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Students Gain Insight about Role of Sustainability at Net Impact Interchange

Throughout the course of 10 hours on a sunny mid-October Saturday in Raleigh, N.C., groups of North Carolina State University students listened attentively to a series of panel discussions and keynote presentations about sustainability and what career paths it might hold for them. In all, about 70 students attended the various sessions presented by sustainability leaders in municipalities, universities, and several different business and industry sectors. Bayer CropScience provided sponsorship support for the event’s luncheon.

The event, held October 15, was the inaugural Sustainability Interchange, presented by the Net Impact chapter based in the Jenkins MBA program at the NC State Poole College of Management. As a whole, the day’s presentations reflected the extent to which sustainability is impacting decision making across industries.

“In this month’s Harvard Business Review, Yvon Chouinard, rock climber and founder of Patagonia, and his co-authors talk about the sustainable economy and progress that is being made,” said Emily Barrett, sustainability manager for the Town of Cary, N.C. “They say, ‘Never before have we felt the optimism we feel now’,” she said, citing the authors’ view that sustainability has evolved in three eras, as follows:

“Sustainability 1.0 saw businesses and organizations using defensive efforts to reduce environmental footprints and waste.

  • “Sustainability 2.0 evolved into more strategic focusing on innovation and whole value chains.
  • “Sustainability 3.0 is where we are now, in the midst of an overhaul of the concept where considerations of environmental impact pervade all decision making in organizations.
  • “And Sustainability 4.0? They think the era we are in will make the term sustainability obsolete. It will simply be how business is done.”

Barrett was one of three speakers representing a municipality in the Research Triangle Park region. Other presenters were university and corporate researchers and business leaders in electrical services systems, sustainable energy, biofuels, biomaterials, systems solutions, energy service companies, and more.

Students took advantage of the ample time for networking with the presenters and each other during breaks and lunch. Business cards and email addresses were exchanged.

That kind of interchange, said Net Impact President Zach Tinkler, was the main goal of the event, along with engaging undergraduate students, who indeed comprised most of the audience.

“I was very pleased,” Tinkler said of the event, noting that its organizers and attendees “felt the content was spectacular.” The variety of panel discussion topics provided students the opportunity to learn more in an area they were passionate about. “And that was the goal – to facilitate interaction between the business world and NC State students.” Tinkler said he and the other event organizers hope to see NC State’s undergraduate students establish a Net Impact club of their own. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University both have undergraduate and MBA chapters, he said.

The day’s program “provided great education about what (students) can do now to prepare for sustainability-related career opportunities in their fields,” Tinkler said, adding that the MBA chapter plans to host its second Sustainability Interact next year.

Following are a few highlights from the presentations.

Sustainability in Action

Shannon Hess, sustainability sourcing manager for Burt’s Bees, summarized the natural personal care products company’s approach and commitment to sustainability in her opening keynote address. That commitment includes everything from composting and recycling to giving back through service activities, including an annual service project in Guatemala. Videos in the company’s annual report, available on YouTube, showcase the company’s activities reflecting that commitment.

“Sustainability is a fundamental belief in the organization,” Hess said, adding: “We have a 100 percent engagement goal” for the company. Burt’s Bees also aims to implement, by 2020, 100 percent renewable energy, zero waste and a LEED Platinum/ISO 14001 certified green building.

Representatives from three universities provided another perspective of sustainability in action within an organization. David Dean, outreach and communications coordinator for NC State’s Sustainability Office, moderated a discussion by panelists Tavey McDaniel Capps, environmental sustainability director at Duke University; Lindsay Batchelor, sustainability office coordinator at NC State, and Rawlins Parker, president of the Net Impact chapter at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and member of its 2012 MBA class.

The three presenters each had taken a different path to their current roles. Batchelor said that when she was in college, “There was not this concept (of sustainability). Environmental studies was the closest thing to it.” She began helping with sustainability-related projects at NC State, “before there was a sustainability office,” and currently is program manager in recycling, helping groups on campus to launch their projects, among other activities.

