so many amazing people here today who are really inspiring and really know sustainability and the challenges that we face” STEPHEN KELLY

VICE PRESIDENT OF MANAGED SERVICES, NTT UKI

“ There is a window of opportunity, but that window is relatively small and closing” DR JAMES ROBEY

GLOBAL HEAD OF CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY, CAPGEMINI

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“ Planning can be the benefit, bonus, or the killer of the sustainable supply chain” JIM BRALSFORD

SENIOR DIRECTOR, INDUSTRY AND SOLUTIONS AT KINAXIS

“ It’s great to actually see peoples faces to be able to see their reactions and hear their questions afterwards” TARA KAUR

SUSTAINABILITY AMBASSADOR, SAP INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

“ The urgent need for change is now as it wil take years to achieve that” TOMAS ZABOROWSKI

HEAD OF SUSTAINABILITY EXCELLENCE, BAYER CROP SCIENCE

EVENT REVIEW

as data, technology, and innovation to decarbonise industries and create greener processes. Over recent years there has been a lot of talk about sustainable fuel in the aviation industry, but shipping must also decarbonise. Øinstein Jensen, Chief Sustainability Officer at Odfjell, uncovered some of the efforts at Odfjell to reduce the emissions of its vessels, breaking down some of the pros and cons of emerging alternative fuels.

Supply chains are under pressure from various angles. Decarbonisation is high on the agenda, but businesses in the agricultural sector are undergoing significant changes to meet the needs of an ever-growing population. With resources thinning across the globe, innovation is required to provide food for all regions.

Pippa Bailey, Head of Climate Change and Sustainability Practice at Ipsos, believes that a change in consumers’ approach to food is needed. “We’re going to have to make tougher choices in terms of diet to continue feeding the populations,” Bailey explained. “When we dig deeper, it’s a lack of knowledge and understanding. [...] We need to have measurability. We need to be accountable.”

Meanwhile, Tomas Zaborowski, Head of Sustainability Excellence at Bayer Crop Science, provides his thoughts as part of Climate Change and Sustainability The Tipping Point; a fireside chat with Blaise Hope, Chief Executive Officer at Sustainability Magazine. “The urgent need for change is now because it will take years to achieve that,” Zaborowski said.

The time for sustainability is now Some of the Sustainability LIVE speakers received particular attention from CNN, which was in attendance for the launch of

the inaugural event. One of these was Dr James Robey, Global Head of Corporate Sustainability at Capgemini, following his insightful talk that put many things into perspective — particularly around the use of data and the role of ‘purpose’ in sustainability regulations.

Robey explained some areas in which the audience may not have considered unsustainable, such as the incredibly large number of photos stored on personal mobile phones that are kept in the cloud.

He explains that around 90% of photos are never looked at, but required energy to be stored. sustainabilitymag.com

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DIAMOND SPONSOR

VISUALISING YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN See Threats Before They Become Real

VISUALISING RISK

Interos is leading a revolution to reinvent and recharge the world of global commerce and trade. Its breakthrough SaaS platform leverages the power of artificial intelligence and the world’s largest database of supplier relationships to provide unprecedented visibility into global supply chains, down to the nth tier.

By utilising AI, Interos helps reduce months of backward-looking manual spreadsheets that are still too often used to track supplier relationships. While it once was normal to check in with suppliers once a year, organisations now are looking for more enhanced tools to map, monitor and model supply chain relationships continuously and in real time.

Interos creates instant visualisations with continuous mapping, monitoring and modelling tools. It ingests and analyses 34

March 2022

tens of thousands of public and proprietary sources to pre-emptively identify and eliminate risks before they occur.

The company’s platform monitors for both physical and digital supply chain issues and assesses supply chain risk factors across six critical areas– finance, operations, regulatory, geopolitical, ESG, and cyber.

MAKING THE SUB-TIER VISIBLE

Interos has eliminated last-mile issues by using the same profiling criteria for all 345mn entities on its platform and the billions of inter-relationships among those entities.

Never has the need for greater visibility been such an imperative. Today, supply chain disruptions cost large companies, on average, US $184M annually and among 83% of those affected report material reputational damage.

Demand for Interos’ breakthrough solution

INTEROS

Jennifer Bisceglie, CEO & Founder Interos

is soaring (300%+ growth in the past two years) and comes at a time when billions of consumers around the world are feeling the effects of a severely strained global supply chain firsthand.

We need intelligent tools to build agility and resilience into supply chains to achieve trust and transparency, and to prevent the

next crisis. Interos has cracked the code for protecting the supply chains of the world’s largest companies and governments with its first-in-class, AI-powered, multi-factor, multitier, third-party risk management platform.

Interos CEO: JENNIFER BISCEGLIE INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & SERVICES HQ: WASHINGTON, USA is the average annual revenue loss companies face from supply chain disruption

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EVENT REVIEW

One Water: a UK business with a global reach Founded in 2005, One Water is a certified B Corporation founded by Duncan Goose to tackle the widespread issue that is access to clean drinking water around the world. The company was formed with the aim of selling products in the UK to fund clean drinking water initiatives through The One Foundation.

The One Foundation is on a mission to eliminate fatalities and combat the lack of drinking water, which currently affects around 771 million people worldwide. So far, the organisation has impacted more than 4 million people in this situation, by raising £20mn.

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EVENT REVIEW

In general, Robey believes it’s a critical time for sustainable action.

“There is a window of opportunity, but that window is relatively small and closing,” Robey explained.

Creating a sustainable business community Sustainability LIVE received great feedback from attendees and speakers. It gave them the opportunity to not only reflect on the outcomes of COP26 but to share thoughts and processes to build a sustainable business community. With collaboration being a common theme among all attendees, the overarching goal is to allow both the planet and the population to thrive for years to come.

This is just a handful of the insights available at Sustainability LIVE, and with an abundance of knowledge available, attendees and other viewers can catch up on all sessions from the hybrid event through the Brella platform. It enables on-demand viewing and provides a method of contact between registered attendees to allow businesses to collaborate further. As stated by Andrea Vena, Chief Climate and Sustainability Officer at the European Space Agency, “a single entity cannot really be carbon neutral. sustainabilitymag.com

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PETRONAS’ CSO ON ACHIEVING NET ZERO CARBON EMISSIONS BY 2050 AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: HELEN ADAMS

PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

PETRONAS

With a net zero aspiration, energy company PETRONAS is ready to support a more sustainable Malaysia

P

ETRONAS was the first Asian oil and gas company to publish its aspiration to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The company is now working hard at developing its pathway to this destination and the Chief Sustainability Officer Charlotte Wolff-Bye is leading the way. Her role is to embed sustainability into strategy and to ensure that the company has good governance to match.

“The task at hand is to deliver robust strategy, engage stakeholders on all activities, implement roadmaps and also set the pace for accelerated sustainability action across PETRONAS.” Wolff-Bye joined the company in 2021, but she has always been associated with sustainability.

“Over the years, I have worked in a number of different industry sectors. I have, I would say, quite a lot of empirical experience to fall back on, including technical, field, but also strategy experience,” says Wolff-Bye. “I think all that experience is really relevant now in my role as a Chief Sustainability Officer at PETRONAS, because PETRONAS is a national oil company, so this is a company that's not only driven by market forces, but it has much broader responsibilities to shoulder.”

“PETRONAS is there to support the economic development of Malaysia, progress of society in general, and foster industrial development and so on. I think

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“ PETRONAS IS THERE TO SUPPORT THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF MALAYSIA, PROGRESS OF SOCIETY IN GENERAL” CHARLOTTE WOLFF-BYE

VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF SUSTAINABILITY OFFICER, PETRONAS

Example of an image caption

PETRONAS

with my experience across a number of sectors, knowing perhaps where the pitfalls are, and drawing good examples, I think that will come to a good stead here at PETRONAS.” Fascinated by innovation, Wolff-Bye was drawn to a career in sustainability.

“I believe in the private sector enterprise.

Basically, business is where innovation happens. Business really is there to serve its customers and fulfill their needs, it makes the world economy go round. Coupled that with sustainability, I think you have a golden combination of transforming society for the better and for a better future, so I think that's my motivation for working in sustainability.”

The impact of COP26 Over the years, Wolff-Bye has attended many COP events, including the most recent one in Glasgow, which ended up in a compromised agreement.

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“Now, of course, because our climate system is deteriorating, every community across the world will sense a change in the climate, and it's a great concern. These COP meetings have become the beacon of hope.

There is no other process in the world that actually can bring momentum to action on climate change, so expectations are always incredibly high.”

For the first time, Wolff-Bye feels that there was a high level of participation from the private sector. People were showcasing the newest technology, matching finance with projects, seeking customers and bringing solutions together.

“To me, it was really a momentous COP, but of course everything can be improved.

The world is changing, and with that also the COP process must change.

“Now it's important to also bring the real economy into this, because it is the polluting sectors and the consumers of polluting

CHARLOTTE WOLFF-BYE TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF SUSTAINABILITY OFFICER INDUSTRY: OIL & ENERGY

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: MALAYSIA Charlotte Wolff-Bye joined PETRONAS as Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer in June 2021.

Prior to joining PETRONAS and relocating to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Charlotte helmed the role of Vice President Sustainability in London, United Kingdom, at Norwegian multinational energy company, Equinor, with key efforts that include delivering the company’s first sustainability strategy to steer the company’s low carbon focus.

With professional experience across many industry sectors, Charlotte has been a champion of corporate sustainability practices.

Charlotte currently serves on the board of trustees of the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), Cambridge, United Kingdom

PETRONAS

fuels, if you like, that really need to come together and solve this - together with the policy makers as well as the nongovernmental organisations.”

Cleaner, conventional and renewable resources at PETRONAS As the world shifts to a more sustainable one, PETRONAS recognises the responsibility to balance the risks of climate change, but also with the mandate to produce affordable and reliable energy, in a sustainable manner.

“We're really looking hard at where we can reduce emissions in our own production, and we are also focusing, for instance, on carbon capture and storage. This is a very important area for us, where basically you capture the CO2 from the operations, and then you sequester them.

“We are also looking at it from a commercial perspective, so could we perhaps also offer this opportunity for other sectors, basically capture their CO2 and help them store it permanently. This is one area that we are exploring.”

Like many of their peers, PETRONAS is working on renewables and has a target for 2024 to increase renewables capacity to 3,000 megawatt.

“We are making good progress towards this target, but we also are working in adjacent industries in renewable spaces, not just about energy provision,” says Wolff-Bye. Influenced by the UN's sustainability development goals, PETRONAS has its own lenses of sustainability.

“We have something we call the Four Lenses, and the Four Lenses inform our decisions and our activities across the board in the company. These are about continued value creation, so it really is about driving long-term business value.

Sustainability is not for charity or altruistic 44

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“ WE ARE FOCUSING ON CUSTOMERS AND STAKEHOLDERS, SO NO LONGER DO WE JUST SUPPLY OUR PRODUCTS” CHARLOTTE WOLFF-BYE

VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF SUSTAINABILITY OFFICER, PETRONAS

PETRONAS

1974

Year founded

Oil and energy Industry

50,000 Number of employees

purposes. This is about transforming the business to be sustainable and also making profits in the future. It's about safeguarding the environment, creating positive social impacts. We must create social value, through our daily operations and adhere to responsible governance as well, which is really important to ensure that we're constantly reminding ourselves that we apply strong governance mechanisms and ethical business practices throughout. This is our top-down steer to effectively embed sustainability across our group, so not just through our decision making, but also for our daily business operations.”

