May 2014
 |
L to R: John Gardner, Elsa Reichmanis, Bruce Karas, Bert
Bras, Diana Rivenburgh, John Crittenden, Steve Leffin, and
Marilyn Brown |
On
March 10th, 2014, The Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems
hosted an event at the Historic Academy of Medicine to honor three Georgia
Tech professors as the inaugural recipients of the title Brook Byers
Professor. Professors Bert Bras, Marilyn
Brown, and Elsa Reichmanis were joined by three corporate sustainability
leaders and moderator, Diana Rivenburgh as well as Professor John Crittenden in a
broad ranging panel discussion. The
three corporate participants were John Gardner from Novelis, Bruce Karas from
Coca-Cola, and Steve Leffin from UPS.
Made
possible by a gift from Shawn and Brook Byers, a 1968 Georgia Tech alumnus in
Electrical Engineering, the Brook Byers Professorships provide resources to
enable and enhance cross-disciplinary, collaborative research and education in
sustainability, energy, and water. The
three recipients were recommended by their peers, chosen by the Provost, and approved
by the Board of Regents. The Brook Byers
Professorship is the highest title bestowed at Georgia Tech for those engaged in sustainability related research and education.
Michael
Chang, Deputy Director of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems,
said in his opening comments how remarkable it was for three people to be
appointed to such a title at once.
He went on to express his hopes for how Bras, Brown and Reichmanis would
realize the opportunities for collaboration and synergy that were possible with
a cluster appointment such as this that might not be possible individually.
The
discussion ranged from the sustainability issues that are foremost in the minds
of those in the corporate world, to how higher education can prepare graduates
to both succeed professionally and bring about a more sustainable world.
All
those in attendance were treated to a copy of Diana Rivenburgh’s new book, The
New Corporate Facts of Life: Rethink Your Business to Transform Today’s
Challenges into Tomorrow’s Profits, courtesy of Novelis.
A
summary of points made during the discussion follows:
Steve Leffin:
Compressed natural gas, propane, and liquefied natural gas are viable
alternative fuels for package trucks that achieve a more sustainable balance
than liquid petroleum fuels. UPS has
been and will continue to phase in these vehicles.
Bruce Karras:
Water is a fundamental issue for Coca Cola’s business. It is not only in every product, but it is
critical to every production process.
Closing loops for water is a major sustainability initiative for Coca
Cola. Another is how the millennial
demographic group uses social media with regards to the sustainability
attributes of Coca Cola products.
John Gardner:
Novelis is working towards becoming a supplier of 100% recycled content
products. This is possible because
aluminum is infinitely recyclable with no degradation in quality.
Diana Rivenburgh: What opportunities and challenges are on the
horizon that require attention and investment in order to be addressed
effectively?
Leffin: UPS uses scenario planning to help prepare
for the future. One such scenario looked
at what might happen if oil prices reached $200 a barrel. Other factors that will have an impact are
water scarcity, technological innovation, personal mobility, changing
regulatory frameworks, expansion and upward mobility of those people at the
base of the pyramid, ubiquitous use of mobile devices, and the rapid expansion
of urban spaces such that people may not have an “address.” The world is likely to be very different over
the next two decades. Capital
investments will need to be made with great care to anticipate the coming
changes.
Gardner: Companies need to look beyond the boundaries
of their business operations. Life Cycle
Assessment is a trend that enables companies to do this. Novelis is working on using its products in
the light-weighting of cars and trucks to increase fuel efficiency. Currently
about 33% of its feed stock comes from recycled materials. Novelis is moving towards
sourcing 80% of its feed stock from recycled materials which would halve
Novelis’ carbon footprint, meanwhile doubling their business.
Karas: A supply chain-wide view of sustainability is
beginning to emerge. Life cycle
assessment is a big part of that.
Designing with the proper end-of-use in mind is critical. Currently, everything is designed for
landfill. Coca Cola has been working on
the development of plant based PET resin for its containers as a way to move
away from its reliance on petroleum based materials.