For Capps, working in a sustainability position is an extension of “what I grew up with,” she said. Her parents’ interest in sustainability “shaped her career path, and drew her to sustainability in higher education,” where she gets involved in “all facets of sustainability, with amazing students.”

Rawlins, currently an MBA student and Net Impact president at UNC’s Kenan Flagler Business School, came to sustainability through an interest in working with non-profits. When she “saw how it all applied to sustainability, I realized this is what I wanted to go into, to be in the middle of it.”

Opportunities for Student Involvement

One student in the audience asked how students can get involved in sustainability. The panelists’ suggestions follow.

  • Attend campus events, like the Sustainability Interchange, or volunteer for Earth Day and other sustainability related projects
  • Contact staff working in sustainability on campus, and find ways to help, to gain experience
  • At NC State, follow the Office of Sustainability’s activities on its Facebook page and Twitter accounts, and register online for its newsletter.
  • Find professors who are working in sustainability and ask how you can get involved.
  • Incorporate sustainability into classroom projects and discussions
  • Discuss the topic with friends, and broaden the discussion to include topics like social and environmental impact and traditional American family values

Innovation in the Sustainable Economy

Jim Roberts, director of membership and fundraising for the Center for Innovation for NanoBiotechnology (COIN), moderated the panel discussion on innovation in sustainability. Panelists were Kenneth E. Russell, Ph.D., working in enterprise strategy for Cisco Systems, Inc.; Griffith Kundahl, CEO, COIN; and Stephan Perry, president and CEO of Kymanox, a company whose name means “ideal knowledge transfer’ with a focus on the biotechnology industries.

Roberts’ panel broadened the discussion to include technology developments at the nano scale in diverse industries including pharmaceuticals, energy, photovoltaics, and cosmetics.

As “things at the nanoscale become available,” new applications arise, including aiding clean-up following oil spills and developing more efficient energy systems, light bulbs, solar panels, he said.
Perry said his company has been implementing sustainable business processes, including use of the latest technologies to minimize travel, recycling at its three locations, launch of a solar project, and redesigning processes to make them more efficient.

Kundahl, who had worked at Duke Energy in the past and “had a lot of passion around energy,” said seeing sustainability “come alive was exciting.”

One of the issues that energy researchers are working on now is how to best store energy produced by alternative sources, including wind and solar collectors, and to channel excess energy from solar collectors installed at individual homes and offices into the community energy grid for use when needed.

The United States’ aging energy infrastructure is a problem, Russell said. “So much has changed in the past ten years; how do you run it though an 80-year-old infrastructure?

Skills Needed for Careers in Sustainability

Solving such problems will require technical product management skills, a strong technical aptitude, as well as a “well-rounded talented individuals with a nice GPA, experience, and good social skills,” Perry said.

Russell added “Econ 101” to mix of skills and knowledge needed for the sustainability marketplace. Perry concurred. “When you are talking about sustainability, it has to be a long term win for people, the government and business,” he said.

Metrics play a key role in justifying the premium price of sustainability-related products. “Track the true costs, including health costs,” Perry said. “Try to come up with cash flows, net present value,” using technologies available to complete such measurements.

Barrett recommended that students “be very attuned to what you love, what you are good at, and what you have to offer.” Those who love accounting, for example, she mentioned that “PriceWaterhouseCoopers is working on a methodology to value ecosystems so that we as a society have a tool to use to value our environment and the function it provides.

“If business and finance gets you going in the morning, get out there and show that socially responsible investing means something, that companies that have a process in place to make sustainable decisions not only save money but add value.”

Sustainability leaders from Raleigh, Durham city and county, and Cary said their roles as sustainability analyst or manager were examples of career paths for students interested in government and sustainability. Life cycle cost analyses, quality of life and mixed use communities that include residential and office space are among the measures under way in their communities, along with sustainability focused transportation initiatives.

