Healthy Spaces Podcast: Season 4, Episode 11 - Spilling the Tea on Sustainability

[00:00:00] Dominique: Reducing our impact on the climate can sometimes feel like a tall order. 

[00:00:05] Dominique: With so many attitudes to change, industries to transform and systems to innovate - it's hard to imagine that there are even enough people trying to tackle these challenges. 

[00:00:16] Dominique: But the truth is - a lot of people are engaged, and a lot of industries are evolving. 

[00:00:20] Dominique: And every day, we’re making a difference. 

[00:00:24] Carrie: Sometimes I still feel like that when I read kind of the news on climate change, and the hottest summer on record, and the impacts of climate change, and it can make you very, very sad. very anxious. but what I realized here today is that, you know, in listening to these very powerful and talented women who are sustainability leaders, they have a plan. We have a plan. There are collaborations and partnerships and initiatives that we can all be part of to help chart that future together. 

[00:00:58] Dominique: You just heard from Carrie Ruddy, Senior Vice President and Chief Communications & Marketing Officer at Trane Technologies. 

[00:01:03] Dominique: I'm Dominique Silva. 

[00:01:04] Dominique: And you're listening to Healthy Spaces, the podcast exploring how technology and innovation are transforming the spaces where we live, learn, work, and play. 

[00:01:14] Dominique: And in this special episode, we're bringing you a panel discussion straight from Climate Week NYC all about the women leading the charge on net zero, climate tech innovation, decarbonization and more. 

[00:01:26] Dominique: In this episode we'll hear from a host of climate leaders, including: 

[00:01:31] Dominique: - Ali Mize, Director of ESG, Belonging and Corporate Philanthropy, Neiman Marcus Group 

[00:01:36] Dominique: - Michelle Li, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Women and Climate NYC 

[00:01:41] Dominique: - Holly Paeper, President, Commercial HVAC Americas at Trane Technologies 

[00:01:44] Dominique: - Denise Naguib, Vice President, Sustainability & Supplier Diversity at Marriott International 

[00:01:48] Dominique: - Roberta Barbieri, Vice President, Global Sustainability at PepsiCo 

[00:01:52] Dominique: - Heather Clark, Senior Director for the Building Sector, White House Climate Policy Office 

[00:01:56] Dominique: - And Keishaa Austin, Acting Principal Deputy Director, U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of State and Community Energy Programs 

[00:02:02] Dominique: We'll learn about the diversity of pathways to sustainability, the collaborations making the decarbonization of industries a reality, and how to leverage partnerships to advance global sustainability goals. 

[00:02:12] Dominique: But first, we hand over to Ali Mize to introduce the discussion, and to our moderator, Michelle Li. 

[00:02:20] Ali: Climate is a topic that's really important to us here. Um, As part of Neiman Marcus Group, Bergdorf plays a really important role in our science based targets to reduce scope 1 and 2 emissions 53 percent from a 2019 baseline, a goal that we've hit early in partnership with Trane Technologies, and it was so cool to watch the chillers be lifted up as we shut down 58th Avenue. But we also have goals to, um, procure 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and work with our brand partners - 75 percent of our spend - to set their own science-based targets by the year 2028. So, we really are working with all of your favorite brands to help them set climate goals, too. And while we do that, we're committed to seeing women at the forefront of this movement. So today's topic is really important for us as a brand as well. Neiman Marcus Group is a female founded, female majority organization, and that definitely holds true in this building here at Bergdorf Goodman. We're led by a female president, Darcy Penick, who has a female majority leadership team here at Bergdorf. And throughout the year our foundation sponsors a variety of partnerships in the city of New York to help women break into the fashion space. So thank you all for being here. Welcome to BG and welcome to Climate Week. 

[00:03:37] Michelle: I want to start off by asking everyone to just share a little bit about your journey, because I know many of you started very early on. You've had a very, kind of, long career here, and share a little bit about what that journey was like, and any pivotal moment that you had that you were like, okay, I need to enter sustainability, and So, Denise, why don't we start with you?  

