Enviance Blog

Welcome to the Enviance Blog!

Hello! Thank you for visiting our Blog!   Here you can find information and updates on the latest corporate and legal developments around energy and carbon emissions management, corporate responsibility, water and waste management, cap and trade, carbon taxation and carbon accounting, environmental compliance, EH&S and Environmental ERP best practices.   We encourage you to read throught our posts and leave comments and suggestions with your feedback!   Sincerely,   The Enviance Team

Environmental March Madness Tournament: Does Your School’s Program Have What It Takes?

If you think your alma mater has a great environmental studies program, we want to hear from you!

Enviance has teamed with Environmental Leader to host a March Madness tournament to identify the best undergraduate program for environmental studies and sustainability across the country.

In order to participate, department heads must share their program’s marketing materials and fill out a submission form for background/information on their school’s environmental programs by February 20, 2012. If selected by our panel of industry experts, your university could make our “Sustainable 16” list.

After being selected for the “Sustainable 16”, students and faculty will have until March 9, 2012 to submit short video testimonials, and/or a short 300-word essay, explaining why their school’s program deserves to be crowned the top in the nation.

The 2012 National Champion, announced April 2, 2012 will be awarded:

• A $5,000 cash donation to the university’s environmental & sustainability department.
• An all-expense paid trip to San Diego, CA for the department chair, where he or she will attend the Enviance User Conference April 16-18, 2012 and participate in a panel titled, “What Tomorrow’s Environmental Leaders Need to Know.”

In addition, the top two students who submitted the most compelling video or essay during the competition will win netbooks. There are also multiple opportunities for schools to be featured in publications throughout the tournament.

Judges for this year’s tournament include Velislava Ivanova , global sustainability director at CH2M HILL, Nick Johnson, managing consultant at Trinity Consultants, Don Cuffel, manager of environmental engineering at Valero/California, and our very own CEO, Larry Goldenhersh.

For more information on the tournament and how to get involved please visit our website.

The 5th Annual State of Green Business Live Webcast

Enviance is proud to sponsor GreenBiz’s State of Green Business live webcast. This year’s webcast takes a closer look at the findings from the fifth annual edition of GreenBiz’s State of Green Business report which measures the environmental impacts of the emerging green economy.

Join GreenBiz’s Executive Editor, Joel Makower, and VP and Senior Analyst, Joe Davies, as they discuss how companies are improving their environmental performance in spite of the many challenges that have come as a result of the recession. Together Joel and Joe will assess the economy from an environmental perspective, and highlight key trends in corporate culture in regard to the environment.

Register today and watch the webinar!

 

The results are in! Find out what Enviance’s third annual EUEC survey revealed

It was great to see those of you who were able to make it out to the EUEC conference in Phoenix this week. As you may have noticed, we conducted an environmental survey addressing controversial topics ranging from readiness to report carbon emissions to reactions about cap and trade regulation.

This year, 237 attendees participated in our third annual EUEC survey. This morning, we released the results – here are just a couple highlights:

• This year’s survey showed that more than three-fifths of respondents now believe the imposition of a carbon tax will affect their business.
• Surprisingly, there was a substantial 17 percent increase from last year in the number of companies that have no system in place for tracking and reporting greenhouse gas emissions.
• While water management was an issue that 48 percent of respondents said was a concern for their organization (similar to carbon emissions), approximately 40 percent responded that they don’t measure or report on water at all.

Check out all of the results from the 2012 EUEC survey here!

Enviance returns to EUEC with (Kindle) Fire!

It’s that time of the year again! Today, we head back to Phoenix, AZ to kick things off at the Energy, Utility & Environment Conference, January 30 through February 1—and we’ve got a ton of exciting things going on!

Super Bowl XLVI is right around the corner! So stop by our booth #616 at the exhibitor’s hall and tell us who you think will take home the Vince Lombardi trophy this year. If you guess correctly, you’ll be entered to win an Amazon Kindle Fire.

