Reporting back to the room after Solutions Statement session
E efficiency:
technology or behavior changes

Org change:
board term lengths

E- vehicles infrastructure
- car shop; charging stations
- encouragement/incentives from biz, local govt

Regional food systems:
- how to use basic tech to improve logistics for sourcing for large scale buyers
- subsidies in healthcare

Employee engagement
- how to take it in as a core value
- how to sustain interest it and not just remain a dream

Steve Littman's speech
MS' group - 8 people only
Big issue: data centers - lot of prods/srvcs use these -- charge them back on space
servers tall and narrow, not e efficient
- but now charging on energy use -- specs changed, more e eff servers, data center mgrs got to keep part of savings to reduce cooling costs etc.
- nice win-win story, sounds good. tons of low hanging fruit, but the challenge is: the systems we have make it difficult to imbibe sustainability (for e.g. no C cost, custmers want it but more in theory, market signals missing).
- issue is how to promote these systematic changes - internal small incentives work but don't have the incentives at a big enough scale to bring in the bigger changes that we really need.

Kevin Hagen - REI
Challenge Intuition
biggest issue as REI and other corps attack sustainability -- intuition always seems to be wrong. Intuition got us here!
first anecdote: when REI started C footprinting, looking at various tiers, wide scope. REI's intuition was it's all about product transportation -- bringing in stuff from china etc. Sourcing from china manufacturers to distribution centers to stores. C footprint was reported.
- employee commuting -- 14% of their env impact -- not intuitive to them. Looks like they're good at moving goods but lousy at moving people.
- green energy - seems more expensive than conventional, but REI's saved over 100k by doing RE. non intuitive? took advantage of opportunities in some places. 'brown' energy prices have increased in some of those places, so RE was steady and bought it as a hedge option. this was counter-intuitive.
- metrics -- measure the right thing, you get diff results. 'all the passion that Excel can deliver'
* Ask questions
* Encourage education

Post speeches table discussion
- how to identify opportunities to scale
- if u don't know where u're measureing, you don't know where your biggest impacts are
- if the market had done the reverse on RE - would he have talked about it.. he could've also avoided spikes with brown E contracts too. 100k is not much! may be just a starting point? not above the noise level.
BEF - seems very important for communities etc but very likely be expensive for a while.
getting society to get used to the idea that there are many places we can put up PVs for e.g. parking lots, stadiums, large MS installation.
So it seems like education is a key component. firms to their employees, train the teachers, public/community education.
EE is more widespread, but RE is much more smaller scale, distributed throughout the servive territory. That includes smart grid.
Jon - how do we get over the nimby attitude.
Affecting jobs. Govt making decision to invest.. for e.g. % of fed/state power will be RE .. that will increase market for it, increase jobs.

2nd feedback round to the room - reflections
- how far can biznesses go in pioneering sustainability. govts following biz, not pioneering. biz follows customers.
- recycling attitude in the NW -- there are incentives and systems here to make it easy. how to be get this to scale across other parts of the country.
- DG energy systems for the future -- nimby issues.
- Steve REI - true that a lot of upfront analysis and work required, for e.g. LCAs. getting accuracy also an issue. But learn a lot of lessons that challenge intuition and that helps. Learning is a front-end cost, but your design team will be more informed and will make better supply chain and design choices and better chances of staying competitive and thriving in the long term.
- Rashmir - are we measuring what matters. not just the firm level but systems & individual levels as well. Courage to innovate.
- Jason from Vulcan - scale & magnitude are the problem. economic models need to change. how can biznsses change these. policy transformation and biz role in that.
- Biodiversity -- this topic appears to be missing in the discussions here, but important and key to remember.
- Funding/financing the changes/big ideas