[00:04:21] Denise: I was actually a pre-med student, so I wanted to be a pediatrician from day one. And then, in fourth grade, we moved to Oregon, and I saw hillsides clear-cut for the first time in my life. I was from Cairo, Egypt, so there are no real trees. So, seeing trees, and then seeing the removal of trees was pretty impactful. And so, I wrote a letter to our governor, and I got a note back from his staffer. And so I thought that was pretty powerful. My fourth grade teacher was pretty excited. But I still was on a pre-med track. I started college in pre-med, and I was well into the pre-med world, working in neuroscience lab. And then I had to take a non-science class, and it was one course, on the impacts of the ecosystems of Southeast Asia, tropical ecosystems that were pretty decimated at that time. So I would say the fourth grade letter and this kind of course were two pivotal points that shifted my career trajectory, my focus, and really led me to sustainability. So I've been focused on environmental conservation and sustainability for now 27 plus years.  

[00:05:20] Dominique: Roberta Barbieri 

[00:05:22] Roberta: I have always known since I was a little girl that I wanted to do environmental conservation work. And my mom tells a story, I was in second grade, so around seven years old, and I had a play date, and we were trying to decide what we wanted to do. And my suggestion was, how about we go in the woods and pick up litter? So that led me into, the University of New Hampshire to environmental conservation, which at the time was one of the few programs in the country. And then when I graduated, I found this great little NGO in Boston called Green Environmental Internships. And they actually found me a role as an environmental engineer with a company in Connecticut, and that started kind of the journey. So I was environmental compliance for many years, and then when the sustainability profession started to be a thing, I was working for a British company at the time, so they were ahead of the curve, fortunately, on climate change. I made a pitch to the bosses at the company, to create the company's first environmental sustainability full-time global role. They agreed and I stepped into that role and I immediately said, Ah, this is it. You know, it's sustainability. It's not about compliance. It's about getting companies to do more than what's required by law. So that was a real pivotal moment for me in my career. 

[00:06:52] Dominique: Heather Clark 

[00:06:54] Heather: I, as a kid, loved buildings. I loved cities. I loved beautiful skyscrapers. And I was also really concerned about homelessness. When I was in middle school, I did my first presentation on climate change, and I started becoming more concerned about environmental issues. I remember sitting in ninth grade in a class and hearing about landfills. I didn't know where our trash went. And I remember asking, wait, you mean like people put refrigerators in landfills? They don't have a plan for this? And suddenly I was like - the grown-ups don't have a plan. This is scary. And at that moment, I realized I couldn't be an architect. The world doesn't need any more buildings. That same year, I went to my earth science teacher's house, and he had built his house with all hand tools using all materials from the site. It was passive solar. It had a composting toilet. It was totally off the grid, and it was the most beautiful house I have ever been in in my life, probably to this day. And it changed my life. At that moment I realized that we can make our communities, we can make them better, um, and they can be really, uh, better for the environment, better for people, um, and completely beautiful. And since then I've always had a vision for how we can transform the places where we live to make them more equitable, more sustainable and really better for the world. So from there, I ended up, in college studying ecology. I ended up deciding to become a real estate developer because at that time, I realized that the real estate developers really were the ones who kind of controlled the world, and the places where we live. So I worked in affordable housing for a couple decades. Again I had always been concerned about homelessness and equity, and was able to meld those worlds. This really strong idea that we can move buildings to zero emissions, but we can also make the places where we live more equitable and make places better. So, that is my story. 

[00:08:45] Dominique: Our panel represents a diversity not only of roles, but of industries too. 

[00:08:51] Dominique: So as we look to decarbonization and a transition to net-zero, what are the levers in their respective industries that can make these changes a reality? 

[00:09:02] Dominique: We go first to Holly. 