Four different Enviance executives will be featured at the conference discussing a variety of critical environmental and sustainability topics. Make sure you don’t miss their presentations:

• Greg Gasperecz, Enviance VP of EH&S, will present “Enduring the Environmental Legislative Roller Coaster,” in the Climate Policy & Energy Sustainability track on Monday, January 30, from 3:30-5:30 p.m. in room #222C.
• Lawrence Goldenhersh, Enviance CEO, will present “The New Era and Impact of Envirofinance,” in the Planning & GHG Reporting track on Monday, January 30, from 3:30-5:30 p.m. in room #225A.
• Graeme Dykes, Enviance Sales Manager, will present “The Changing Paradigm of Sustainable Business,” in the Compliance Technologies & Strategies track on Monday, January 30, from 3:30-5:30 p.m. in room #229A.
• Graeme Dykes will also present “Cloud Based Compliance: The New Age of Business Performance”, in the EHS & Risk Management track on Tuesday, January 31, from 3:30-5:30 p.m. in room #229A.

See you all in Phoenix – and good luck in the contest!

Take a sneak peek at the Enviance 2012 E-Book

Over the last few years, Enviance has helped innovative companies around the world reach their environmental compliance goals while saving them time, money and resources in the process. To capture some of these case studies, and show how these companies were able to achieve success and gain confidence in their compliance reports, we compiled our 2012 E-Book featuring clients such as American Electric Power, Boral, Fujifilm and many more.

Find out how companies like Tucson Electric Power and Valero were able to address their complex environmental regulatory requirements while saving time and money with the Enviance system.

Preview our 2012 E-Book here!

3 Questions with... Jennifer Woofter, Strategic Sustainability Consulting

It’s time for another installation of our 3 Questions series, where we ask industry experts about their organization’s environmental programs, perspectives on environmental policy, and how they reduce their own environmental footprint.

This week we interviewed Jennifer Woofter, founder and president of Strategic Sustainability Consulting (SSC). She’s been doing sustainability strategy consulting for seven years, and before that had a career in socially responsible investing (SRI). Jennifer has a master’s degree in Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability from the Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden.

Q: Are we doing enough to encourage the use of renewable energy through subsidies and incentives?

A: I would like to see a stronger emphasis on feed-in tariffs, and stronger net metering options for small-scale producers. However, I think one of the most powerful things that we could do is to reduce subsidization of fossil fuels. By artificially suppressing the cost of oil and gas (and all the industries that rely on fossil fuels), we are perpetuating the idea that fuel should be cheap.

Q: In your opinion, which industry sector has the greatest opportunity to impact the future of sustainable business?

A: Currently, I think that retail has the biggest role to play—simply because of their huge supply chain impacts. When a large retailer implements vendor sustainability standards, that action ripples out to impact hundreds, thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of other businesses. It’s an awesome sustainability echo chamber.

I’ve also come to realize that business—not government—is the real change-agent for sustainability. My opinion is that protesting in the streets about government policy is a waste of time. I’d rather work from within the system, where I can accomplish something more than holding a sign and chanting.

Q: What do you think the determining factor is in a consumer’s decision to buy green?

A: I think that it is ridiculous to try and categorize consumers into different levels of “green”. People will prioritize environmental aspects depending on the product category (e.g. food vs. automobiles), their current situation (e.g. financial stability, birth of a new baby, etc.), and their receptiveness to advertising.

The real message that I think green marketers need to understand is that “green” has to be icing on the cake. Their products have to meet the quality, price, service, sexiness and durability of a non-green product. Most people are not (and should not be) making a purchasing decision solely on the “green” factor.

Have a question for Jennifer? Feel free to leave one in the comment section below or on Twitter @jenniferwoofter!

 

EPA’s new site identifies biggest GHG emitters

Have you ever wondered what happens to all of the data collected as a result of the EPA’s Green House Gas (GHG) Mandatory Reporting Rule (MRR)?

It looks the EPA has put it to good use to help us get a better idea of where emissions are coming from—they’ve launched a new website that allows you to enter a location and see the top GHG emitters in your area. For the first time, the EPA is sharing data on the amount of CO2 and other pollutants emitted from over 6,700 utilities, factories and refineries in the U.S.

To find out what’s going on in your city, and see how it compares to others, visit the EPA site to get started. We were surprised by some of our results, will you be too?