The PETRONAS statement of purpose is, ‘A progressive energy and solutions partner enriching lives for a sustainable future’ and Wolff-Bye uses this as her guide as CSO. “The statement of purpose provides us the direction we need for everything we do now in the business. The world is changing. Our industry is transforming like never before, and this statement of purpose, provides us the guide of where we are going, and it reflects our growth agenda and also the innovation we are aspiring to.”

As PETRONAS is predominantly an oil and gas producing company, the role of the company is certainly changing.

“We are focusing on customers and stakeholders, so no longer do we just supply our products.”

This is important in Malaysia, which will grow by a third in population over the next couple of decades, to surpass 40 million people.

“At PETRONAS, we need to make sure we deliver reliable, sustainable, and affordable energy to support progressive growth, but it must be low carbon growth.”

ESG at PETRONAS There has been a tremendous growth in interest in ESG, but also in investments linked to ESG criteria. At PETRONAS, this has been welcomed.

“It basically rewards good sustainability performance. If you think about investor dialogues, maybe even five years ago, rarely would they have been asking anything about non-financial performance, but now actually I think the world has woken up to sustainability challenges around climate change, loss of nature and inequality actually impact any business strategy. Now that's being embedded into evaluation criteria.” sustainabilitymag.com

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“THIS IS ABOUT DRIVING LONGTERM BUSINESS VALUE. THIS IS NOT FOR CHARITY OR ALTRUISTIC PURPOSES” CHARLOTTE WOLFF-BYE

VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF SUSTAINABILITY OFFICER, PETRONAS

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PETRONAS

STATS & FACTS Malaysia alone will grow by a third in population over the next couple of decades, so to surpass 40 million people PETRONAS has committed to this aspiration of net zero carbon emissions by 2050

One strong aspect in ESG, is the number of women in business and what companies are doing to improve their gender diversity.

“For women in business, we've still got a way to go. But here in PETRONAS, we have such strong female participation in our workforce across the board. We also support scholarships for females in engineering and STEM subjects in general. If you look at our leadership, our chief finance officer is a woman. Our company secretary is a woman. Our HR head is a woman.

They all sit on the executive committee. That's quite strong female leadership, but of course, what comes to women in business in general?

It's not about changing women. It's about changing the culture of organisations and across the board.”

Throughout the next 12 months at PETRONAS, Wolff-Bye has her work cut out for her.

“We need to work with the wider ecosystem. We are only as strong as our value chain, so we really need to work with them - all the way from vendors to our customers - and see how we can come together to really make sure that we can together achieve a net zero carbon future.”

In the immediate future, Wolff-Bye will be attending BizClik Media’s Sustainability Live 23rd - 24th February and she has a message for her colleagues.

“Sustainability challenges around climate change, nature loss, and inequality have been on a slow burner for a long, long time.

But now they have become existential to business success.”

If companies across the world don't manage to address these issues with gusto, the fabric of society really will be stretched. PETRONAS will do its own bit for that not to happen.

sustainabilitymag.com

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ESG

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IS DRIVEN BY ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE T Development starts at the bottom and to determine the success of future leaders, organisations must invest in their sustainable career paths WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW

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he majority of business insights are usually obtained from experienced leaders who are driving positive changes within their organisations. But, who will take the reins in years to come?

Encouraging young individuals into leadership positions is a crucial step that enterprises must take to ensure the longevity of their operations. This discussion goes hand-in-hand with the increasing emphasis on social responsibility within businesses.

While more organisations are taking steps to become inclusive, this begins in the hiring process. Circl, offers an inclusive leadership training programme to level the playing field for minority groups and under-represented young people, as it truly believes anyone can become a leader.

“ WE PROVIDE THE COACHING SKILLS ELEMENT TO THAT WITH YOUNG PEOPLE, THE FUTURE LEADERS, BEING THE CORE ASPECT OF THAT COACHING SKILLS PROGRAMME” CHARLIE STAINFORTH

CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, CIRCL

In conversation with Charlie Stainforth, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, and Meenal Patel, Head of Growth at Circl, we were graced with thought-provoking discussions around the current employment landscape, the importance of diversity and inclusion in hiring, and how the organisation empowers both young leaders and industry professionals from all backgrounds.

A catalyst for social and business development As one of the Circl founders, Stainforth had a significant input into how the organisation has developed. Working alongside Adrain Blair, Co-Founder and Chair of Circl, he sustainabilitymag.com

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approached the business with his past experiences in mind. He told us about how he “worked in the social sector with underrepresented young people and got to know lots of different individuals who had really challenging circumstances, but were so capable.”

“I found that building an organisation around supporting those young people, to make an impact on professionals and organisations that they are going to be the future leaders of, is not only a good thing to do, but a necessity.”

Experiencing significant growth since its founding, supporting large companies like Google, McKinsey, Meta and Uber, Circl introduced Patel to the team to bring a

new perspective from her background in leadership for Barclays and JP Morgan Chase & Co. “One of the things that I always remember is when I was making the decision to potentially move and follow my own passions and dreams — wanting to create more impact — I almost didn't make that decision. I almost didn't go and do that because I felt this burden of responsibility around how I was representing so many people who looked like me and where they could get to in their careers,” Patel says. “It's not just about hiring more diverse people. It's about creating environments that allow them to flourish.”

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ESG

“ I ALMOST DIDN'T GO AND DO THAT BECAUSE I FELT THIS BURDEN OF RESPONSIBILITY AROUND HOW I WAS REPRESENTING SO MANY PEOPLE WHO LOOKED LIKE ME” MEENAL PATEL

CHEAD OF GROWTH, CIRCL

Inclusive leadership requires a new perspective ‘The action or state of including or of being included within a group or structure’; the definition of inclusion already forms a statement for businesses to follow. Circl’s approach to leadership is centred around providing coaching skills to individuals — whether they are experienced professionals or new to leadership — to bridge the talent gap, which proves to be beneficial for both the Gen Z workforce while also showing positive commercial implications.

Patel explains that Circl has worked with many organisations with their initial queries being: “How do we retain talent? How do we develop and invest in our people? And how do we improve on the diversity and inclusion piece?”, cementing the fact that businesses are conscious of their social responsibilities and are committed to making meaningful changes.

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So, how does Circl approach this? The Circl inclusive leadership programme puts professional leaders together with young individuals — usually from underrepresented groups — to breed creativity and provoke new perspectives that can be applied to their everyday working lives. “We help organisations build more inclusive cultures by giving their leaders the skills and experience to be inclusive. We do that by training them up on inclusive coaching skills, which is all about helping people find their own solutions to their answers,” says Stainforth.

He explains that “at some companies, they already have leadership academies and it won't surprise you that a lot of those leadership academies focus on inclusive leadership. We provide the coaching skills element to that with young people, the future leaders, being the core aspect of that coaching skills programme.”

The organisation has also found that growing firms — such as groups like Mention Me and Trustpilot — are implementing the programme on a quarterly basis to embed inclusivity into their daily operations.

Meanwhile, large corporations benefit from the applicable skills that employees gain from the programme, which allows leaders to implement what they have learned and develop their roles.

Queue the ‘Circl Match’ The accredited programme, recognised by the Association for coaching, sees groups of 20 leaders from an organisation — predominantly middle managers — paired with 20 ‘future leaders’ with shared interests, from outside the company, to participate in a series of online workshops with an accredited executive coach. This process is called the Circl Match, which is geared towards openness and allowing sustainabilitymag.com

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ESG

“ WE GET THE YOUNG PERSON TO COACH THE PROFESSIONAL ON WHAT THEIR CHALLENGE IS AND THE PROFESSIONAL HAS TO BE VULNERABLE AND OPEN” CHARLIE STAINFORTH CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, CIRCL

both professionals and young individuals, in preparation for — or the early stages of — their careers, to learn from each other and leverage their perspective differences.

“We get the young person to coach the professional on what their challenge is and the professional has to be vulnerable and open, which is a core skill of being inclusive.

By saying my challenge right now is that I've got a big issue with my boss and I’d love to have some coaching from you 18-year

old, young future leader on how to deal with that’. And that young person doesn’t need to have any experience of dealing with a difficult boss, but they can use the skills they’ve just learned as an equal on the programme to coach that manager on the challenge. Then they switch roles and the manager coaches the young person on their challenge,” Stainforth says.

Patel say, “It really shifts your perspective.

It opens your mind about the capabilities of people younger than you about the capabilities of people from all these different backgrounds.”

“When you are coaching this young person through their challenge, you are then getting another perspective shift in terms of people are being moved out of their lived experience into those of individuals from underrepresented backgrounds. You're suddenly getting an insight into a world that you’re never normally exposed to.” sustainabilitymag.com

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Making local food delivery sustainable AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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DELIVERY HERO

Making local food delivery sustainable, Jeff Oatham explains how Delivery Hero is reducing plastic in its ecosystem by sourcing more responsible packaging

O

ver the past few years, local food delivery has been booming. It has become an integral part of city living and is responsible for a significant portion of restaurant deliveries.

During the coronavirus pandemic — when food production and delivery was one of a few essential services to remain operational — restaurant-quality food deliveries have come a long way, and have increased as a result. According to McKinsey and Co., the food delivery sector is valued at over US$150bn; the figure has doubled since the onset of COVID-19 and tripled since 2017.

Now that city-dwellers have access to multiple types of food, at the click of a button, without having to leave the house (or the office in many cases), what will determine which platform they decide to order from?

With a global supply chain and client base, Delivery Hero has cemented its position as a leader in this space and is looking to provide more sustainable solutions for food delivery and create more options for consumers.

Founded in 2011, the company was formed from an online food ordering service that was founded in Berlin by Niklas Östberg, the firm’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer.

Operating in around 50 countries across the world, Delivery Hero takes great responsibility for the impacts of its global operations on the environment, but also those hired by the company to carry out exceptional services.

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Example of an image caption

DELIVERY HERO

In conversation with the company’s Senior Director of Sustainability, CSR and Safety, Jeff Oatham, he explains the initiatives the company will implement and divulges the team’s crucial role in Delivery Hero’s success.

Initiatives for a sustainable ecosystem As with many sustainability initiatives, innovation is critical both for meeting the needs of consumers — with generations becoming increasingly more conscious of their purchasing habits — and to reduce the environmental impact of the overall business and supply chain.

Delivery Hero launched a Sustainable Packaging Programme that will benefit its restaurant partners for a few reasons; they will have access to biodegradable packaging, increase appeal to sustainability-conscious consumers, and its partners will be able to source the solution through their established 60

March 2022

partnership. This is just one of the many ways in which the company is reducing its negative global impact.

“For us, it is about looking, understanding our climate footprint and impact, and then figuring out how we can make the biggest difference on that?” Oatham says. “Our longterm agenda is to build a company we can be proud of, and we believe we can do that by addressing and having a material impact on climate change.”