Tobin Freid, sustainability manager for Durham city and county, who said she never thought she’d be in her current role, “loves seeing the effect of what I do every day, how things are improving because of what we are doing.” That includes water and energy conservation, changes in construction, more open space. “I work with people who have expertise in all these things areas, and with every department in the city and county, with businesses and communities.”

Freid noted that Durham’s new buildings are complying with LEED standards at the silver or gold levels, noting that the cost difference for green versus conventional construction is narrowing in today’s more competitive construction pricing market. The greater availability of green construction products has also helped to reduce the cost of building green version conventional.

Robert Bittner, former director of energy and physical plant for the Wake County Public Schools System, said he “never thought when I started my career that business, law and science would be such a part of it. There’s a great need for great business minds, law minds, engineering minds as we move forward.”

Bittner also commented on the politicizing of sustainability. “We talk about sustainability and people automatically choose sides, particularly when you talk about global warming and climate change,” he said, adding that he tries to avoid such terms to minimize the polarization. “People don’t fall into sides when you talk about saving energy or money, or jobs. You can accomplish the same kind of things if you watch the language that you use. The more you get people working together, the better.”

Energy Efficiency

“Making the energy that we use more productive, lowering the cost of doing business, and lowering emissions” are energy efficiency goals, said Isaac Panzarella, clean energy extension specialist at the North Carolina Solar Center and moderator of the energy efficiency panel discussion. “Lowering the cost of investment in energy efficiency requires decision making between the consumers and the utilities, and leadership at the local and national level,” he said. “Business, consumers, utilities and policy members are all part of the picture, (but) we are not achieving the high level of efficiency compared to what’s viable and possible.”

Energy efficiency panelist Maria Kingery, co-founder and president of Southern Energy, said there is a large number of organizations that work with builders to produce more energy efficient homes. Many homes have similar characteristics, based on when they were built and the price point. “Duct sealing air barriers and supplemental power sources, these are among the things we are excited about now,” she said. It’s important for buyers to lock in the cost of energy for their homes, and consider the cost of ownership for the long run, and to consider renewable energy as an asset in the value of the home.

Home owners and businesses make decisions based on some kind of payback period, said Barry Wilhelm, with Schneider Electric and one of the panelists. Kevin Overcash, business development manager with Piedmont Service Group, said new technologies are reducing the cost of renewable energy components. Along with market-based incentives, it’s “moving us in the right direction.”
Panzarella said retrofitting existing buildings and developing new energy efficient technologies have tremendous potential for jobs and boosting the economy. The panelists saw the impact of that in their businesses. “It’s become part of how we do business,” Overcash said.

Jill Logeman, energy program director for the Environmental Defense Fund, said “we need people who do the policy work (to be) literate in the technology side as well, and are looking for investors for the private and public sectors. Wilhelm said legislation promoting efficiency mandates is driving his business. Kingerly said “it’s a step in the right direction, and if you believe that the cost of energy will be rising across the world, we need to address this now.”

Renewable Energy

The next 20 years will define the way this nation produces and uses energy,” said Erik Lensch, president of Argand Energy Solutions, LLC.

Converting anything that contains carbon, breaking materials down to their basic molecules and the building them back up into energy producers, at the end of the day, our goal is to produce a low-cost commodity, said Sam Yenne, chief executive officer of the energy start-up Maverick Biofuels. Work by Stephan Kelley, professor and head of NC State’s Department of Forest Biomaterials in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, “helps to drive this.”

Kelley explained that energy is electricity. Renewable energy – photovoltaic – Is not particularly useful for transportation. Biofuels, the area he researches, fits well with transportation needs. “We as technologists have to provide information in a context that informs this lively debate, and we have to one another that there are ways to have this debate realizing there always are tradeoffs, socially, environmentally, economically,” Yenne said. “All of you under age 30 have to deal with the complex questions.

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