[00:09:04] Holly: Carrie mentioned at the outset here the, the kind of price of a building, right. You know, 15 percent of greenhouse gas globally is, is attributed to the heating and cooling of buildings. And so to solve that requires transformative innovation. And we continue to lead on this front. So we had our first set of climate commitments over a decade ago. We did all of those. And then we created our Gigaton Challenge, which is really about eliminating the equivalent of the annual emissions of France, Italy and the U. K. combined. To do that, you need to think big. I think the second piece is we were one of the first companies in the world to have our net zero targets validated by the Science Based Targets Initiative. So really, really proud of our goals there in terms of scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and what we're trying to do to get to net-zero. All of that said, right, there's some really exciting, easy technology today, and we talked about it in this building, around, you know, in a traditional system, you have heating separate, right, traditional boiler system, think about a boiler plant, and cooling - chiller plants, right? And bringing that together like what we've done here in one all electric system that doesn't burn fossil fuel that has a payback of a couple of years, right? The business case is there, the tech is there. Another thing that we're super proud of - our new commitment in terms of reducing embodied carbon by 40 percent by 2030. We're focusing our efforts first on suppliers that both matter in the bigger buildings context as well as our products. So there's a lot of good things happening I'm super proud of the work we're doing in terms of leading and transforming, and we need others to come with us. We truly believe that we can make a huge difference as a company, but imagine what the industry could do if they followed… 

Michelle: I mean, one gigaton is, is a lot. It's beyond the gold standard. And, um, just wearing my nerdy, clever carbon hat. So globally, we emit around 35 to 40 gigatons of CO2 annually. And one, like, even one gigaton is, is a lot. So being able to reach that is, uh, a great goal. Roberta, I'll come to you. 

[00:11:09] Roberta: So I work for PepsiCo. Obviously Pepsi is the brand over the door, so to speak. So, if I think about our food business, we have, a lot of fryers and ovens - hundreds of them all over the world, and they all run on natural gas. So, we have options to convert from natural gas for those operational components. We could do electrification. However, the average snacks plant uses as much electricity as, say, 1,500 homes. Every fryer line that we electrify adds another 500 to 1, 000 homes to that. So what we found is that not too many utilities around the globe have the juice that we need. So, grid modernization and expansion is super, super critical for us, Another option we have for those fryers and ovens is renewable natural gas, which is basically a drop in alternative to fossil. We can generate that ourselves on site with, think like waste potato peels, The other solution that we're actively involved in trying to promote is market-based mechanisms. So, you have a natural gas pipeline. Somewhere in that pipeline, you can inject renewable natural gas, and immediately the molecules combine and you can't trace them to where they're used, but you can monetize the environmental attribute of that injection of renewable natural gas. Another kind of interesting area of our business is agriculture. We work with, tens of thousands of farmers around the world. So we're doing a lot of work with regenerative agriculture to not only reduce GHG emissions but also to sequester carbon. So that’s just a couple of, a flavor for decarbonization elements in our supply chain.  

[00:13:10 Michelle: Yeah, two very interesting and also very different topics there. And renewable natural gas. I need to read a little bit more about that. That's very interesting. So thank you, Roberta.  

