The first thing I said was, “Excuse me?!” followed quickly by, “When can I come and talk to you?”
It started in 2008, when top Diageo execs decided to set some big goals. Before committing themselves, they ran the numbers on what it might cost to go entirely carbon-free. The back-of-the-envelope calculation was daunting (hundreds of millions of dollars) and included the building of bioenergy plants to power some of the company’s largest distilleries. The executives settled on a still-aggressive goal of 50 percent, made it public, and, remarkably, crossed their fingers.
Environmental exec Richard Dunne took responsibility for meeting the target in North America. He suspected that building an expensive bioenergy plant was not the only way to get there. His team implemented a rigorous process of collecting ideas for emissions cuts and estimating the costs. Then they sorted the results, ranking ideas by net gain on environmental improvement and then by financial investment, grouping the ideas into three expense buckets: (1) low or no cost, the no-brainers; (2) some increase in operating expense; and (3) significant capital expenditures (like the bioenergy plant).
Diageo’s leaders initially thought that only major capital projects would reduce emissions significantly. But Dunne’s process revealed a surprising number of no-brainers. As a result, Diageo North America cut emissions 50 percent by 2012, mainly using ideas from the low-cost group of initiatives. The projects ranged from easy efforts—like lighting retrofits, boiler upgrades, and installing variable-speed mechanical drives—to larger, but still economical, changes such as switching from oil to natural gas and cutting back from two boilers to one in a small distillery.
But Diageo’s example, along with other leadership stories, provides some guideposts on how to make big goals happen.
Executing Big, Science-Based Goals
Setting and achieving radical efficiency goals can be easier than it sounds. After all, Diageo made it happen pretty fast. But it takes focus and trust in the best science available. Here are a few guidelines.
Understand the Science and Global Goals When They’re Clear
On carbon, the IPCC continues to lay out recommended goals, and scientists like Jim Hansen and Michael Mann help convey these goals to the public. An 80 percent reduction by 2050 (from 1990 emissions) is the latest minimum goal as of this writing. On a range of biophysical concerns, the Stockholm Resilience Center is doing fantastic work on our global system boundaries. And on social issues, the UN Millennium Development Goals are a combination of scientific and moral imperatives, all grounded in real social and ecological limits.
