What is In Store for the Future of Energy?

How Becton Dickinson Tackles Its ESG Strategy

On this episode of The Energy Exchange, Host David Hidinger talked with Sarah Hill, Director of Sustainability at Becton Dickinson (BD), one of the largest global medical technology companies in the world and is advancing the world of health by improving medical discovery, diagnostics and the delivery of care. They talked about BD, the importance of ESG, and Hill’s career. Before landing at BD, Hill worked for one of BD’s competitors as a Product Stewardship Manager and Sustainability manager, where she wore many hats and took on many roles. Her duties focused on product compliance, environmental legislation compliance for medical devices, and a small amount of sustainability strategy work. An opportunity opened up at BD, so she made the move. “My role is Director of Sustainability, but I still wear a couple of different hats,” Hill said. “I haven’t moved completely away from the product stewardship work, so I still partner with colleagues on my time and the rest of the business on various stewardship issues.” But, primarily, she focuses on sustainability disclosures, such as sustainability reporting, “an alphabet soup of frameworks we have to follow.” She also engages with stakeholders, such as investors, customers, suppliers, and associates. She is also in charge of setting up their sustainability strategy. “Working with partners around the business to identify what are important environmental and social governance issues, figure out where we need to go in the next ten years, what’s important for our stakeholders, and get a strategy together,” Hill said.

How AT&T Tackled Its Carbon Footprint: The Energy Exchange

On this episode of The Energy Exchange, Host David Hidinger talked with John Schulz, Director of Sustainability Integrations at AT&T. They talked about Schulz’s career, how he got into his current role, and his role in helping AT&T lead the way in sustainability. “I’ve been really lucky,” Schulz said. “I’ve had the chance to do lots of different jobs within sustainability.” Of the 19 years Schulz has been at AT&T, 14 of them have been in sustainability. He started by looking at the media company’s footprint and how they use electricity. As the first to gauge the companies carbon footprint, he measured the company’s emissions back in 2008. This led him to work on other parts of the business, such as the supply chain and vehicle fleet. As the first person to tackle AT&T’s carbon footprint, it seems like an enormous task. But, the company was ahead of its time when it came to tackling this work. Schulz noted that there were protocols and technical documents available for companies taking on the job, with a lot of intelligent people setting up the guidelines. “We were early in the cycle when our first emission portfolio came out in 2008,” Schulz said. “We were in the early group to do that. It was exciting and challenging.” But, he might be most excited about what he is working on now: customers. He is currently examining how AT&T’s connectivity can enable their customers to reduce their carbon footprint through energy or fuel use and even water and raw materials. Listen to hear more about Schulz’s career with sustainability at AT&T.

Exploring AT&T’s Commitment to Renewable and More Efficient Energy Use

How are key stakeholders driving change in energy? Many are forging a path to renewable energy, carbon neutrality, and leveraging data and technology to be more energy efficient. Discussing AT&T’s journey, Energy Exchange host David Hidinger spoke with the company’s Director of Global Environmental Sustainability, Shannon Carroll. Carroll has been with the company for over 22 years, and in the last 10, he’s focused on sustainability. “Our commitment to this is companywide, from the mitigation side to reduce emissions, investment in renewable energy, and being more efficient with the energy we do use.” On the renewable energy bucket, AT&T works as an investor to developers, guaranteeing that they will buy energy produced. “Last year, we had the largest solar deal to date, where we purchased 500 megawatts,” Carroll said. Since 2018, the company contracted to purchase over 1.5 gigawatts of renewable energy, which Carroll noted: “reduces greenhouse gas emissions, provides developers financial security, and boosts the local economy with clean energy job creation.” AT&T also focuses on using energy more efficiently, and since 2010 has created over 100,000 energy-efficient projects. What’s unique is that they go beyond the best practices, leveraging data to make smarter decisions. “We are to the next level of predictive analytics and optimization, through IoT integration. We work with the data office to find opportunities.” Their data process matured beyond streams of data, with sensors working in conjunction to drive meaningful insights. “What we see for the future is more real-time data analysis and knowing in the moment how decisions will save on costs and usage,” Carroll shared.

How Are Organizations like AT&T Working toward Carbon Neutrality?

As the next “season” of The Energy Exchange kicks off, host David Hidinger started things off with a bang, inviting AT&T AVP - Global Environmental Sustainability Charles Herget onto the show to explore a variety of topics related to sustainability and the initiatives of the telco juggernaut. In his role, Herget leads AT&T’s corporate environmental sustainability efforts across the organization, taking stock of end-to-end processes in order to evaluate how the company can achieve its sustainability goals. Perhaps its most prominent current goal is carbon neutrality, which the organization hopes to achieve by 2035. That’s a tall order made taller by the addition of several other considerations, including: Expansion of its Climate Change Analysis Tool Achieving net zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions A commitment to network resiliency in the face of natural disasters and other disruptions Influencing suppliers and partners in an effort to engender widespread impact Herget and Hidinger dove into these goals, identifying specific steps the organization is taking to achieve them, exploring their potential impact on service across the globe, and examining the critical importance of connectivity in a world advancing more rapidly than ever before.

What is In Store for the Future of Energy?

With that in mind, Hidinger took this episode of the show to look back on those episodes and hit the high points, offering a quick tour through the educational and engaging conversations to this point. In episodes one through 11, he and his guests have covered: Improved Battery Technologies Disputes over Pipelines The Shale Revolution & Power Grids Expanding Electric Transmission Lines Designing Sustainable Cities Simulating Vertical Windmills Protecting America’s Cyber Infrastructure How to Use IoT to Manage the Energy Grid What Will The Home of The Future Look Like? How to Get Perfect Power in the Home Could New Technology Pioneer an Entirely New Era of Seawater Mining? That’s quite the tour around the industry. Even so, Hidinger has identified several common trends, including new technology’s mark on the overall landscape and the acceleration of innovation, the role decreasing sensor costs have played in the industry, the impact of increases in computing power, and more. In upcoming episodes, Hidinger and his guests will expand their lens even further, tackling what the world’s largest enterprises are doing in terms of energy and other forward-looking subjects.