Brown: There are already lots of good sustainable technologies
available, but what we lack is a good policy environment to allow them to
flourish. There are policies that in
place or coming on-line soon that are helpful in bringing about sustainability
such as: more stringent CAFE standards, upcoming Clean Air Act revisions may
include regulations to limit water consumption in thermal electricity
generation, and the trend towards real-time pricing of energy to encourage
usage during off-peak times.
There are major sustainability
issues for which there are no definitive policies in place such as: allowing
the free export of LNG globally could double or triple the cost, the approval
of the Keystone XL pipeline may buffer an increase in oil prices but at what
environmental cost, the denial of the pipeline might slow the development of
the resource but might have worse environmental consequences if the oil is
transported by other modes such as rail, putting a price on greenhouse gas
emissions will lead to better market viability for carbon efficient and
renewable technologies.
Bras: Corporations are broadening their perspectives by
partnering with companies in different, seemingly unrelated markets. Ford’s MyEnergi
Lifestyle is a project that partners the auto
maker with an appliance company and solar panel manufacturer to investigate
what synergies might be possible amongst these product categories. Companies are also beginning to think of their
business models in terms of services to the consumer rather than product
offerings.
Karas: Where Good Ideas Come From by Steve Johnson is a helpful resource for companies
looking to broaden their perspective and engage in partnerships with other
companies in adjacent market niches.
Elsa Reichmanis: Research in sustainability for chemistry and
biomolecular engineering tend to be on longer time horizons. They are focused on some of the major
challenges facing humanity such as water, energy and food supply. Science and engineering can’t solve these
problems without involvement from other disciplines including public policy and
business. Higher education is preparing
graduates with these ideas in mind.
Crittenden: BBISS works primarily in the area of sustainable urban
infrastructure systems. Cities can be
likened to the largest machines humanity has ever built. There has been a lot
of attention on sustainable technologies and materials at the product scale,
but not so at the urban scale. Today’s
decisions about urban infrastructure remain for a long time and the majority of
environmental impacts occur throughout the day to day use. Lots of infrastructure is going to be built
in the coming decades, especially in rapidly urbanizing countries like
China. BBISS advocates a shift in
thinking about infrastructure from the current paradigm of discrete systems or elements
to one of “Infrastructure Ecology.” This
paradigm considers multiple infrastructure layers, systems and elements and
their interactions and emergent properties as critical to maximizing the
function of infrastructure as providing comfort and wealth in a durable and
resilient way.
Leffin: Measurements of ecological impact are currently leveled at
the business and product level. It may
make more sense to begin to measure at the economic sector or systems
level. It is possible that some sectors
or systems may have bigger discrete footprints but will eliminate the necessity
of smaller or more highly differentiated businesses that, in total, add up to
much greater impact. For example,
expanding public transportation results in greater impacts for the public transportation
sector, but has the potential to displace much greater impacts in the personal
transportation sector. So, under some
proposals, the individual public transportation systems would be penalized for
their increased local impacts even while they serve to reduce impact on a
global scale.
Brown: Measuring impacts at
the national level doesn’t reveal things like the U.S. selling coal to Europe
or the offshoring of energy intensive manufacturing processes. The greenhouse
gas emissions for the U.S. might go down, but some of that reduction is
actually embodied in products that are manufactured in China but consumed in
the U.S. It is important that students
understand these nuances.
Leffin: The World Resources Institute (WRI) and the
World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) understand these
nuances and are working to incorporate these issues into their work with the
business community.
Reichmanis: Higher education will also need to take a
more holistic approach to educating students.
Most disciplines are still mostly stove-piped. Moving to a multi-disciplinary education
model will produce graduates today that will accelerate our progress toward
sustainability in the private sector tomorrow.
Gardner: Corporations working with institutions like Georgia Tech
are vital to keep the personnel pipeline filled with people who understand
sustainability and can innovate. Novelis
built a global R+D center in Kennesaw yet it struggles to find the right people
to hire.
