Companies know that a coordinated sustainability initiative is a business imperative. But how do you implement your sustainability initiative? Where does sustainability fit within the corporate structure? How do you overcome the inevitable challenges? Sustainability Leader of Sears Canada James Gray-Donald opens his playbook and shares the challenges and successes of leading Sears towards greater sustainability.
Unilever is the top Food & Beverage company on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Through Bullfrog Power, Unilever recently became the largest commercial purchaser of renewable energy in Canada at 59,000 MWh per year. What is Unilever’s sustainability strategy and why do they do it? To find out, I took a tour of their Brampton plant and talked to John Coyne, Vice President and General Counsel of Unilever Canada.
The final part of this case study on Canada’s largest solar rooftop focuses on the Ontario Feed-In Tariff program application. We look at how LoyaltyOne got their FIT program approval to become the first solar system to feed electricity into the provincial power grid.
Operational since early 2010, the huge 800-panel solar rooftop system costs $1.85 million to build. The third part of this case study focuses on financial details. We look at the startup costs, operating costs, income from the high profile Ontario Feed-In Tariff program, and most importantly, the projected payback period.
Canadian luxury hotel giant Fairmont partners with World Wildlife Fund Canada to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. We look at how Fairmont Waterfront, Chateau Lake Louise, Château Laurier, and Château Montebello implement their climate change projects in solar, hydro, wind, lighting retrofit and heat recovery, with project costs between $15,000 to half a million and payback time between 2 to 5 years. Future savings after payback could be very substantial.