Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is key to avoiding the very worst potential outcomes of global warming. Even while governments craft policies to the negative impact that society has on the natural world, there is still plenty of room for invested and innovative leaders to drive positive outcomes through decisive action.
This summary details the steps of work conducted at Compugen Inc., including a blueprint for how we have reached our initial objectives in a data-driven and economical manner. I hope that by sharing this information, others can use it to build their own plans, stoking competition in our industry to reduce carbon emissions whilst also benefitting business results.
Over the past 12 months, I have been proud to be part of a team at Compugen Inc. who have worked towards establishing the company’s first-ever carbon footprint. This involved a comprehensive and transparent accounting of our Scope 1 and 2 emissions (for clarity on scope definitions see here). In August, we completed our carbon footprint report and are now prepared for the next steps of third-party verification and public reporting. By doing so, Compugen will demonstrate a level of corporate governance typically reserved for publicly traded companies. While public organizations are often compelled by shareholders to meet such standards, privately held companies have more flexibility. I am proud that Compugen chose to undertake this challenging task because our team, from the CEO down, believes it is the right thing to do.
Efforts were already well underway when I signed up to champion our work in this area; for many years prior, the Compugen group of companies (under Compugen Finance Inc.) had been promoting innovative financing and e-waste minimization solutions to incentivize recycling and remarketing, a ‘Green Team’ had been established to create a grassroots sustainability network and via our membership of HP’s “Amplify” program, action plans were underway to promote more sustainable means of doing business. As a result of this, my engagement began by working to craft a cohesive framework that would support these initiatives in continuing to flourish whilst also bringing central governance and a layer of quantifiability.
The first step was engaging our Executive Leadership Team with a draft strategy to gain their buy-in and start to build alignment. The key tenants of this plan were as follows:
Vision: Generate a measurable and positive impact on the issue of Climate change by eliminating and offsetting carbon emissions.
Aspiration: Legitimately lead the industry in transforming our business from carbon-positive to carbon-
Strategy: Develop and leverage an economy of trust to couple business benefits to impact objectives and drive sound, sustainable business.
Plan: Create a single, universal and extensible carbon accounting framework which can ingest all available data sources to provide actionable insight. Engage and inspire Compugeners to address scope 1 emissions. Craft policy and solutions to address scope 2 & 3 emissions. Manage over time with a strong governance model.
In my mind, the key terms were “legitimately” and “trust”; the world is awash with so-called “greenwashing” and fake news – if we were to do this, we should aim to be a source of inspiration for those who want to participate or replicate. Though there were questions, the ELT’s support was unanimous.
With alignment and support secured, we agreed the next concrete milestone to be the creation of a carbon accounting framework to measure the carbon emissions produced in a year of doing business. Stemming from the key principles of legitimacy and transparency, we engaged through the office of our CFO to ensure that the necessary rigour was put into this process. We also reached out to our key partner HP to understand tools that could support our efforts here – previous incarnations of these efforts resulted in lots of manual effort and thus ware starting to stall based on the requirement for people to dedicate hours “off the side of their desk”. Through our amplify partnership with HP, we were connected to their global platform partner, Sweep who quickly impressed us with their capability and engagement methodology. After a period of evaluation, we agreed to contract with Sweep, initiating our next search ... resourcing to administer protocols within the platform.
For several years now, Compugen has operated a summer intern program, leveraging our brand to draw some incredibly bright talent from Canada’s leading universities. Though a role to support our sustainability efforts had not been part of the initial assignments, the organization was extremely supportive in securing a spot for a ‘Climate Action Administrator’.
It was hard not to be blown away by the quality of applicants, largely hailing from the University of Toronto, but stretching as far as the University of British Columbia, my team and I had the privilege of interviewing some incredibly bright young leaders who were bursting at the seems to take on an opportunity to do some good in the world. Through a difficult selection process, we eventually landed on a tremendously impressive young man who was completing a Master’s Degree in Sustainability Management. During the course of our work, I and others from Compugen had many conversations with Charles on Climate Change, Innovation and potential futures, all of us finding his optimism to be an antidote to the sense of hopelessness that can sometimes set in when facing a challenge of such proportions as climate change.
Over the following weeks, we executed against our plan, identifying data required to paint a clear picture of our carbon footprint and building a matrix of data sources, including notes on where they came from and how ready they were for automated discovery (a necessity to improve the leverage Sweep could provide in maximizing future efforts to reduce our emissions). With consultation from subject matter experts (part of our implementation agreement with Sweep), we documented a framework of logic to sit behind our accounting of Compugen’s emissions – we found that there are often grey areas in how data could be classified, and by documenting our logic, we left it open to revision as we become more knowledgeable through our continued efforts.
Compugen now has a statement of our carbon footprint and the ability to easily track the sources of our carbon emissions. We also have an engaged community, the sum of which opens up a world of possibilities when it comes to driving emissions down and building environmental sustainability into the continued growth and success of our business.
Here are four key learnings that I would share with anyone trying to replicate our results within their own organization:
Be specific in what you are trying to accomplish and understand how you will measure results. We at Compugen have many “green” initiatives in flight and we understood that by creating a framework to measure impact, these initiatives and the people behind them could be better enabled.
Gain support from executive leadership. Enterprise topics impact various parts of the business, and even in an environment like ours (where people are extremely accommodating and eager to support), prioritization of the work will be required to maintain progress. Thank you to the Compugen ELT for their support, without which, we would not have made the progress that we have.
Engage broadly – sustainability is a big & complex topic, often lacking “single correct answers.” Being informed by SMEs allows you to move forward in alignment with your core principles, and being supported by engaged individuals from across the organization supports momentum. Thank you to the experts at HP and Sweep for your guidance and to the Compugen Green Team for your tireless eff
Transparency allows rigorous investigation, which in turn opens up a greater possibility of achieving the ultimate outcome of reducing emissions. I look forward to open discussions with industry competitors to stoke competition in this space, which will ultimately benefit us all.
I look forward to the next steps of my organization’s journey and the continued engagement of passionate people from organizations across Canada to propel us all toward a vibrant, low-carbon economy.
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Tom Willshaw
Director, Integrated Service Solutions