[00:13:19] Dominique: Heather Clark 

[00:13:21] Heather: So, I want to take a step back before we think about how corporations can really be effective in driving policy to think more about where we are right now and where our goals are for climate. In terms of thinking about what's happening with the entire economy, we have to get emissions to zero by 2050. 2050 is not that far away. Um, the other part of the goal is by 2030, we need to cut our emissions in half. Those are two really ambitious goals, but they absolutely have to happen, and, in all honesty, they probably need to happen faster if we're really going to curb this climate crisis. As we think about where we're at in terms of advancements, we are well on the path to meeting those goals. As we think about where we're going and how much we've accomplished so far…one thing that my younger self, you know, that really dreamy eyed 9th grader, I never thought I would say this in my lifetime… but we are on track to have a 100 percent clean power grid by 2035. Since the president took office, we have added 100 gigawatts of clean energy to the grid in just that short amount of time. That's enough to power 25 million homes. By 2030, we're going to be at an 80 percent clean power grid. We're also doing a lot on updating the grid, to make sure that we can get the power to the places we need. In terms of how you can influence policy, I think the first way to influence policy is through your own leadership and commitments. I was absolutely thrilled to hear about Trane's embodied carbon commitment today that was announced. I had the CEOs of all of the large, um, heat pump manufacturers to the White House over a year ago, and we talked about kind of where they were going and what they want to see in the market. So to be able to back that up with an embodied carbon goal is incredibly important. In terms of opportunities, for you to hear your voice, we need more corporations saying that this work is important and that it can be done. The White House, Department of Energy, EPA, we want to hear from you. Come to us with great, bold ideas. This summer, I had a large group of real estate developers come and said, we have ideas on how we can get to a zero emissions building sector faster. They were very specific ideas, really interesting. I quickly was able to pull together DOE and EPA to review them and now we're doing this whole initiative where we're looking closer at, at how we can help drive more investment to buildings that are on a trajectory to zero emissions. That was because of that outreach. If you think we need to get out of fossil fuels, tell people, because other voices that don't feel that way are pretty loud, and we need to have more voices from the folks that know that this work can be done, and that it is an absolute priority for the future of humanity, for our kids, um, for our grandchildren, and it is the direction that we're going. 

[00:16:10] Dominique: We've heard about some of the methods industries are adopting to decarbonize themselves internally. But how are our panellists' organizations promoting sustainability among their stakeholders. We turn first to Roberta Barbieri. 

[00:16:27] Roberta: Yeah, a huge, huge part of my remit is to engage our, our value chain, cause it's not just about suppliers for us, it's contract manufacturers and it's our franchise bottlers. We have a multi-tiered program to build capabilities. One of my favorite programs is we call it Climate College. And then we also have programs where we're trying to help our value chain partners actually take action. So the Renew Program, which is um, focused on renewable electricity. Schneider Electric is our partner there. They built a platform that educates all of our value chain partners for free. But the really exciting part is that we then, pull suppliers or value chain partners together to do aggregated virtual power purchase agreements with us out in the marketplace. So we do the heavy lifting and they end up with actually leading to additional renewable energy projects out there in the world. We also have a couple of partnerships in the ag space that are pretty exciting. We partnered with two organizations - the Soil and Water Outcomes Fund and then I've forgotten the name of the other one, but they're implementers of regen ag projects out on the field with our farmers and other farmers. And we collaborated with them to apply to the USDA's Climate Smart Commodities Program. And we're able to win a grant for $165 million that goes to those two organizations who are doing work basically in our supply chains. So the power of PepsiCo name and support helped leverage the winning grant for that. That’s the carrots. There is one stick that we have employed with our suppliers in particular, which is contract language. So we rolled out this year actual contract language requiring them to set a science-based target. It's kind of a hard line in the sand for us. You don't necessarily have to go to SBTi to validate it, but if you don't, we'll do it for you.  

[00:18:37] Michelle: I like the carrot and the stick, right? You kind of need both to get things going. Holly, how about Trane?  

[00:18:42] Holly: Decarbonizing our future means we've got to decarbonize buildings, and we can't do that without our suppliers, right? So we do a lot, and I talked a little bit before about the embodied carbon piece, which is one way to, to put some numbers and additional sort of force behind that. But honestly, the way that we work with our suppliers has changed really dramatically over the last many years. It used to be very transactional, and it is not at all like that anymore. I'll give you an example. A couple of months ago we brought our top couple hundred suppliers into our headquarters for an innovation session to be working with them to try to figure out how do we net, do better. There's times where we're going into our suppliers to help them with their businesses and their ESG goals and their reports. And so not only to decarbonize the buildings they operate in or the processes that they run, but also how we partner with them. And so the way that we're working with our suppliers now is dramatically different. And, and we're starting to see the results, right? It's easier for us to achieve our goals when our supply base is helping kind of push behind that. I think the other piece as a manufacturer, you end up between kind of your suppliers and your customers. And so in order for this whole ecosystem to work, we need to have innovation sort of across those groups and across those stakeholders. And more, more often than not now, we even have customers and suppliers at the table with us when we're innovating kind of the next solution for this application or that application. And so, there's a piece around, hey, how do we go deep into the supply chain to either inspire or help them go faster? But the other side of it is, you know, really a true partnership in the spirit of solving customer problems and how we work with these suppliers to, to net move us forward.  

