Under growing global pressure to address climate change, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) launched the Better Climate Challenge in February. This initiative asks committed organizations “to reduce portfolio-wide GHG emissions (scope 1 & 2) by at least 50% within 10 years.”
With DOE’s guidance, public and private partners will seek ways to cut emissions through more efficient heating, lighting, transportation, and production processes, for starters.
If all organizations in the commercial, public, and industrial sectors reduced their U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50%, it would save nearly 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2e annually, according to the DOE press release. That is more than the emissions from every home in the United States.
The DOE plans to bring its cutting-edge research, technical assistance, and marketing expertise to the table, and participants bring their experience, successes, and failures.
Together, partners and DOE will work together to share technical knowledge, ideas, and solutions of what is and what is not working.
To date, more than 90 organizations, ranging from manufacturers and schools to entire cities and states have committed to be inaugural partners with the program.
“Are you getting stuck?” Jennifer Granholm, Secretary of Energy DOE asked at the launch. “If so, others probably are too. We want to help you and others get unstuck. Together, we can determine what works.”
This information can then be used by similar national and local organizations to help cut their emissions.
The concept is not entirely new. DOE offered a similar program ten years ago when it began its Better Buildings Challenge.
Similar in concept and in scope, Granholm says, to the Better Building initiative, “we learned that there will be challenges, both of a technical and marketing variety. But together, we can build real-world, economic solutions.”
In fact, more than 950 organizations have worked with DOE under the buildings program, sharing more than 3000 innovative approaches and strategies for accelerating the adoption of energy efficient technologies and practices.
One inaugural partner of the Better Climate Challenge, the Ford Motor Company, has already started its carbon reduction journey. The company received a 2020 Better Project Award for implementing a series of upgrades and technological improvements to achieve a 50% reduction in energy and water use at its Dearborn Research and Engineering Campus Central Energy Plant.
Through the Better Climate Challenge, which will serve as a database and a repository for information, Ford, can now share with partner companies specifics of how it achieved that decline.
This is a group sport, says Javier Quinones, CEO and Chief Sustainability Officer of IKEA. “We all are able to do more when we work together.”
The Better Climate Challenge is only one example of many entities that are stepping forward to help companies and organizations achieve carbon neutrality. In our next post, we will look at Carbon Call and what it is doing to help businesses meet their greenhouse goals.
