Energy Efficiency, GHG Emissions  -  February 14, 2022 - By Alexandra Failla, Smart Energy Decisions

Smart Energy Decisions Plans Its First Sustainability Report

While helping others achieve their sustainability goals has been integral to Smart Energy Decisions’ business since our inception, we felt it was time to “walk the walk” by setting our own sustainability goals and informing our community of our intentions, challenges, and progress.  That’s why I was excited to announce plans for SED’s first Sustainability Report back in December at the Renewable Energy Forum in California. We are proud to be the first energy focused business-to-business media and events platform to showcase progress across three key sustainability sectors: environmental, social and governance.

There are several goals we want to accomplish with this Report:

• Outline our progress thus far and demonstrate that SED is committed to sustainable development.
• Establish baseline sustainability performance including an emissions inventory with plans to reduce those emissions
• Find opportunities for efficiencies, innovation, and risk management
• Monitor our progress over time with KPIs

The Report will highlight the mission and values of SED, how we engage with our stakeholder community, and detail SED’s sustainability tracking and goals through the ESG framework covering environmental, social and governance factors. Among the areas to be covered in the Report: 

Environmental:
We’ve worked hard over the last six years to help our community reduce their energy consumption and increase their procurement of renewable energy to reduce carbon emissions and the impacts of climate change. Therefore, we feel it is important to practice what we preach and demonstrate SED’s commitment to sustainable development by performing an emissions inventory on our business model and taking steps to both reduce and offset the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated by our operations.  

Social:
While SED is working to improve awareness of its environmental footprint going forward, we’re proud of what we have already accomplished in our work in the “social” component of ESG. Our “Inspiring Diversity in Energy” series, which began in 2019, in addition to other efforts, has paved the way for others to follow in addressing this important issue in the industry. 

Governance:
We plan to focus our governance efforts on our vendor and site selection processes related to our operations including hotels we partner with for our events. We will also discuss our culture and values, customer privacy, and identifying opportunities to enhance the diversity of our organization and our Advisory Board. 

We are very excited about these sustainability plans, and I look forward to presenting more information to the community at the Innovation Summit in Houston, March 14-16.

Alexandra Failla is Senior Project Manager for Smart Energy Decisions, managing sustainability initiatives, social media, and coordinating content-related scheduling.  She recently received her M.S. in Sustainability Management at Columbia University.