Sustainability – Now More Than Ever

“These are extra­or­di­nary times. And we face an extra­or­di­nary chal­lenge.” This is how John F. Kennedy start­ed his spe­cial mes­sage to Con­gress in May of 1961, in which he announced the goal of send­ing a human being to the moon before the end of the decade. The idea seemed impos­si­ble at first, yet it touched off a con­test that achieved the seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble just eight years later, and demon­strat­ed that human­i­ty is quite able to take giant leaps.

For the Swedish Earth sys­tem sci­en­tist Pro­fes­sor Johan Rock­ström – Direc­tor of the Pots­dam Insti­tute for Cli­mate, which is based in Brandenburg’s cap­i­tal and inves­ti­gates sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly and social­ly sig­nif­i­cant issues in the areas of glob­al change, cli­mate impact, and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment – the year 1961 is com­pa­ra­ble to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion: “Now we are announc­ing our goal to cut emis­sions and reduce green­house gases in Europe by at least 50 per­cent in ten years.” And even if so far no nation has start­ed to take on this “moon shot” in terms of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and estab­lished suf­fi­cient­ly com­pre­hen­sive poli­cies, the coro­na pan­dem­ic at the lat­est sets us the deci­sive ulti­ma­tum: “This ter­ri­ble pan­dem­ic comes with an impor­tant sig­nal: for bet­ter or worse, we are not so much caught in the sta­tus quo as we often believe.”

The cli­mate expert, who is in great demand world­wide, takes a crit­i­cal view of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion: “We cur­rent­ly do not see the changes that sci­ence shows we need to make to sta­bi­lize the cli­mate – and avoid fur­ther dan­ger­ous impacts with irre­versible dam­age to our life-sup­port sys­tem: our plan­et.” But at the same time, he said, a sig­nif­i­cant shift has taken place over the last five years. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is increas­ing­ly per­ceived by com­pa­nies as a strate­gic core task and estab­lished as a suc­cess fac­tor in com­pe­ti­tion: “These two trends must be com­bined. We are cur­rent­ly at a trans­for­ma­tion point. Some busi­ness­es are seiz­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty and pio­neer­ing, while oth­ers keep on tip­toe­ing and will soon be lag­gards.”

A world­wide cri­sis like the Covid-19 pan­dem­ic could launch a devel­op­ment that enables this trans­for­ma­tion to suc­ceed, and thus lay the ground­work for greater sus­tain­abil­i­ty. “Gov­ern­ments, busi­ness, and the pub­lic are all called upon to apply new approach­es and solu­tions,” says Pro­fes­sor Lucia Reisch, the spokesper­son for the Porsche Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Coun­cil. “Yes, we should be devot­ing all the nec­es­sary resources to beat­ing the virus right now. Yet it would be neg­li­gent if we ignored long-term and more fun­da­men­tal threats like cli­mate change and there­by hin­dered mea­sures need­ed to avert them.” A pro­fes­sor of con­sumer behav­ior and con­sumer pol­i­cy at Copen­hagen Busi­ness School, she notes the need to learn from the past. As recent­ly as 2008, mile­stones long since achieved were set back by years as a result of the finan­cial cri­sis.

Despite this risk, sci­en­tists like Rock­ström have a hope­ful view: “I’m quite opti­mistic here, actu­al­ly. This dev­as­tat­ing shake-up caused by the coro­na virus is grad­u­al­ly open­ing up the oppor­tu­ni­ty to recov­er in a way that builds more sus­tain­able and resilient soci­eties in the future.” That is because Covid-19 has made one thing clear: there is a link between human inter­ven­tion in nat­ur­al habi­tats and glob­al crises like this. Accord­ing to Rock­ström, the pos­i­tive impulse lies in this under­stand­ing: “Pre­cise­ly because the pan­dem­ic, while root­ed in envi­ron­men­tal issues, now affects human health and secu­ri­ty issues, it might accel­er­ate change.” In con­crete terms, this means that more than ever, com­pa­nies are now called upon to devel­op solu­tions for cli­mate-neu­tral mobil­i­ty or to estab­lish use of resources in bal­ance with nature that will also pre­serve a live­able world for future gen­er­a­tions.

At the moment, how­ev­er, the pan­dem­ic and the asso­ci­at­ed eco­nom­ic dam­age have com­pelled many com­pa­nies to focus pri­mar­i­ly on cost reduc­tion and liq­uid­i­ty. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is often rel­e­gat­ed to a sec­ondary role. Yet Bir­git Engler, a part­ner at the Porsche Con­sult­ing man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy, says now is pre­cise­ly the time to put sus­tain­abil­i­ty at the top of the agen­da as a key to suc­cess. “In the future, com­mer­cial suc­cess will depend not only on eco­nom­ic fac­tors but also on respon­si­ble social and eco­log­i­cal action. Now is the time for com­pa­nies to set this course and to strong­ly inte­grate sus­tain­abil­i­ty.” Pri­or­i­ties should be placed on fore­sight and value-adding growth instead of short-term opti­miza­tion of the bot­tom line. Flow­ery words and lip ser­vice will not do the job. “Clear actions and rec­og­niz­able results are need­ed in order to build trust,” she says.