“We've been rolling out carbon measurements on a regional basis over the course of the last three years. This spring we’ll have our first kind of global footprint and that's across Scope one, two, and three. It's our entire emissions footprint,” Oatham explains.

“We know from our data measurement that the biggest drivers of our footprint are packaging and the vehicle emissions during delivery,” he says.

JEFFREY OATHAM TITLE: SENIOR DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY, CSR AND SAFETY INDUSTRY: INTERNET

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: GERMANY Jeffrey Oatham is the Director of Sustainability at Delivery Hero, leading the business’s efforts on the environment, giving back to society.

Jeff has over 15 years of experience in sustainable business, most of that working in FTSE100 firms in the United Kingdom. He brings insight to developing and implementing corporate responsibility programs in business across a range of sectors including tech, energy, finance, and logistics.

“ What we needed to do was to find a type of packaging that could compete against plastic in the eyes of restaurants and customers” JEFFREY OATHAM

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY, CSR AND SAFETY, DELIVERY HERO

Packaging products for modern consumption During the conversation with Oatham, packaging was one of the main talking points, which is the company’s response to climate change and the changes in consumer mindset around environmental responsibility. Recognising the saturation in the market for restaurant-grade plastic packaging, Oatham says: “We needed to find a type of packaging that could compete against plastic in the eyes of restaurants and customers, but we also wanted to meet sustainability requirements.”

Oatham continues: “Packaging needs to be food safe. We also wanted to make something that was plant-based, compostable and that would [withstand] the rigours of food deliveries. So, being moved around in the bags on the back of a bike or motorcycle.”

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Delivery Hero also explains that “a lot of the packaging out there will have certain additives in it,” which has repercussions for things like food safety. “It affects things like compostability and these are some things that we are able to overcome, by working with our packaging partners.” By launching its own global Sustainable Packaging Programme Delivery Hero aims to provide local restaurants with eco-friendly packaging solutions at a competitive cost. Piloting the concept in Austria, Chile, Hong Kong, Hungary, Qatar, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates, the company plans to expand the program to more markets in 2022.

“What we want to try to drive is sustainability across the ecosystem,and our restaurants are key to that.”

“Understanding from them ‘what are their interests? What's their ability to tackle and challenge some of these issues?’ We've

DELIVERY HERO

“The biggest drivers of our footprint are packaging and the vehicle emissions from delivery” JEFFREY OATHAM

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY, CSR AND SAFETY, DELIVERY HERO

worked with some of them to understand the feasibility of rolling out certain initiatives and what works in practice.”

Technology insights drive sustainability initiatives As a technology company at heart, one of the most obvious ways to incorporate sustainability into the platform is by leveraging Delivery Hero’s current capabilities and the expertise within its technology and product team. With “thousands of really talented engineers and product specialists,” Oatham delves into the organisation's intentions to utilise the full extent of the team’s capabilities to continuously improve its consumer experience while also creating a more sustainable solution for delivering goods to them.

“It was with the product teams, with whom my team and I worked, that we were

able to look together at how do we put in place a better system to get insights into what customers think around packaging or how they are approaching sustainability?

How do we develop new features within the product to connect customers to causes they care about? How do we look at designing features that would enable restaurants and vendors to take sustainable actions?,” he says. “It's really [about] how we leverage those internal capabilities and systems.”

Diversity, equity and inclusion have also played significant roles in developing the company as a whole. “One of the great milestones for the business overall last year was that we were among the first DAX40 companies to put in place a diversity and inclusion advisory board,” Oatham says. “So, we have that at the highest level of governance, supporting our management to understand the diversity and inclusion issues on a global basis.” sustainabilitymag.com

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DELIVERY HERO

Meeting the demands of the coronavirus pandemic “I led the coronavirus task force and the crisis response with some peers from March 2020, and that was an intense period, but also really gratifying to know that we are helping to keep our fellow employees safe.”

During a period lacking knowledge and certainty, coronavirus and the issues it raises have been one of the main challenges for Delivery Hero. But, Oatham acknowledged that many companies faced struggles during that time.

“It was challenging in that we were having to create things at the same time as learning something or not knowing anything. I don’t think that is an issue or a challenge that's unique to Delivery Hero,” Oatham says.

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Tackling future sustainability challenges As positivity looms around the corner in terms of the coronavirus pandemic and how it is affecting businesses and buying habits, one trend that will remain is the high demand for local delivery services.

When asked about the challenges that await, Oatham says, “the next big challenge that we are looking at… is on the logistics and delivery side.”

“When we look at our footprint we know that it's packaging and vehicle emissions” that must be addressed. He explains that Delivery Hero is considering how it will improve the sustainability of its vehicles through emissions reduction initiatives. “Tackling such major challenges such as reducing emissions from vehicles can only be done through multistakeholder partnerships.”

“Our long term agenda is to build a company we can be proud of”

Oatham elaborates on this. “When we look at the electrification of transport, that is a challenge because change must be driven within many different countries while working in partnership with a variety of organisations. Big issues must be addressed including infrastructure and encouraging use of electric vehicles.”

“We will be looking for partners who are able to help in the context of reducing emissions from transport and who can do that at scale across a range of markets, in different parts of the world.”

Aside from the company’s sustainability agenda, it will continue to expand its offerings across the globe through its quick commerce developments. “Last year we launched our logistics-as-a-service in 25 markets.”

JEFFREY OATHAM

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABILITY, CSR AND SAFETY, DELIVERY HERO sustainabilitymag.com

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DIVERSITY

FIRST-EVER

LGBT

BUSINESS CHAMPION IAIN ANDERSON IS A LEADER Cicero/AMO Co-Founder & Executive Chairman Iain Anderson is the UK’s first-ever LGBT business champion, and an advocate for companies driving global change

T

WRITTEN BY: BLAISE HOPE

he UK government made history in September 2021 when it appointed Iain Anderson, the Founder and Executive Chairman of global communications firm Cicero/AMO, as its first-ever business champion.

I spoke with Iain Anderson for an in-depth discussion on the state of LGBTQ+ acceptance at work, how the business world can affect change and the efforts he has been involved in.

Blaise Hope: Hi Iain, great to meet you. So tell us who you are and your journey to today.

Iain Anderson: Great. I'm Iain Anderson.

I am the UK’s first ever LGBT business champion and I also chair Cicero/AMO, 66

March 2022

which is a leading public policy research and communications business. I started off as a business journalist. I've covered corporate and economic issues all my life. I've worked with business and political leaders.

I launched my business about 20 years ago and work with corporates large and small, domestic and global across a range of sectors. I'm probably best known for working in and around the financial services and FinTech sector, but my business now works across virtually every part of the economy. If you cut me in half, which is a rather strange idea, I would say Ian likes being part of the debate. I have been very much involved in LGBTQ activism for about the past five or six years.

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DIVERSITY

BH: Sustainability is now firmly on the corporate agenda and diversity and inclusion goes into that. You don't even need to get people to agree with it, it's a no-brainer.

IA: This is why I was so keen to take you up on your offer. One of the things I'm trying to do is move this conversation from, purely the diversity and inclusion piece into the ESG conversation. For it to be a meaningful part of what corporates do around the 'S' of ESG. BH: What was the process of you finding out that you were going to be appointed before and immediately after?

IA: I probably talked myself into this job. I was hearing about initiatives the government had planned, not least the plan to have a global LGBT conference bringing together lots of kind governments and policymakers.

Two things struck me: the first was that nobody was really talking about the role of business. They were talking about political actors, civil society, actors, and, actually, businesses and the workplace is where most people spend most of their time.

The second is that most of my career as we built Cicero from the ground up, has effectively been operating an SME. Just before the pandemic hit, we sold a majority stake of the business to the global communications group Havas, which is part of [French media conglomerate] Vivendi. So I'm now part of a very large global business with a lot of power and strength.

“One of the things I'm trying to do is move this conversation from, purely the diversity and inclusion piece into the ESG conversation” IAIN ANDERSON

CO-FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, CICERO/AMO

sustainabilitymag.com

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DIVERSITY

I have seen the opportunities and challenges as an SME and now see the opportunities and challenges for larger businesses. I thought, why do all the efforts focus on large businesses? Then, I chaired the first-ever conversation hosted by the Minister for Women and Equalities [Rt Hon Elizabeth Truss MP] and myself, focused on supporting SMEs on LGBT at work.

The government said, “look, actually that was quite an interesting initiative. Would you like to take on this role as a business champion to shine a light on best practise and try to get large and small businesses collaborating?’

To go out and find some evidence to enable greater LGBT progress at work.

The government has a lot of data on gender at work, on ethnicity at work, on social mobility at work, but what it doesn't have is a lot of data on LGBTQ+ at work. I'm basically going out and about trying to get data to help make better informed policy.

BH: What lessons do you think are here for other governments trying to do the same thing?

“The government has a lot of data on gender at work, on ethnicity at work, on social mobility at work, but what it doesn't have is a lot of data on LGBTQ+ at work” IAIN ANDERSON

CO-FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, CICERO/AMO

IA: I think the exciting thing about this is it is the first time a government has appointed an LGBT business champion. This for me goes far beyond the classic diversity and inclusion piece.

I remember doing a conference in November 2019 when the topic was, ‘would environmental and social and governance [ESG] factors survive a cyclical downturn?’

Well, we haven't had a cyclical downturn.

We've had a global pandemic that has unleashed a very legitimate conversation about the role we all play in society and the role that business plays in society. So one of the things I'm trying to do out of this, and hopefully we'll see this replicated in other countries, as well, is to take some of this conversation out of purely being DEI and turning it into a meaningful, tangible element around the S part of ESG. It also has a bearing on the E and G parts of ESG, but S is where investors are trying to lock in long term meaningful change.

BH: I was going to now go straight in, and say ‘let's talk about corporates’, but I feel we should talk about investors first. That's a really interesting phrase ‘locking in the long term change’ through investors. Can you expand on that?

IA: If we look at some of the major public pension schemes, they are now asking very different questions than they were a decade ago. They're asking about corporate behaviour, intention and what's happening with supply chains. Increasingly - and rightly - investors, politicians, and now the regulators are posing some harder questions.

BH: You can't get away with a hollow commitment anymore. People are wise to it. Pre-2022, how would you characterise the state of affairs for LGBTQ+ people in the workplace and within corporate culture as a whole? sustainabilitymag.com

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DIVERSITY

IA: So I think the difficulty in your question is the, ‘as a whole’ bit. There are certain sectors of the economy that are doing pretty trailblazing work. I've come across a bank that has an amazing policy to support trans people, a major telecoms company, too, where they will step in with their private healthcare support at the point of medical transition. I've seen amazing examples where companies are trying to bring together the LGBTQ vote and allies.

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The really important bit is to ensure this is not just happening at head office.

We will hopefully soon meet much more in person, in a series of roundtables with various parts of the economy, just to find out where people are because I just don't think the ‘as a whole’ point is necessarily what's happening out there. I think different parts of the economy are going at very different speeds on this.

DIVERSITY

BH: Do you see change as more tied to generational shifts? Do you sense an organic desire in the corporate world?

