STEP 4: Engage stakeholders
Stakeholder engagement involves the identification, communication, and collaboration with individuals or groups – including employees, customers, suppliers, NGOs, and local communities – who have a strong interest in or are impacted by your organization’s decarbonization action.
Engaging stakeholders in energy and decarbonization strategies and initiatives fosters diverse perspectives, transparency, and better decision-making. Engagement produces valuable insights, identifies risks and opportunities during implementation, and fuels innovation for sustainable solutions. It can even encourage employee productivity and retention. Moreover, stakeholder engagement ensures strategies align with market demands, making your organization more appealing to customers and investors. It also helps meet stringent environmental regulations, mitigating potential legal and reputational risks. Ultimately, this approach considers local communities’ needs, leading to positive impacts, stronger relationships, and shared value creation.
STEP 5: Develop your decarbonization roadmap
Once you have collected the proper data and analyzed your carbon footprint, aligned your stakeholders, and set your targets, you can develop a strategic roadmap for decarbonization and energy initiatives. You will need to create a roadmap outlining the initiatives, actions, and energy solutions necessary to address the identified areas for improvement. Start with manageable and impactful projects and solutions that will help you build momentum.
STEP 6: Evaluate energy and decarbonization solutions, create a portfolio, and integrate solutions whenever possible.
Your energy and decarbonization portfolio should be diversified and balanced, encompassing a variety of solutions to meet organizational goals. Think of energy efficiency, renewables, clean electrification options, and more. Energy partners can help optimize your portfolio, based on where you are in your decarbonization journey. They can help you decide on what solutions to implement, the order of implementation, and how to optimize over time – ensuring quick wins for your organization. They can also help orchestrate longer-term activities, like assisting with procuring, developing, and maintaining renewable energy projects.
As your organization is just starting on your decarbonization journey, we recommend you consider the following energy solutions. They could be mixed and matched and depend entirely on your organization’s unique needs and goals.
SOLUTION: Energy efficiency
Prioritize energy efficiency measures as a cost-effective method to substantially reduce emissions. These measures often require minimal capital investment and offer swift returns. Beyond simple lighting changes, options encompass HVAC systems, chillers, motors, compressors, water systems, and building envelope enhancements.
SOLUTION: Demand response (DR)
Engage in DR programs to earn incentives for reducing energy consumption during grid stress and support a flexible, sustainable energy grid. During supply-demand imbalances on the electric grid, DR programs act as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuel peaker plants, preventing blackouts. By agreeing to curtail electricity consumption when required, participants earn payments while ensuring grid reliability. Your organization can spend the payments you earn from DR on renewable energy initiatives in your energy and decarbonization portfolio.
SOLUTION: On-site distributed energy resources (DERs), including solar and battery storage
On-site solar and battery storage is a great way to leverage your facility’s infrastructure to generate and store on-site renewable energy, reducing energy costs, enhancing corporate sustainability, and boosting resilience – and integrating the two technologies amplifies the benefits of each solution. Solar generation is a great way to decarbonize operations and transition to renewables instead of relying on grid power. However, solar generation is limited at night – and sometimes the system generates more energy than what is consumed on-site, wasting valuable renewables. And battery storage, when charged from the grid, doesn’t help with decarbonization. The magic happens when these technologies are paired, allowing flexible usage of renewable energy. Battery assets can charge from solar power, discharging stored energy during periods of low solar generation.
SOLUTION: Unbundled Renewable Energy Credits (RECs)
Your organization can purchase unbundled RECs to match your electricity consumption from any source to claim a renewable energy, or green power, product. According to the U.S. Environmental Production Agency, a REC is a market-based instrument that represents the environmental and other non-power attributes of one megawatt-hour of renewable electricity that was generated and delivered to the electric grid. While bundled RECs come as a package deal together with the physical renewable electricity that they represent, unbundled RECs can be separated from the electricity they represent and can be bought and sold independently.
Embark on your decarbonization journey with a trusted energy partner
As decarbonization expectations continue to rise, your organization should be proactive about recognizing where you are on your decarbonization journey and what you need to do to stay ahead. At Enel North America, we have the right sustainability track record, experience, and expertise to work across products to get you started and integrate your strategy in the simplest way possible. As a turnkey provider of holistic energy solutions, we can help you develop a comprehensive energy strategy and roadmap. Take a look at our guide, Decarbonization navigator: a toolkit for organizations, to learn more about the specific steps required to jump-start your organization’s decarbonization journey. Contact us today to discover how we can guide you on that journey.