Bras: On the other hand, most companies still hire graduates
based on their depth of knowledge in their discipline rather than their breadth
of multidisciplinary knowledge. Georgia
Tech mechanical engineering students are now given 15 credit hours of free electives
so that they can broaden their perspectives.
Leffin: One way the UPS encourages more holistic thinking among its employees is to get them involved in volunteer forestry
projects. It’s very important for
students to seek out similar experiences where they get exposure to natural
systems as a way shift their perspective towards thinking holistically.
Brown: Public policy has an important role to
play. Policy makers need operate from
the facts in the world and a deep understanding of science and technology. The failure of ethanol policy in the U.S. is
an excellent example of decision makers listening to influences other than the
experts in the energy policy realm.
Karas: Water efficiency is a critical factor for
Coca-Cola. Currently most of the
thinking is how to use water more efficiently one time versus using that same
water multiple times before treatment and discharge. Students ought to understand better how newer,
more efficient technologies integrate better with existing systems that are less
efficient. We can’t get there
overnight. There has to be a transition.
Reichmanis: We have to balance a holistic approach to
educating engineers with the in-depth material that engineers need to
effectively practice their profession.
Life-cycle assessment can be a way to achieve this balance. Another way is to understand that an
engineering graduate will be required to continue learning after graduation
day. Teaching students to collaborate
with other people from different disciplines to solve problems is a something
that higher education can do better to fill this gap.
Brown: Integrating the supply side with the demand
side is becoming more important. We
often educate for the optimization of one or the other in isolation.
Crittenden: Transportation is access to function. Reductionism in
engineering is not enough – it’s not enough to only look at how individual
products can be made more efficiently or to be more efficient. There’s a limit
to the amount of efficiency that can be achieved and there’s a limit to the
number of efficient products that can exist sustainably. We will need to take radical approaches to
fulfilling the underlying needs that our products and systems fulfill.
Bras: User behavior can be just as important as efficiency
technologies in achieving efficiency goals.
Proper training for efficient use is often cheaper than the
technology. If you make the most
efficient product, it won’t perform as intended if it’s not used as intended. A litmus test for whether a new efficiency
technology will integrate well into a given setting is to ask the question, “Would
my (wife, husband, grandmother, stubborn co-worker, etc.) use that?”
Leffin: Transparency enabled by the internet is a
major factor in the sustainability conversation.
Rivenburgh: How do we teach the students of today to
solve the problems of tomorrow given that the ones we know about are really
difficult and that there will be many problems that we can’t know about today?
Brown: Engaging everyone in discussions surrounding
the problems. Georgia Tech is leading
the way in the diversity of students.
Crittenden: “We want to change the face of engineering through
sustainability. But, we also want to
change the faces of engineers as well.”
Reichmanis: The world is getting smaller. Solutions that are acceptable to us may not
be somewhere else in the world.
Bras: Preparing students for problems that aren’t
known yet has to combine the fundamentals of science and engineering with an
understanding of the global context in which we must now make decisions. Being immersed in a diverse setting is one
way to achieve that.
Crittenden: There is strong relationship
between population growth and childhood mortality. Sustainable technologies in much of the developing
world amounts to proper sanitation so that children don’t get sick and
die. This is a knowable and soluble
problem that we can deal with now.
Rivenburgh:
Education of girls is also a big factor in population.
Karas: We have to think carefully about the lens
through which we view problems.
Solutions for the developed world are not necessarily viable in the
developing world.
(Question
from the audience)
Dennis Creech (Southface
Energy Institute): How do we bridge
the gap between the skills, knowledge, and wisdom in the academic and business
communities with the policies and decisions we see in our local, regional and
state governments?
Brown:
Masters students at Georgia Tech in public policy have to fulfill and
internship. Most do so at the state and
federal level. There is probably a bit
of reverse education happening from the student to the decision makers about
the science and engineering involved in sustainability decisions.
Reichmanis:
Those who choose science and engineering as a career don’t tend to
become involved in the political side of their professional expertise. People currently in academia could become
more involved in communicating with the public and with decision makers as well
as teach their students to more effectively do the same.
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