IA: I think it's a bit of both. I do think it's a bit like my earlier point about investors and - let's face it - generational changes that are being aggregated in terms of how people are saving for their long term future and the kind of questions younger investors are asking were just not being asked by their parents. But I have seen a mindset change at board level, too.

I do think more and more companies understand, and the heartening thing is they seem to understand that for global companies there's an opportunity to affect change through their supply chains and where they operate, and sometimes where they operate is in places that are not safe for LGBTQ+ people. I mean, some territories where, we've got to be honest, you could be thrown off a building for being gay and face no consequences. In fact, you could be applauded by certain sections of society. So, there's been some pretty groundbreaking work with some organisations to create and make work a very safe place to be.

“ I've seen amazing examples where companies are trying to bring together the LGBTQ vote and allies” IAIN ANDERSON

CO-FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, CICERO/AMO

BH: Can you tell me more about your work with Lord Herbert and also initiatives, especially Safe to Be Me and LGBT At Work?

IA: So working a lot with, with, with Nick Herbert as he's working at a macro intragovernmental level. His work with the caucus of parliamentarians around the world to seek and secure LGBTQ rights is well-known. My role is to support his work but to bring that business element, to bring that business voice to be able to join the dots in some of the wider efforts. Nick is leading the initiative for the first global LGBT conference which takes place on June 27-29 this year, around the 50th anniversary of the first Pride March in the UK [July 1, 1972].

What I am most actively engaged in is the Safe to Be Me conference from June 29-July 1.

Getting business commitments to create a specific sort of business declaration that will get businesses signing up to at least the UN principles on LGBTQ+ rights. I want to write in specific commitments to get large and small businesses working together, back to my earlier theme that we work in commitments around supply chains, that we don't reinvent the wheel, but we actually make the wheel a bit bigger.

BH: What do you hope to accomplish as a legacy of what you're doing?

A commitment to equality. We made a commitment to an LGBTQ+ network here in the UK as a long term thing. That's why I'm so keen to link this into the current debate around ESG, a meaningful and tangible thing that businesses can do around the social part of ESG. So that this is locked in.

Right now, about 20% of LGBTQ+ people in the UK do not feel they can be out at work. We've got to try to drive that number as low as we possibly can.

BH: Iain Anderson, thank you very much. sustainabilitymag.com

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DELIVERING

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NTT provides a data centre platform and end-to-end solution from edge to core to cloud, for a future of speed, security, and sustainability in every region

D

igital transformation is driving the need for more bandwidth across the world and across every vertical, whether healthcare, scientific research, content streaming, education technology, software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, as well as business continuity and resiliency services. Everything now demands greater data capacity, connectivity, flexibility, and ease of deployment.

NTT Ltd. was formed to meet the needs of this digital world, providing end-to-end ICTmanaged services solutions across networks, data centres, security and collaboration. A series of strategic acquisitions has made NTT a global digital solutions provider. This expertise combined with its strong heritage as a communications provider makes NTT Ltd. well placed to serve the exponential growth in the market for data centre capacity, alongside the adoption of cloud infrastructure and services that will define this decade. Now, it is one of the world’s top three global data centre companies.

Masaaki Moribayashi, the President and Board Director of NTT, has been with the wider NTT company for over 30 years and overseen much of its growth strategy. He has held leadership positions internationally for NTT in Hong Kong, US, Japan and UK and played a key role in the company’s data

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NTT's GLOBAL DATA CENTERS

“ We are very excited to expand the business” MASAAKI MORIBAYASHI

PRESIDENT AND BOARD DIRECTOR, NTT LTD.

centre growth and investment strategy. He joined NTT Ltd. in London in 2019 and took up his current position as President in 2021.

“I have spent much of my career in the data centre industry” says Moribayashi “and have worked in different regions for NTT, building and growing our data centre footprint and infrastructure to allow NTT to serve its clients and help deliver digital transformation across the globe.”

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Florian Winkler is the Chief Executive Officer of NTT Global Data Centers EMEA and has 25 years in the ICT sector and 10 years in data centres.

“This is a very dynamic environment,” says Winkler. “I worked for global players like Siemens, and then 10 years at British Telecom. It is useful to have had that experience when developing the data centre division in a corporate setting: it has all the strengths and backing of NTT while preserving the entrepreneurial spirit that keeps us agile and eager for growth. I really enjoy working in a dynamic environment with lots of growth and expansion with the international cooperation we have under the NTT family. That is what excites me — that

FLORIAN WINKLER TITLE: CEO OF GLOBAL DATA CENTERS EMEA, NTT LTD. INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: GLOBAL Florian Winkler has over 20 years of experience in the ICT and data centre sectors. He has developed ICT solutions for major clients, as well as built and run client-oriented organisations and processes in various roles covering consultancy, business development and general management. In 2019, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Global Data Centers EMEA, where he is responsible for the operational management and further expansion of the business in that region. Florian holds a master’s degree in Economics from the University of Augsburg (Germany) and an MBA from the University of Dayton (USA).

NTT’s history and the rapid creation of a global data centre giant NTT was a state monopoly founded in 1952, with roots tracing back to the beginning of modern communications. It privatised in 1985 and two years later made history with a stock offering of US$36.6bn.

Today, it is a global telecommunications leader whose actions change our world and with huge strength in its digital backbone.

It employs more than 300,000 people in 200 countries and has US$109bn in revenue across its divisions. NTT Ltd. was launched on July 1, 2019, and has become one of the

EXECUTIVE BIO

global presence and the solutions we can bring to help our client’s transform.”

NTT's GLOBAL DATA CENTERS

MASAAKI MORIBAYASHI TITLE: PRESIDENT AND BOARD DIRECTOR, NTT LTD. INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: GLOBAL

EXECUTIVE BIO

Masaaki Moribayashi was appointed President and Board Director in April 2021, and he is directly responsible for Global Data Center business, mobile and IoT business, submarine cable business, and Japanese multi-national clients. Prior to his current position, he was SEVP Services and Board Director at NTT Ltd. from July 2019 to March 2021. From June 2018 to June 2019, he was SEVP at NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) based in Japan, where he was responsible for technology, services, operation, information security, and global businesses. From 1984, he experienced a variety of positions in NTT Group including SVP and Board Director at NTT Com, responsible for Global Data Centers and Cloud businesses, Managing Director of NTT Europe Limited based in London, and President and CEO of NTT Com Asia Limited in Hong Kong.

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“ We are the only one that is not just a pure data centre or colocation provider. The strengths of NTT as a company are unprecedented” FLORIAN WINKLER

CEO OF GLOBAL DATA CENTERS EMEA NTT LTD

world’s largest ICT providers and top three data centre providers. It was formed by bringing together 31 brands from a series of acquisitions, amalgamated into one NTT brand for the future of digital transformation.

Major names were folded into NTT’s Global Data Centers division, including e-shelter, RagingWire, Gyron, Netmagic, and NTT Communications Nexcenter. These brands serve every continent and bring together decades of data centre experience and businesses that have allowed NTT to establish its market-leading position.

While these acquisitions provided a nonorganic growth basis for NTT, its organic investment strategy is now growing its global footprint significantly. In September 2021, it announced a 20% footprint expansion over the following 18 months.

Today, NTT Ltd. has a revenue of US$11bn, 40,000 employees, and NTT Group has invested an annual average of US$5bn in research and development for the next five years.

Meeting diverse priorities of sustainability, speed and security in data centre demand NTT’s Global Data Centers is able to provide retail, wholesale and hyperscale solutions sustainabilitymag.com

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NTT's GLOBAL DATA CENTERS

that deliver on the priorities in each region.

“What we call the digital backbone is our fabric between the edge and the cloud,” says Winkler. “Our proposition delivers hybrid IT solutions that include data centre infrastructure that is specific to our clients' security and vertical needs.”

Winkler and Moribayashi have observed how the data centre evolves from region to region, for example, trends, like cloud computing, might emerge in the US for example and then transfer to EMEA and APAC, and today the focus is very much on sustainability.

“Sustainability is a key focus,” says Moribayashi. “A good example is when we started using renewable energies and invested in a solar and wind power plant in India. Meanwhile, our data centres in London use 100% renewable energy and have a unique cooling system, which has significantly reduced the power consumption.”

NTT’s Global Data Centers has committed to the Climate Neutral Data Center Pact, which commits the company to operating their data centres in the EU in a climateneutral way by 2030. Indeed, it is the first large data centre operator in the UK to achieve the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology certification (BREEAM) rating of Excellent for their London 1 site, certifying that it meets the high standards of the world’s longest established environmental assessment methods.

What sets NTT’s Global Data Centers apart from the rest of the industry NTT’s Global Data Centers has a broad range of clients. However, the majority of their client base is made up of cloud providers and big enterprises, like banks – two industries experiencing worldwide innovation, investment, growth and the 82

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promotion and expansion of digital services.

All of them plug neatly into the solution stack that the company has built.

“We are special among the top data centre players in the world,” says Winkler. ”We are the only company that is not just a pure data centre or colocation provider.

The strengths of NTT as a company are unprecedented.”

Winkler says this allows NTT to fulfil the changing requirements of any industry.

“This gives us the ability to serve multiple types of clients. We can provide exactly what's

good for hyperscalers, but also what’s good for the enterprise market. That's why this service portfolio — combining what we have in data centres with the strength of our network, security and managed services — is compelling because ICT is always transforming.”

“NTT’s Global Data Center Interconnect (GDCI) — an integrated global network fabric service — delivers a cross regional data centre network and private secure connection to major cloud service providers and contributes to client’s digital transformation as a digital backbone. On the mobile side, with private

5G, NTT owns the major mobile company in Japan, so that means we can provide a secure managed network end-to-end from the device to the cloud,” says Moribayashi.

“This is a differentiator for NTT across the data centre and telecoms industries. Telecom competitors don’t operate their own data centres as many spun those operations off some time ago. Data centre companies don’t have the network. We have both. We believe having the secure end-to-end infrastructure provides huge potential for us to serve our clients and communities.” sustainabilitymag.com

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NTT's GLOBAL DATA CENTERS

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“On the mobile side, with private 5G, NTT owns the major mobile company in Japan, so that means we can provide a secure managed network end-to-end from the device to the cloud” MASAAKI MORIBAYASHI PRESIDENT AND BOARD DIRECTOR, NTT LTD.

Building a total solution for our sustainable future through the IOWN initiative The company is also looking to build a world that transcends the typical constraints of physical connectivity operations, bridging all current infrastructure together. A powerful illustration of this offering is the IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network) initiative, which promises the “total mobilisation of city and mobility” with a roadmap through to 2030 to offer a sustainable and regenerative solution for businesses. NTT will maximise the benefits of its technologies by building out an all photonics network that will provide end-toend coordination of ICT resources. Included is a Super White Box that supports the next generation of computing platforms as well as quantum cryptographic communication and traffic flow management: systematically and methodically dealing firmly with issues of latency, security and bandwidth flow

that plague international communications.

Through Digital Twin computing and a cognitive foundation, its network will allow for predictive action, analysis and optimisation, marking a complete departure from disaggregated computing, and the entrance of an era of low power consumption, large capacity with high quality, and low latency. The initiative promises 100x less power, 125x greater transmission capacity, and a latency reduction of 200*3. NTT believes this will deliver a sustainability-first.

