A Conversation with HP: Post COP16 and Prop23

Valerie Davis, president of Green Canary Sustainability Consulting and CEO of EnviroMedia Social Marketing caught up with HP on the final night of COP16 at HP’s U.N. Climate Wall in the Moon Palace just hours before the “Cancún Agreements” were struck. Here’s her interview with Vice President of Environmental Sustainability Engelina Jaspers and a video demonstration of the Climate Wall from HP’s Ellen Jackowski.

In the photo to the left, U.N. Climate Secretary Christiana Figueres talks to Climate Village visitors from HP’s U.N. Climate Wall from the secure negotiations site miles away.

Valerie Davis: What do you think about the Cancún Agreements, and, if they lead to a treaty in Durban, what does that mean to a global company like HP?

Engelina Jaspers: Small steps as well as giant leaps are needed to address the energy and climate change challenge. HP supports the need for greater transparency in tracking and reporting greenhouse gas emissions — for both nations and businesses. This will allow us to measure progress and make necessary course corrections, and also hold us to our commitments and promote broader accountability in the shared response to climate change.

It is also important that we not try to address climate change in a vacuum. Its causes and effects are too complex and far-reaching. We must take a systematic, integrated approach, leveraging the best opportunities for making the fastest progress and greatest impact.

Valerie Davis: Why is it important to HP to participate in the COPs?

Engelina Jaspers: We consider COP to be an ideal forum — a global stage with a highly influential audience — to demonstrate how technology can be a catalyst in meeting the challenge of climate change. And this year, we were honored that HP’s energy-efficient solutions were chosen to power COP16.

Valerie Davis: What would you say to your colleagues at other U.S. businesses who have not put COPs and related climate issues on their radar as much as HP has?

Engelina Jaspers: If climate change is not yet on your radar, energy efficiency ought to be. Energy efficiency is the low-hanging fruit of climate change, with solutions to both lower your operating costs and your environmental footprint available today. In today’s “do more with less” environment, businesses, governments, and consumers alike cannot afford to maintain duplicative, energy-inefficient, or expensive-to-maintain technology products.

Valerie Davis: What, if anything, has changed with HP’s climate-related projects since U.S. climate legislation has stalled?

Engelina Jaspers: We have not slowed down our commitment nor momentum.

Valerie Davis: What do you think of California Prop 23 — not just its outcome, but what it means nationally?

Engelina Jaspers: HP came out strongly opposing Proposition 23, which would impair California’s leadership in reducing greenhouse gases. As a top employer in California and one of America’s greenest companies, HP takes seriously its role as a leader in protecting our environment, and supports California’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions and provide regulatory certainty that fuels innovation. California, and Silicon Valley specifically, has often been at the forefront of emerging industries and bold leadership needed for the future.

In the video below, Ellen Jackowski of HP Environmental Sustainability talks about the U.N. Climate Wall and how HP helped COP16 lighten its carbon footprint.

Valerie Davis, president of Green Canary Sustainability Consulting and CEO of EnviroMedia Social Marketing, was a delegate of the U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Development at the UNFCCC in Cancún, Mexico. Read more COP16 reports at GreenDetectives.net.