This is con­firmed by experts on renew­able ener­gy such as Dr. René Back­es from BASF, the world’s largest chem­i­cal cor­po­ra­tion by sales. A chemist and spe­cial­ist in busi­ness devel­op­ment, Back­es works as a scout at the Swedish office of the Ger­man cor­po­ra­tion. For him, the main prob­lem is eco­log­i­cal. “We already need huge amounts of ener­gy and resources. And to meet these needs, fos­sil fuels are vir­tu­al­ly the only resource we’ve been find­ing.” Although BASF has man­aged to cut its total green­house gas emis­sions in half since the 1990s while also dou­bling its pro­duc­tion, the com­pa­ny is now at a point where it’s no longer as easy to go on reduc­ing. “But because we want to con­tin­ue mak­ing sub­stan­tial improve­ments, we’re now get­ting down to essen­tials.”

This pol­i­cy forms the basis for Back­es’ work. He is active in BASF’s Nordic region—covering Swe­den, Nor­way, Den­mark, and Finland—where he scouts for value-adding sequences that are quite lit­er­al­ly new. “I try to iden­ti­fy ways of achiev­ing the raw mate­r­i­al transition—like how to replace petro­le­um with recy­clables or renew­able bio­fu­els.” With the help of a long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty strat­e­gy, BASF has estab­lished itself as the num­ber one part­ner for sus­tain­able chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion in the Nordic coun­tries. Accord­ing to Back­es, the region is five to ten years ahead of other areas and is serv­ing as a type of “petri dish” for the future. It, and there­by also the chem­i­cal indus­try world­wide, are devel­op­ing solu­tions that could play a pio­neer­ing role in ener­gy pro­duc­tion over the long term. But this takes time, and also the insight required to place sus­tain­abil­i­ty at the core of all busi­ness deci­sions.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is no easy busi­ness? These com­pa­nies beg to differ—and are blaz­ing new trails.

The impor­tance of sus­tain­abil­i­ty as a com­pet­i­tive edge can become espe­cial­ly evi­dent when anchored in a cor­po­rate strat­e­gy. North­volt is a good exam­ple. This Swedish start-up seeks to become Europe’s largest man­u­fac­tur­er of bat­tery cells and sys­tems, and there­by facil­i­tate the tran­si­tion to elec­tro­mo­bil­i­ty. “We want to make the world’s most envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly bat­ter­ies,” explains Emma Nehren­heim, Northvolt’s chief envi­ron­men­tal offi­cer. The com­pa­ny has there­fore devel­oped an over­all strat­e­gy that incor­po­rates the key role of sus­tain­abil­i­ty in a vari­ety of ways. Devel­op­ing a recy­cling man­age­ment sys­tem by which most of the raw mate­ri­als come from dis­card­ed bat­ter­ies is just one part of that strat­e­gy. With the help of sus­tain­abil­i­ty teams in all of its divi­sions, North­volt wants to min­i­mize the envi­ron­men­tal foot­print of not only all its prod­ucts but also its fac­to­ries and the com­pa­ny as a whole. Mea­sures include using only clean power to acquire its raw mate­ri­als. More­over, all of the company’s 700 employ­ees have rec­og­nized the value of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and made it a nat­ur­al part of their daily rou­tines. That, says Nehren­heim, is the most pow­er­ful fac­tor. “All of us take a long-term view of every­thing we do, in order to pre­vent our actions today from caus­ing prob­lems for the envi­ron­ment in the future.”

The suc­cess of indi­vid­ual com­pa­nies can serve as bea­cons of progress, but to achieve deci­sive results every­body has to get involved, says sus­tain­abil­i­ty expert Bir­git Engler. Despite the cur­rent cli­mate of uncer­tain­ty, the con­sul­tant empha­sizes the need to con­tin­ue res­olute­ly pro­mot­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty, incor­po­rat­ing it into all aspects of eco­nom­ic life, and moti­vat­ing peo­ple to change their out­looks. The cur­rent dis­rup­tion in our usual pat­terns of behav­ior offers a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to exam­ine and realign exist­ing sys­tems and habit­u­al prac­tices. “Sus­tain­abil­i­ty has to be part of cor­po­rate strate­gies. It needs to be vis­i­ble in tar­gets and effec­tive ini­tia­tives, and anchored in com­pa­ny struc­tures, process­es, and cul­tures. If com­pa­nies can con­vinc­ing­ly com­bine high eco­nom­ic per­for­mance, social respon­si­bil­i­ty, and sub­stan­tial­ly lower envi­ron­men­tal impact, that will give them real added value,” she explains. High­er lev­els of employ­ee and cus­tomer loy­al­ty, bet­ter access to out­side financ­ing, eas­i­er acqui­si­tion of new busi­ness fields, and long-term increas­es in com­pa­ny value as well as cri­sis resilience are exam­ples of the com­pet­i­tive advan­tages offered by sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Rock­ström is also crit­i­cal of view­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty in too nar­row terms. It is time to rec­og­nize how social, eco­nom­ic, and eco­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­na are inter­de­pen­dent. Covid-19 has shown exact­ly that. Now is the time to act accord­ing­ly and take anoth­er big step for human­i­ty.