NTT is well placed, with its digital backbone, data centre footprint and expertise, to provide end-to-end solutions that are secure, sustainable and connected and help their clients across all sectors navigate their digital transformation.

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BRAND POWER:

THREE

CONSUMER GOODS

MULTINATIONALS

ON THREE CONTINENTS

ADDING STAR POWER TO THE SBTi 86

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The introduction of the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) marked a shift away from a culture of greenwashing or, more accurately, the ability for companies to easily get away with

WRITTEN BY: BLAISE HOPE

B

orn out of a collaboration between major international organisations and nonprofits, the stated goal of the SBTi is to show companies best practises for curtailing emissions and provides them with resources, advice and data on how to achieve net zero. It helps them set targets, meet them and articulate how they are going about it.

Calls for sustainability have regularly come hand-in-hand with corresponding calls for accountability from those making commitments as well as those avoiding them altogether. The 2020s is a new era, however, where even the holdouts are accepting that change is happening and will need to happen, wholesale.

We wanted to put a spotlight on one industry in which the SBTi focus on emissions as well as plastics, waste, recycling, pollution, community welfare, supply chain accountability, and customer welfare are all relevant: consumer goods.

We will take a closer look at three major multinationals: what they have pledged and what they are doing. The three companies cover an enormous range of products and maintain sales and supply chains on every continent and in even the most remote regions. This is not meant as an exposition of the consumer goods industry but rather a snapshot of what different companies, headquartered on different continents, are doing. More importantly, it is a picture of the public commitments and statements they have made. sustainabilitymag.com

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Procter & Gamble is headquartered in the United States, Unilever in London and Shiseido in Japan. All three have committed to the SBTi and all produce world-famous products and brands that are part of everybody’s daily lives. Understanding how they are aligning themselves and their brands with the SBTi is crucial to both informing projections and making predictions about consumer behaviour in the coming decades.

Procter & Gamble P&G’s Chief Sustainability Officer is a major figure in global corporate sustainability and was featured in our Trailblazer section earlier this year.

Virginie Helias has spent her entire career at the Cincinnati-based multinational and landed her first sustainability role by creating and pitching the job to the CEO a decade ago. sustainabilitymag.com

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Helias told French financial daily Les Echos in a 2017 interview that P&G had rejected industry greenwashing and planned to stay firmly to a course to sustainability informed and measured by science, saying (in French), “At P&G, we’ve never done ‘greenwashing’. We have a culture that is both factual and scientific: we would never have entered the topic of sustainable development if we did not have scientific arguments.”

In September last year, P&G announced a comprehensive plan to “accelerate action on climate change”.

“We are fully committed to use P&G’s innovation and ingenuity to unlock new solutions to address climate change,” David S. Taylor, Chairman, P&G President and Chief Executive Officer said at the time.

The company submitted its progress to the SBTi and committed to reducing emissions from its operations by 50% and across its supply chain by 40% by 2030, as well as drawing 100% of the energy used by its manufacturing sites from renewable sources. The goal for 2040 is to be net zero across its entire supply chain.

P&G is also a founder and member of the Renewable Thermal Collective and part of the 50L Home Coalition. Its portfolio of products includes Ariel, Pantene, Bounty, Charmin, Crest, Fairy, Febreze, Gillette, Head & Shoulders, Lenor, Olay, Oral-B, Pampers, Tide and Vicks.

Unilever Unilever is pursuing an aggressive and ambitious route to net-zero emissions across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 by 2039 - a pointed strategy to beat by 11 years the target set in the Paris Agreement.

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Thomas Lingard, Unilever’s Global Director for Climate and Environment says “Science-based targets set the basis and guiding principles for all climate action strategy at Unilever.

All our brands are covered by our overall targets, and some have also set themselves individual sciencebased targets that go beyond our overarching goals.”

The firm’s focus for this decade and the 2030s is on reducing emissions rather than carbon offsetting and it aims to have halved the carbon footprint of its products in 2010 by 2030. It has broken its emissions reduction targets into short, medium and long term goals. It plans to reduce operational (Scope 1 & 2) emissions 70% by 2025 from 2015 (short term), by 100% by 2030 (medium) and full net zero by 2039.

Unilever grabbed headlines in 2020 when it announced that it would put €1 billion (US$1.13 billion) in a climate and nature fund. Its Chief Executive Officer Alan Jope said at the time, “While the world is dealing with the devastating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, and grappling with serious issues of inequality, we can’t let ourselves forget that the climate crisis is still a threat to all of us. Climate change, nature degradation, biodiversity decline, water scarcity – all these issues are interconnected, and we must address them all simultaneously.”

Unilever brands include Ben & Jerry’s (long associated with activism), Pukka, Axe, Cif, Comfort, Knorr, Rexona, Dove, Lux and Lifebuoy. The latter offers hygiene, cleaning and health products that help prevent disease in far-flung corners of the world. sustainabilitymag.com

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Shiseido Shiseido, a multinational cosmetics firm based in Chuo City, Japan, announced its accreditation under the SBTi in 2020. That was a big year for the company’s Sustainability mission as a whole.

In 2020, Shiseido announced the formation of its Sustainability Committee, “a dedicated body to ensure detailed discussion and timely management decisions concerning sustainability issues.”

In 2019, the firm had already endorsed the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations, and in its 2020 Sustainability Report said it had “analysed risks and opportunities associated with the transition to a carbon-free society, as well as those posed by drastic changes in the natural environment.”

That report laid out Shiseido’s three-pronged strategy of reducing its carbon footprint, as well as developing sustainable products and procurement practises, and revealed that it had redesigned the manufacturing process at both new and existing factories, introducing more efficient equipment, switching to lower-impact energy sources and using renewables. Shiseido has promoted the installation of solar power systems at sites in Japan and abroad as well as using hydroelectric power when possible.

As well as emissions, Shiseido also set medium term targets for palm oil, paper, water, and waste, and plans to make its product containers 100% sustainable by 2025.

Shiseido-branded products are some of the most recognisable in cosmetics and it is a major player in the Asian market. As with P&G and Unilever, the weight of its commitment is one thing - but the weight of all its branding is something else entirely.

These brands touch every aspect of household life. So, in turn, do their public actions and commitments. sustainabilitymag.com

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HOW WYOMING HYPERSCALE FORMED THE WORLD'S IDEAL DATA CENTRE

WRITTEN BY: BLAISE HOPE PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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WYOMING HYPERSCALE

Wyoming Hyperscale is Trenton Thornock's vision of a liquid-cooled, renewable-fueled, minimal power, no-water, and carbon-negative data centre made real

W

yoming Hyperscale White Box, or just Wyoming Hyperscale, has a story behind it that is a modern version of an old corporate founding retelling. A forwardthinking, future-proof, family firm in the Old American West.

Wyoming Hyperscale is the brainchild of siblings on a family ranch near Evanston, Wyoming. Bought from a bankruptcy in the 1990s, the 12,000-acre plot sits 2,316 metres (7,600 feet) above sea level, on the northern ridgetop of Aspen Mountain.

The tagline “The End of Air Cooling” spells out neatly how innovative the project is.

It is a fully sustainable, innovative and allinclusive data centre solution.

The project offers: a 30MW critical IT load, 10MW vaults using under 1200 square metres, a dedicated on-site substation with 120MW design capacity, 8 ​ 0kW average rack density, 100+kW/rack high-density compute capacity at scale, less than half the per megawatt capital cost of comparable cold plate HPC [high-performance computing] expansions. It is also the first “geothermalcoupled” hyperscale data centre known.

According to the company itself, it is “the hyperscale you should have been planning and permitting for immediate construction two years ago​​” with the “potential for infinite runtime with diverse natural gas storage and multiple high pressure gas transmission lines 96

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WYOMING HYPERSCALE

Wyoming Hyperscale

running through adjoining acreage owned by the family​.”

Trenton Thornock, the Founder and Managing Member of Wyoming Hyperscale White Box, says “one of the things we wanted to do was to create a situation where our tenants could find things that they can't find anywhere else in the world.”

“My background as a CFO had me doing large scale industrial developments all over the world,” says Thornock. “I've built plants in China, started businesses in Russia and South America, and just everywhere else you can imagine.”

Wyoming Hyperscale is Thornock’s purpose-driven mission and feels like a grand opus to a career of formidable industry and business relationships.

Wyoming Hyperscale is a data centre project that uses negligible water and power by relying on Liquid Immersion Cooling (LIC).

“In addition to the operating efficiency…is a connection to an indoor farming facility.”

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Farming is carbon negative and by growing produce that is sold locally on the same land as the data centre, obviating the need for haulage from elsewhere, social value impact is embedded here for the community, climate and customer.

The project uses resources on site, taps into renewable sources and maximises the use of an ideal situation by, frankly, making sure it is ideal from the planning stage.

Benefits of the set-up run deep and by building the concept from the ground-up, Thornock can maximise the benefits of using LIC to speed up construction.

“One of the benefits we get from liquid cooling is we don't have to hang a lot of stuff overhead, so all that HVAC equipment goes away,” says Thornock. “We still have pipes where we have to move the heat, but those can be on the floor, which means we don't have a lot of suspended stuff overhead.

“That has a knock on effect in the engineering, in that our data halls are clear

WYOMING HYPERSCALE

span, metal buildings. To build a clear span metal building on a concrete slab takes less than three months.”

The core benefit, though, is that switching from air cooling to Liquid Cooling reduces cost of cooling by 95%.

Thornock runs the business, his brother Brady the ranch, and the five other siblings are silent partners. It is Thornock’s career supervising major industrial builds that makes the project possible. Bringing in all the right partners and expertise has also allowed the project to come online in just a few years. Construction on Phase 1 is ongoing but the partnerships that brought it together mean progress has been rapid. Construction began on January 3, 2022. The current expectation is to install 10 megawatts in October 2022, ten megawatts in November 2022, and ten megawatts in December 2022. Full commissioning of the first ten megawatts is expected to complete by the end of 2022.

TITLE: FOUNDER AND MANAGING MEMBER INDUSTRY: DATA CENTRE LOCATION: HOUSTON, TEXAS, US

EXECUTIVE BIO

How partnerships and knowledge shaped a Hyperscale of the future Wyoming Hyperscale is the product of a lot of experience, a lot of expertise, a lot of interest from very large companies.

Unsurprisingly, it is largely focused on providing for very large Content Delivery Networks, and while Thornock cannot name the clients lined up, they have been partners in the process, too. The will to set the solution up effectively comes in from all angles.

That everybody involved knows what the market wants, could articulate it and then could make it happen actually owes less to the serendipity of the site itself and more to the people Wyoming Hyperscale has been able to draw on. Partnerships define this project’s success.

TRENTON THORNOCK

Trenton K. Thornock is Founder and Managing Member of Wyoming Hyperscale White Box, Chief Financial Officer of Wyoming Hyperscale Indoor Farms, and a Senior Consultant with the Boxley Group. He is also an owner of Hyperfuels, the first e-commerce racing fuels retailer and US distributor of TOTAL racing lubricants.

