Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Christopher Ong, Vice President Business Development, First Choice & GoGreen for DHL Asia Pacific , Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa. The express division has cut its emissions by 19%, an impressive achievement given the large size of DHL. Globally DHL employs around half a million people.

How has it achieved these savings?

Firstly the chairman identified that it was important for the company to reduce its emissions, as part of being a good corporate citizen.
Secondly, it set a carbon reduction target, of globally reducing emissions by 30% per kg delivered, by 2015.

Third it put in place a measurement and tracking system. Unlike many organisations which centralise their data collection for the purpose of tracking emissions, DHL developed a system where the data entry is decentralised system.

Fourth it got staff using the system. Initially it was hard to motivate staff to do this. However with strong management support, monthly data entry into the system is now the norm. Each month each facility fills in a on-line questionnaire, entering in information such as the litres of diesel used. This only takes a few minutes.

Fifth, graphs and reports from the system are printed out at each facility, and put on the facility noticeboard where they are prominent to staff and drivers.

Sixth, it has fostered competition, encouraged ideas that reduced energy consumption, and empowered staff to take actions to reduce their energy use. For example, in their facilities in Singapore DHL now practices “lights off at lunchtime”, an idea suggested by a staff member.

Chris highlighted the fact that saving energy saves money, and that the Global Financial Crisis has actually accelerated their savings.  He said that their total savings to date of 19,000,000 kgs have come from lots of people each saving a few kgs each day. Financial savings so far total ten million euros. His advice to other organisations:

1. Be able to measure your emissions accurately.
2. Give power to the people on the ground. Give them the information they need – what their emissions are now, what they were, how much they have saved. The results can be very immediate, and this reinforces what more can be done.

DHL provide a inspiring example for other organisations to follow. This good news interview with Christopher Ong can be found at https://carbonetix.com.au/wwx/good-news-interviews.

Reflecting on my interviews with various leaders in the energy efficiency space there are five things you must have to successfully reduce energy use and carbon emissions.

First you need leadership commitment.

Second you need a measurement and monitoring system. Whether you are a school (listen to Hannah Lewis, Westernport Secondary College, which has halved its energy use in the last four years) or a major corporation such as Wesfarmers, you must be able to track your progress.

Third you need more than one person active and driving the program. Witness Linfox, where a few programmers voluntarily took on the extra project of building a carbon tracking tool.

Fourth you need a well informed plan as to what you need to do. An energy audit by experienced energy efficiency engineers will provide this.

Fifth, you need investment. Money is needed to get the savings. The money could be spent on people (eg the driver training undertaken by LinfoX) or technology (eg lighting upgrades at Darebin City Council and Newcastle City Council, or the new paint plant at Toyota). 

Do this and with time you’ll have a self-funding system that will continue to reduce your energy use and carbon footprint.

A recent study by IBM published in Forbes magazine says that whilst many companies want to reduce their carbon footprint, many do not have the measurement systems in place.

The study says that “Companies aren’t collecting and analyzing the information they really need or aggregating it often enough. Because of that, they can’t implement real changes to fundamentally increase efficiency, lower costs, reduce environmental impact and improve their reputations with key stakeholders.”

“In our survey, only 19% of respondents said they are collecting data on carbon dioxide emissions weekly or more often. Most are collecting it only quarterly. That may be enough to meet government or stakeholder demands for information, but it’s not nearly enough to produce systemic change that can reduce environmental impact.”

The old adage “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” is no less true when it comes to cutting your carbon emissions.

Measuring and tracking your emissions on an ongoing basis:

• Helps you know where to focus your efforts. Its been our experience that the 80/20 rule certainly applies to greenhouse gas emissions. 20% of an organisation’s sites will be responsible for 80% of its emissions. We have worked with many local governments and the 80/20 rule always stands up. Organisations which don’t know where their emissions are coming can easily fall into the trap of not focussing their effort where it will have the greatest impact. On the other hand by applying the 80/20 rule its easy to get some quick wins that build credibility and win valuable support for ongoing carbon reduction. An example of this comes from Darebin City Council in Melbourne. We started off with an 80/20 analysis, then undertook energy audits of their top 13 sites. We were then contracted to project manage energy efficiency works. We did some data logging and identified that the heating was starting up at 1am. So the first thing we did was to get a programmer in for an hour or so to change settings in the Building Management System controlling the heating. By reading the gas meter regularly, and tracking the gas bills, an immediate saving was identified, equating to roughly $10,000 a year and 100 tonnes of greenhouse gas. This quick win, and a dedicated energy efficiency officer (Stuart Nesbitt) employed by the council at the time we started project managing, provided a “kick start” to a program that two years later is still going strong, with net savings to date across the top buildings of 22%. And measurement was a key part of this – the 80/20 analysis followed by targetted data logging to measure in detail major items of plant.
• Alerts you to problems. For example water consumption jumps 100% – usually when this happens there is a leak, often underground where it can’t be seen. If you aren’t measuring and monitoring, or you don’t have a system that raises an alert, you may end up wasting water for many months. Users of our CarbonmetriX system often find problems they would have otherwised missed because of the automatic alerts it raises.
• Engages with stakeholders. When you know where and how your energy is being used, and the trends, its much easier to engage with facility managers and other stakeholders when developing a plan to reduce your emissions.
• Enables comparison. You can pick out those facilities with the highest and lowest carbon emissions per square meter, per widget, or per staff member. Then see what the best facilities are doing and transfer that to your worst facilities.
• Assist you present genuine green credentials, and not just greenwash, when you go to the marketplace and can demonstrate what you have measurably saved.

The Forbes article finishes with the following comment: “The bright spot in these findings comes from companies that outperform their competitors in bottom-line results. Outperformers rank consistently higher in collecting every type of CSR information frequently or in real-time across all major green and sustainability categories, from carbon dioxide emissions and water conservation to ethical labor standards and sustainable procurement. They also rank higher in information collection from suppliers.”

Click here to see the IBM study presented in Forbes.