Trenton was previously Chief Financial Officer for The Miller Group, a Trinity Hunt Partners portfolio company and Group Chief Financial Officer for WellDog, a high-growth energy technology company backed by Shell Ventures. He was previously Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Scientific Drilling International, the world’s largest private horizontal and directional drilling company. He has served in senior and board roles at the Breitling Energy Corporation, ACI Jet, Duratherm, and U.S. Zinc.

Thornock began his career at Arthur Andersen after graduating from the University of Utah and later held finance positions at PPG Industries, working across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

OPERATIONS – FOCUSED MISSION CRITICAL ENGINEERING AND COMMISSIONING An MEP Engineering firm with roots in Mission Critical Commissioning and systems operation, we engineer systems focused on safe, reliable, maintainable and efficient operation of the facility.

Our employees are: • OCP Advanced Cooling Facility Subproject Lead • Uptime Institute Accredited Tier Designers • ASHRAE Published Authors Discover Now

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WYOMING HYPERSCALE

“ One of the things we wanted to do was to create a situation where our tenants could find things that they can't find anywhere else in the world” TRENTON THORNOCK

FOUNDER AND MANAGING MEMBER, WYOMING HYPERSCALE

Just as he cherry-picked technologies, Thornock did the same with people.

“If I were to build this from scratch and hire all of these people,” explains Thornock, “first of all, it probably wouldn't be possible. And even if I had all the money in the world and it was possible to get all of these people to leave their current organisations and join me at a startup, it would take years to put together this team.

Lumen Technologies, a Fortune 500 telecoms company, joins J.M. Gross Engineering (and its owner John Gross), engineering firm BCER and smart data centre solutions firm Submer as key partners in the project.

Sustainable goals all meet in one at Wyoming Hyperscale Wyoming Hyperscale is special in that, in a region experiencing a megadrought, it uses no water and while it uses far less energy than other data centres, what it does use is renewable.

“There are two reasons we selected this location for the data centre,” says Thornock.

“On the power side, we are surrounded by more than 400MW of existing wind power and our procurement agreement with Rocky Mountain Power has a 138KV power sustainabilitymag.com

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30MW Critical IT load 10MW vaults consuming less than 13,000 square feet of space each​

120MW Design capacity at dedicated on-site substation

80kW Average rack density

100+kW Rack high-density compute capacity at scale, less than 1/2 the per megawatt capital cost of comparable cold plate HPC [high-performance computing] expansions

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WYOMING HYPERSCALE

line coming out of the switch where this wind power converges on the grid. As a former commodities firm CFO… We see a lot of our competitors going out and buying swaps or entering into power purchase agreements, but the electrons that they're consuming are not actually green. They're probably coming from a gas fired or coalfired plant somewhere.”

This would have been the case for Wyoming Hyperscale, until it wasn’t.

“In November 2021, when Bill Gates and TerraPower announced they're building an advanced nuclear reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming, which happens to be where the base load power on our local grid comes from… By 2028, we'll be still plugged into the same wind switch, but the baseload power on that grid is going to be nuclear.

We'll be on one of the first completely decarbonised, non-hydro grids in North America. So now you've got a situation where the entire power generation is decarbonised. You've got a data centre that's 50% more efficient from a power consumption standpoint than air-cooled data centres. And it consumes no water.”

Thornock has also made sure the project is linked into key data centre clusters and is using fibre in the area that is lying unused.

“I think that it's important to note for people who want to understand the project that even though we're still in the construction phase, through our partnership with Lumen, we've activated a lot of the dark fibre that was already terminated near the site,” says Thornock.

Aspen Mountain itself has a history that made this possible. It is one of the highest points on the Union Pacific railway line. Fibre cannot be laid inside active rail tunnels, so telecoms companies instead had to run them over the mountain to rejoin the tracks sustainabilitymag.com

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BCER provides telecom and security engineering services for data centers of all sizes; from enterprise to Hyperscale.

Our redundant fiber distribution and Network Operation Center (NOC) designs create a highly reliable and effective operating environment.

To receive a copy of our Liquid Immersion Hyperscale data center white paper click here.

For more information contact

WYOMING HYPERSCALE

right-of-way below. This meant all the work for splicing out from the fibre line and regenerating the signals was done - making it a far simpler proposition for network providers to get on board with.

Wyoming Hyperscale is also fully plugged into strategic fibre exchanges.

Thornock: “so the main Equinix exchange in Ashburn, we have private wavelength connection already, either ordered or being provisioned there. Same thing for downtown Manhattan and Wall Street, 32 Avenue of the Americas, a CoreSite LA 1, where we have the Asian cables landing and all the media connections, the Westin Exchange up in Seattle, the main exchange in Chicago, the

KEY PARTNERS: Lumen, J.M. Gross Engineering, BCER, Submer, Burns & McDonnell, FFKR Architects, Gensler, Forell | Elsesser structural engineers, Layton Construction, ZincFive, and many others

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DID YOU KNOW...

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• No water consumption exacerbating the megadrought • No CRAC units, refrigerants or compressors with obsolescence risk of phasedown of production and consumption of hydroflourocarbons • No water near the ITE in the data halls - biodegradable dielectric cooling fluid [Submer SmartCoolant] only in the data hall side of the cooling system ​• UI Tier III, upgradeable to Tier IV ​• The hyperscale that will be left standing in only a few short years when any level of CFM air cooling at any temperature simply will not do the job ​• Data Center PUE around 1.05 with credits for heat produced monetised and returned to tenants resulting an an economic tPUE less than 1 • Low-carbon footprint, safe Zinc|Nickel battery powered UPS from ZincFive • Agricultural CO2 capture offsets available to tenants from Wyoming • Hyperscale Indoor Farms affiliate 'waste' heat reuse • REVIT-linked Carbon Life Cycle Assessment tracking building construction • Live facility level energy and sustainability reporting portal accessible to the public • Live tenant level energy and sustainability reporting via secure, private portal for tenants

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WYOMING HYPERSCALE

“So now you've got a situation where the entire power generation is decarbonized. You've got a data centre that's 50% more efficient from a power consumption standpoint than air cold data centres. And it consumes no water” TRENTON THORNOCK

FOUNDER AND MANAGING MEMBER, WYOMING HYPERSCALE

main exchange in Atlanta, we're connected to all those already, or those are currently being [set up].

“So that means that the Cisco switches that will connect the wavelengths are either in those facilities or being provisioned right now.”

Sustainability in the 2020s is becoming defined by the embrace and collaborative approach of agendas by major firms across sectors. The importance of data centres as an underpinning to a hyperconnected world and supply chain has come hand-in-hand with the desire to build the future out with sustainability, emissions, water conservation, social value and business sense in mind.

Wyoming Hyperscale is a case study for all of them.

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SUPPLY CHAIN

HOW UK PUBLIC POLICY BECAME A BENCHMARK FOR INDIRECT PROCUREMENT WORLDWIDE The public-private sector in the United Kingdom has become a breeding ground for advocates of social value and sustainable procurement. Requirements from the UK government to encourage and demonstrate social value are particularly weighted to establishing it in indirect procurement WRITTEN BY: BLAISE HOPE

I

ndirect procurement - goods and services procured for internal use and operations, rather than directly to serve a customer or client (e.g. office supplies, maintenance) - is crucial to these changes. Rather than simply showing a coffee consumer a company’s beans are Fair Trade, a roaster providing coffee to a council will have to provide a detailed pipeline for all its procurement if it is to be eligible for government tender.

This makes indirect procurement visible to everyone, a big change for a sector that has historically drawn less attention, despite its size, and one that first came through legislation.

The Social Value Act and then the National Procurement Policy Statement (NPPS) are already landmarks in the history of sustainable procurement. Fears that they would become an onerous strain on businesses have failed to materialise. The embedding of social value has instead become an issue of corporate and consumer concern and the laws themselves now seem prescient - ahead of its time, but coming in at the right time, too.

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WE MAKE DATA CENTERS SUSTAINABLE.

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A timeline For instance, this means the UK’s National The Social Value Act was passed a decade Health Service, the world largest employer ago and came into law in 2013, requiring with over two million people and an annual procurement spend of £70 bn, is “people who commission public services to enforcing a mandatory social value weighting think about how they can also secure wider social, economic and environmental benefits.” of 10% on all procurement activities from Then, in June 2018 came a pledge to explicitly April. That alone is enough to change evaluate social value. the face of indirect procurement in the In 2021 came the NPPS, requiring all 21st century. new procurement bids to have a minimum 10% social value weighting. By April 2022, Differentiation through social value all contracting authorities with an annual Creating new business, skills and jobs, tackling spend above £200mn (US$271mn) will also climate change and waste, and improving have to publish procurement pipelines and supplier diversity, resilience and innovation its portfolio, of which we’re outstanding quality of Mead Rusert, President, benchmark their procurement capability are all listed in the UK government’s guidance very proud,” states Rusert. its products. Automated describes its industryFrom April 2023, the same goes for those onbuilding social value. “The Theykeys are to also a priority success havein Logic’s WebCTRL® leading approach with spend aboveof £10mn. modern thinking. really been to understand automation system, for business and athe standard their processes: finding out instance, provides customers excellence underpinning what’s important to them with a seamlessly integrated its partnership with Iron as the client, incorporating building system, incorporating Mountain that into the design, and air conditioning, heating, then delivering a powerful, ventilation, electrical power Founded in 1977 and sustainable BMS using our management, and more – to headquartered in Kennesaw, single deployment model create a sustainable data Georgia, Automated Logic around the globe.” centre solution. As such, the (a Carrier company) is an company is able to provide expert in the manufacture The result for Iron Mountain facilities staff with a ‘single of building management has been the optimisation pane of glass’ to monitor and systems (BMS) for data of its data centre processes manage operations. “Our centres. Regarding the latter to create efficient and Strategic Accounts team Mead Rusert, President, says, harmonious operations partners with the client to “Data centres have been DARREN create standards for their KNOWDirrespective of location. part of our DNA since we HEAD OF PROCUREMENT, “We’re very happy that data centres, which leads to launched a mission-critical SALES AND BUSINESS Iron SERVICES, Mountain chose us as a consistency of design DURHAM COUNTY COUNCIL division over 20 years ago. a partner. We want to instil and deployment around We combine our powerful the confidence that we can the world.” building automation products be the best BMS supplier and with a dedicated execution help with all its data centres It was this standard of team to deploy our data going forward.” excellence that secured centre solutions more the company’s partnership efficiently around the world. with data management At Automated Logic, we like company Iron Mountain, a to say that we make buildings collaboration that has now better.” been ongoing for several years. “We’ve now earned The company’s reputation the privilege of being the for speed and reliability LEARN MORE primary BMS provider across is partly rooted in the

“ BY COLLABORATING, WE'VE GOT A BETTER CHANCE OF MAXIMISING SOCIAL VALUE OUTCOMES”

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“ FUJITSU’S PURPOSE IS TO MAKE THE WORLD MORE SUSTAINABLE

BY BUILDING TRUST THROUGH INNOVATION” GARY YOUNG

BUSINESS OPERATIONS DIRECTOR FOR THE UK PUBLIC SECTOR

“For organisations like ourselves, where you work in a highly competitive environment, there is not a lot to choose from between different solutions there is not a lot of differentiation,” says Gary Young, Business Operations Director for the UK Public Sector at the multinational IT equipment and services giant Fujitsu. “Quite often people know what the win price is for a deal, within certain barriers. In reality, if you can outperform the competition from a social value perspective, that gives you an opportunity to be far more successful in the marketplace, which is why it has really become significant, and why it is really high on everyone’s agendas.”

Young’s role means he has become a spearhead for Fujitsu’s social value proposition, but this was not a big leap: “When I was brought up to speed with the changes being made in procurement with respect to social value, I can’t tell you the glee that was on my face.

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“Fujitsu’s purpose is to make the world more sustainable by building trust through innovation. If you take three words out of there in terms of sustainable, society and innovation, they are at the core of what social value is and what people are looking to achieve from that.”

Public and corporate policies align Given the acceleration in trends sparked by the pandemic and a wider embrace of sustainable business practises, these requirements help businesses meet ESG goals they themselves had already set and help customers make choices that will help them meet their own sustainable procurement targets.

Sarah Wadsworth, the Head of Human Resources and Young’s colleague at Fujitsu UK, says “increasingly, we are looking at ways we are growing the IT industry in general so that we are building up a great pipeline of talent, that we can make use of, of course, but that’s also going back into the whole of the IT industry in the UK.”

The trends are not exclusive to the UK nor to a country where social value in procurement has been directly legislated for. This happens in indirect procurement decisions worldwide as a result of existing market forces.

Trenton Thornock, the Founder and Managing Member of Wyoming Hyperscale White Box, says “one of the things we wanted to do was to create a situation where our tenants could find things that they can't find anywhere else in the world.”

Wyoming Hyperscale is a data centre project that uses negligible water and power by relying on Liquid Immersion Cooling. “In addition to the operating efficiency… is a connection to an indoor farming facility.” Farming is carbon negative and by growing produce that is sold locally on the same land as the data centre, obviating the need for haulage from elsewhere, social value impact is embedded here for the community, climate and customer.

Changing behaviour in procurement One person who has had a front seat the effect of the Social Value Act and its successors is Guy Battle, the Founder and CEO of Social Value Portal: “I mean, if you’re not doing sustainable business, what the hell are you doing?”

Social Value Portal offers an online tool for businesses to manage and measure their social impact. In 2017, the company launched the National TOMs (Themes, Outcomes, Measures) Measurement Framework, endorsed by and in partnership with the National Social Value Taskforce. It helps businesses institute social value practises across all its business activities. sustainabilitymag.com

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“I guess one of the challenges is what is the difference between indirect and direct procurement,” says Battle. “If you are the head of that buying supply chain in a way, it doesn't matter whether it's you buying or your supply chain buying on your or behalf, you have direct responsibility for it. So I would challenge the word indirect, which sort of implies perhaps less responsibility.

“It's all about procurement and my particular perspective of this is, is buying in, in the right way.”

According to Battle, the private sector could learn a lot from the public about how to procure sustainably: “I would say in terms of progressive procurement within the UK, it's the public sector leading it, the private sector think they know what they're doing, but they don't understand because there's a certain arrogance, dare I say it.

They think they know everything and have nothing to learn from the public sector.”

“They just think it's all about saving rainforest. While that is really important, it is, you know, a slither of the story. They don't get that big picture,” says Battle.

“They're thinking about all the aspects of environmental sustainability, but do they consider how they are supporting local businesses? Do they consider how they can get the lawyers they're employing to provide free advice to citizens who are struggling to pay for their own legal advice?

Do they consider how they can encourage their whole supply chain to be net zero?

No, they don't.”

The public sector lesson According to Darren Knowd, the success of the public sector should not come as a surprise.

Knowd is Head of Procurement, Sales and Business Services at Durham County Council (DCC), which won the first ever award for 114

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Social Value Leadership for an Organisation by the UK’s Cabinet Office. He leads all procurement activity at DCC, which spends £600mn (US$812mn) annually and is also the Chair of LGA National Advisory Group for Local Government Procurement and Chair of the LGA National Social Value Task Force.

Prior to working in local government, Knowd worked for both Nissan Europe and General Motors.

“ THE PUBLIC SECTOR IS VERY FAR AHEAD… FUNDAMENTALLY A COUNCIL'S JOB IS TO IMPROVE THE SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL WELLBEING OF ITS LOCAL COMMUNITIES” DARREN KNOWD

HEAD OF PROCUREMENT, SALES AND BUSINESS SERVICES, DURHAM COUNTY COUNCIL

“I'm probably qualified to comment given my global private sector now public sector experience,” says Knowd.

“The public sector is very far ahead…

Fundamentally a council's job is to improve the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of its local communities.”

Knowd is currently working on a project called the ‘County Durham Pound’, whose aim is to “maximise the value of every County Durham pound”, and he feels the lessons it teaches are directly transferable to work in the private sector: “We are pretty good at delivering social value. I do think we do a good job, but we are one actor in our community. What about the police? What about the fire? What about health? What about housing? What about education? What about the universities?

“By collaborating, we've got a better chance of maximising social value outcomes.”

For Knowd, that is what the embedding of social value in procurement practises comes down to: “the mantra I always use is to maximise the value of every single pound you spend.”

In McKinsey’s pre-pandemic article “Revolutionising indirect procurement for the 2020s”, the consultancy argued that indirect procurement executives needed to bring stronger points to the table as its contrast with the clarity offered by direct procurement meant the sector’s interests were under-served.

While McKinsey’s report focused on the application of technologies to communicate improved financial outcomes, the sharp focus the pandemic brought to social impact brings both an effective and emotive tool to advancing the interests of indirect procurement through the decade. sustainabilitymag.com

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CENTRICA: EMBRACING TECHNOLOGY IN THE ENERGY SECTOR WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

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PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

CENTRICA

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Centrica is a strong believer in digital transformation and embracing technology to ensure fieldworkers have the most up-to-date tech and software

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roud to be founded on a heritage of 200 years, serving customers in homes and businesses, Centrica is driven by its purpose to help customers live sustainably, simply, and affordably.

“As the pace of change continues to accelerate, we will respond by focusing colleagues and technology on helping businesses and households to use energy more efficiently and sustainably,” states Centrica.

The History of Centrica Founded in 1997 following the demerger of British Gas, Centrica took on the gas sales, gas trading, services and retail business, and the gas production business of the North and South Morecambe gas field.

Over the next 20 years since its founding, Centrica continued to grow its operations, making several company acquisitions, including Direct Energy, Dyno-Rod, Clockwork Home Services (Via Direct Energy), Home Warranty of America (Via Direct Energy), Bord Gáis Energy, NEAS energy and ENER-G Cogen International Limited.

Today, Centrica is a FTSE 250 company, with 23,846 employees, 9.2 million residential customers, 17,700 electric vehicle charging points, and revenue of £20.8bn.

“Our company is founded on a proud 200-year heritage of serving customers in sustainabilitymag.com

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homes and businesses. From our early days supplying gas and coal to being an energy and services company today, we have adapted and changed to meet the needs of our customers,” comments Centrica.

The Centrica Business Model Designed to focus on meeting the changing energy supply, services, and solutions needs for its customers, Centrica provides its offerings to both consumers and businesses, helping them transition to a lower-carbon future.

For its consumer customers, Centrica provides supply, and home services and solutions, ranging from protection, installation and smart heating to the supply of gas and electricity. “We want to make people’s lives simpler by providing seamless, time-saving services that are affordable and sustainable.

Understanding and satisfying consumer needs is critical to our success,” says Centrica.

Centrica is ‘a trusted energy partner’ of its business customers, providing energy and solutions to help businesses operate more efficiently and sustainably to achieve commercial success. Its services range from energy supply to energy trading and optimisation to business services and solutions.

“ Our company is founded on a proud 200-year heritage of serving customers in homes and businesses” CENTRICA 120

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At the heart of its success, Centrica places its values, culture and code. “Care, delivery, collaboration, agility and courage are values we developed through conversations with employees [...] By living our values, we will be better able to fulfil our purpose and satisfy the changing needs of our customers.”

Centrica divides its code of conduct into six key areas: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Operating safely and securely Conducting its business with integrity Valuing people Treating customers fairly Protecting assets, information and interests Working responsibly with communities and government

Digitally transforming the energy industry “The world of energy is evolving rapidly, says Centrica. “It is becoming decentralised as distributed technology supports decarbonisation; choice and power are shifting to the customer, and technology and digitalisation are accelerating the pace of change. We are responding to these trends by focusing investment on our customer-facing businesses.”

One way Centrica has driven its personal digital transformation has been through its collaboration with Microsoft, NetMotion, and Panasonic.

Bringing these three leading organisaions together to optimise its operations, Centrica was the perfect customer to illustrate the impact of combining Panasonic's hardware, Microsoft’s advanced collaboration applications (OneDrive and Microsoft 365), and sustained connectivity from NetMotion.

“Centrica has a large field team that ventures into both rural and metropolitan areas resolving issues and serving customers. sustainabilitymag.com

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Panasonic TOUGHBOOK made by specialists, for specialists.

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CENTRICA

Microsoft Teams, Panasonic & NetMotion: take to the skies

“ A constant network connection is critical to the success of our field workers” CENTRICA

Commenting on the test, Stuart Carver, Mobile Device Specialist at Centrica said: “A constant network connection is critical to the success of our field workers. NetMotion, Panasonic and Microsoft deliver incredibly complementary solutions that ensure a stable connection in any situation. This acid test was a brilliant way to prove it.”

The company currently has approximately 12,000 workers using Panasonic TOUGHBOOKs in the field, with NetMotion Mobility deployed on each device. Centrica is also currently in the process of expanding the use of Microsoft Teams across its entire workforce to facilitate collaboration among employees,” says NetMotion.

To stress-test the technology’s capabilities, the four organisations took a unique approach, by strapping a Panasonic TOUGHBOOK® tablet to a balloon, taking the tablet up into the stratosphere while running a Microsoft Teams call. sustainabilitymag.com

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“ From a user experience point of view, that Office 365 rollout has really transformed Centrica” JOANNE ROSE FORMER HEAD OF MOBILE USER COMPUTING AT CENTRICA IN 2019

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In today’s fast-paced environment, it is crucial to stay on top, if not, ahead of technological advancements to remain competitive and not get left behind. Over the last 20 years, Centrica has significantly transformed its field workforce digitally.

Speaking to Joanne Rose, former Head of Mobile User Computing at Centrica in 2019, she explained that digital transformation for Centrica is about “continually making sure that our fieldworkers have got the most up-to-date technology and software. What we're doing is setting the scene for our field workforce to be on the latest products and for them to be kept up-to-date.”

Centrica and Panasonic: A Story of Successful Digital Transformation

Working with Microsoft, Centrica implemented Windows 10 across its entire organisation coupled with the Evergreen solution to ensure that it is never too far behind the latest operating system version. The escape from incremental and periodic upgrades extends to Centrica’s embrace of cloud technologies, such as Office 365, and OneDrive. “From a user experience point of view, that Office 365

rollout has really transformed Centrica.

We have the full suite and we're constantly adding new applications and features,” said Rose in 2019.

Keen to always embrace the latest technologies, Centrica’s partnership with Panasonic began more than 20 years ago when Centrica asked Panasonic to create a laptop with an integrated CD for its British Gas Engineers. sustainabilitymag.com

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Centrica and its partners today Nurturing its partnership with Microsoft, Centrica continues to harness Microsoft Azure and Dynamics 365 across its European and North American markets.

In the UK, Centrica is harnessing Dynamics 365 to manage customer engineer appointments and optimise in real-time. With this capability, Centrica can deliver fast and effective services to its retail and business customers.

In Denmark, Dynamics 365 is being used to manage and action energy trading across its European energy markets, and, in the US, Centrica has adopted Dynamics 365 for its contract management in the utility market.

In partnership with the leading UK telecommunications company BT, Centrica is harnessing its solutions for better Wi-Fi connectivity for its UK field operations engineers, boosting connection in areas with low cellular coverage.

“ Centrica has a large field team that ventures into both rural and metropolitan areas resolving issues and serving customers” NETMOTION The implementation is currently in its early stages, therefore, time will determine the effectiveness of BT Pinhole. However, it is said to provide the strongest connection at a third of the time, enabling an average of six engineer jobs in two weeks that otherwise would not have been completed.

Centrica is currently conducting collaborative testing with multiple engineer groups to inform the effective use cases.

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Image Credit: EcoDataCenter

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SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

SHAPING A NEW ERA OF DATA CENTRE SUSTAINABILIT Y AD FEATURE WRITTEN BY: BLAISE HOPE

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Schneider Electric leads new era of data centre sustainability with industry-first framework for long-term, strategic commitments to fight climate change

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chneider Electric has just ranked number one on Sustainability Magazine’s Top 100 Companies list, hot on the heels of being named ‘The World’s Most Sustainable Company’ by Canadian media research firm Corporate Knights in January 2021.

In 2021, it also made the Financial Times ranking as a Top 50 Diversity leader for the second year running, the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index for a fourth year, FORTUNE’s ‘World’s Most Admired Companies’ and Forbes’ list of America’s ‘Best Employers for Diversity’.

I asked Rob McKernan, Senior Vice President of its Secure Power Division for Europe, how Schneider had achieved this. His answer: “Sustainability has been at the core of our strategic decision-making for some time.”

The secret is not complicated – early, decisive planning – but it is the grand strategy’s execution and results that are wildly impressive. McKernan, holding the same portfolio for North and South America before moving to Paris five years ago, has been leading the companies’ data centre sustainability efforts in Europe.

A lesson in modern sustainable business strategy McKernan says the sustainability awards are “testament to what our ethos is. We want to help customers make the most of their energy, the most of their resources, so we’ve been talking to them about efficiency, reliability, and sustainability through digitisation and electrification.

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Image Credit: Schneider Electric Example of

an image caption

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

“ We want to be our customers' partner for efficiency and sustainability – helping them drive energy efficiency throughout all parts of the life cycle” ROB MCKERNAN

SENIOR VP OF SECURE POWER & DATA CENTRE DIVISION FOR EUROPE, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

It’s not something new to us in 2022, it’s been part of our culture for many, many years.”

Schneider Electric has positioned itself as a world leader in sustainability and has solidified its position as a leader in sustainable technologies. It earns 76% of its revenue from sustainable, Green Premium solutions and 73% of its investments go right back into R&D. It is the leading name 132

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in global power management and its achievements to date are setting the stage for those to come.

“We've been talking about metrics like PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) for many years, and we've been an early advocate of measuring how well your data centre performs from an efficiency standpoint,” says McKernan.

Amalgamation and green management operations Schneider Electric has acquired greentech startups and is amalgamating them into a world-leading tech management offering.

With its track record and the state of play in sustainability worldwide, it is building a primary application of greentech management solutions.

Its January acquisition of climatetech platform Zeigo followed similarly headlinegrabbing news of the launch of its IoT management software EcoStruxure Resource

ROB MCKERNAN TITLE: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT OF SECURE POWER AND DATA CENTRE DIVISION FOR EUROPE

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: PARIS Rob McKernan is Senior Vice President for Schneider Electric’s Secure Power Division in Europe. Across the region he empowers country leaders to support customer digital transformation through resilient, adaptive, sustainable and efficient data centres.

Rob holds a bachelor's degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and is a strong advocate for embracing sustainable business practices.

He believes that by integrating resilient digital infrastructure with renewables and the grid, and by selecting resource efficient technologies, the data centres of the future can support the needs of the digital and electrical world, helping to transform businesses sustainably.

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Advisor and the energy ‘buying’ portal NEO Network. All of it is building a comprehensive ecosystem for Schneider Electric to remain “the leader of the digital transformation of energy management and automation.”

Its leading edge is a history of sustainable data centre management that solidified through the move from corporate data centres to cloud-based solutions.

Much of this started in 2007 with the acquisition of American Power Conversion (APC™), a transaction that brought McKernan himself into Schneider Electric. In 2017, as part of a 10-year update on the deal, the company explained that “the idea was to take the leader in the IT room or white space of data centres – APC – and combine it with the company’s leadership position in the grey space or electrical rooms – Schneider Electric – to create a single data centre powerhouse.”

Schneider Electric had, at the time, been building up its presence as an end-to-end powertrain solutions provider. This meant it had little customer competition with APC and the US$6 bn acquisition allowed data centres to quickly become a pillar in its global business.

That acquisition allowed the French multinational to leverage its capabilities, sustainable practises, and market position to become a data centre powerhouse and then to move rapidly into the future by building the greenest possible solutions for the sector. A prescient move as the business world transitioned steadily into the cloud and climate change rose steadily up corporate agendas.

“We see this, the data centre of the future, continuing to evolve with needs to be sustainable, efficient, resilient and adaptive,” says McKernan. “It's really interesting when we bring our partners into the fold, whether 134

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Image Credit: EcoDataCenter

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

it's inside a data centre or a building or [as] part of our ecosystem, there's a lot of additional value that we can provide.”

“Looking at the data centre industry from a sustainability perspective has been quite a natural evolution,” says McKernan. “I think we were starting to do that even before we were using the word sustainability in many ways! In Europe we’re having conversations around carbon neutrality, around the removal of gas (SF6), and the issue of water usage. By focusing on what the industry's looking to do here, which is to reach net zero emissions by 2030, we can help operators plan and reach their aggressive CO2 reduction targets.”

“The journey continues, but I can tell you it’s a very effective conversation for clients that are looking for companies to help them drive sustainability across the data centre space” ROB MCKERNAN

SENIOR VP OF SECURE POWER DATA CENTRE DIVISION FOR EUROPE, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

“When I came to Europe five years ago, I had the experience of running the North American and South American business – those of a very mature market in the US, in Canada, and very much of a developing market throughout central and south America,” says McKernan. “So when you look at the diversity here in Europe, the countries that I'm responsible for and the Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, and Paris (FLAP regions), those have been the historical centres for the industry.”

Schneider Electric has worked with numerous businesses across Europe, from end-users to owners and operators including cloud, colocation and hyperscale service sustainabilitymag.com

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providers. It has also supported the efforts of world leading businesses to expand their services across the region. Here customers include Interxion (a Digital Realty Company), Iron Mountain, SuperNAP and EcoDataCenter, the world’s first climate positive data centre.

“The interesting part is that connectivity demands are growing across the entire region, and in southern and central Europe, new hubs are beginning to establish themselves to service this requirement. We’re seeing the build out of new data centres in Warsaw, Tel Aviv, Athens and Milan, nowhere near the FLAP countries. We’re more than prepared here, seeing this evolution once in North America and now experiencing it through a slightly different lens, there’s a lot of similarities between the two. Interestingly, the word sustainability was not used quite as frequently, five, six, seven years ago. Now it’s very much in the forefront of our discussions, if not the first thing we talk about with decision-makers.”

The importance of standardised measurements Talking about what sustainability needs is one thing – providing a means to achieve it is another.

One of the biggest issues in sustainability is figuring out and agreeing, cross-sector and cross-organisation, how to measure it. That is where Schneider Electric’s Data Centre Sustainability Metrics and Framework, launched in December 2021, comes in.

“Last year I was on a panel with a couple of key industry leaders, and we were talking about each of our companies’ focus on sustainability. You quickly realise that everyone is going about this a little bit differently, everyone is trying to measure what it means,” says McKernan. “We felt that one of the key challenges is that we’ve never 136

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really had a standard set of environmental metrics that we can report on both here in Europe and throughout the globe.”

Schneider Electric’s first-of-a-kind Sustainability Framework allows for the tracking and reporting of standardised sustainability metrics, helping drive internal collaboration to make it more effective in achieving company-wide targets, while increasing transparency for external stakeholders like customers and regulators. It was created by a team of ESG experts, sustainability consultants, data centre scientists and data centre solution architects to help operators who are at the

Beginning, Advanced or Leading stages of their sustainability journey, reduce their environmental impact.

The comprehensive framework includes 23 key metrics for standardised reporting and identifies the 17 most relevant sustainability frameworks to guide operators in both setting measurable targets and reporting them. Further, Schneider Electric is recommending that data centre operators utilise holistic environmental strategies, which means being inclusive of five key areas of environmental impact such as Energy use, GHG emissions, Water, Waste, Land and biodiversity.

Using the framework removes the hassle of selecting impactful metrics for tracking, improves internal communication and empowers effective action on sustainability objectives. Moreover, it enables businesses to act on the data to improve operations, which, in turn, enables regular and consistent reporting for external stakeholders, and standardises benchmarking.

“We realise a lot of companies are either not measuring their environmental footprint or really don’t know how to,” says McKernan.

“So by empowering the industry, we can really help it to standardise the way it reports and reduce its environmental impact.” sustainabilitymag.com

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How culture breeds sustainable success An inclusive company culture has helped the firm to reach its highest sustainable ambitions. Its people join the business with the same vision and values, ensuring that sustainability remains central to its purpose.

McKernan says these developments are a product of Schneider Electric’s sustainability-led company culture: “It’s driven from the top-down, it comes from our CEO, through his leadership team and then the top 100 leaders. We are really focused on this, not as the fifth KPI on a sheet, but really talking about how we drive sustainability within our organisation.”

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“ At Schneider, we realise a lot of companies are either not measuring their environmental footprint or really don’t know how to” ROB MCKERNAN

SENIOR VP OF SECURE POWER & DATA CENTRE DIVISION FOR EUROPE, SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC

“We also have a real focus on measurement. In fact, we’ve been measuring our company’s sustainability for several years, measuring our improvement in each of our facilities, each of our manufacturing plants and very aggressively looking at our suppliers. It’s not just one or two things we can do ourselves. We realise we have to do it throughout our ecosystem. We take that mentality when we go talk to our customers, whether they’re building a new manufacturing facility or, in my case, a data centre.”

Now that Schneider Electric’s ascent to a pinnacle of sustainability is getting recognised in the business mainstream, McKernan says it is the drive to continuously improve that

both led it there and will keep it there into the future: “There’s more to the equation of helping the customers, whether it’s through the design process, through the build process or through the operational process.”

“We want to be our customers' partner for efficiency and sustainability – helping them drive energy efficiency throughout all parts of that life cycle. So, I would say that the journey continues, but I can tell you it’s a very effective conversation for clients that are looking for companies to help them drive sustainability in these spaces.”

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