[00:20:24] Michelle: Net move us forward. Not net zero. I like that. Cool. Denise? 

[00:20:27] Denise: I think one of the areas we've been really successful as an industry is partnering together. While there are a handful of really big hospitality names, there are a lot of really small operators around the world. And so, collectively, under the World Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, for years we've been doing a lot together. And most recently, we've started a group with Ecovadis called the Hospitality Alliance for Responsible Procurement or Purchasing Procurement, I think it is. And that has been really focused on driving sustainability through our suppliers’ work. And Ecovadis being the kind of mechanism by which that's happened. So we've been responding to Ecovadis, as I know many of you have for a long time as a supplier ourselves and we're using it as a mechanism to get underneath a lot of the suppliers that we collectively as an industry utilize by asking the suppliers themselves to respond to it so that we as a sector have visibility into it and we can really move the needle collectively versus each of us asking something different and some suppliers that candidly - supplying us alone is really not a big slice of their pie, but supplying the industry holistically is a much bigger part of their business, and so they're more motivated to move if we are all aligned and asking them to move in the same direction. So this partnership with Ecovadis under this HARPP group is really a powerful way where we do the partnerships. And, you know, we have partnerships right here in the room. We are, you know, both customer and supplier to our partners right here between Trane and PepsiCo. So that two-way relationship is also really helpful, right? We provide them travel, they provide us product. And so it's really important to continue those conversations with our peers and partners in those supply chains because we are to Roberta's great point, we're, they're part of our value chain, up and down and across, and so really continuing those conversations. Our supply chain and the spend in our purchased goods is definitely an impactful part of our own science-based target, so we have to work with our suppliers on that effort, but then lifting the collective industry to really drive this effort forward together has really been much more successful than trying to go at it alone.  

[00:22:26] Dominique: The road to a decarbonized future relies on several things: 

- Ambitious leaders willing to make bold changes 

- The cooperation of organizations and their stakeholders to reach net-zero 

- And the collective voices of the public sector, private sector and citizenry to speak up and call for change. 

[00:22:48] Dominique: So as we come to the end of this special Climate Week episode, we turn to Keishaa Austin and Carrie Ruddy for their closing thoughts. 

[00:22:59] Keishaa: I'm almost speechless because it's not often that I get to sit in a room with such influential women who are making a change every single day with the work that we're doing. I work for the Department of Energy and the State and Community Energy Program Office. And so, you might think, okay, you're giving out grants to states and communities. Yes, we are. But I also represent the Office of Infrastructure. And so what we do at SCEP is drive that everlasting consumer demand. Because you need that consumer demand to inspire the folks that you heard talk about the work that they're doing today. But what I'm really honored to do at DOE is work with the set of women who sit at the top of a lot of the programs that you heard Heather talk about, right? So the Grid Deployment Office, The Manufacturing and Energy and Supply Chain Office… Also working with the Office of Clean Energy Demonstration Projects that's doing carbon capture projects. My office. And what we do at the Department of Energy, and because of the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act and annual appropriations, we have already committed to deploying more than $80 billion to help speed and accelerate this transition so that you all are seeing the real effects of this work and that it makes you want to work even harder to get it done. We love to help spur the technology that is going to drive us into the future. And it's not just about our kids and our nieces and nephews and our cousins, it's about us too, and how we're going to be seeing ourselves in this future. So I wanna thank all of you for the work that you're doing because it matters. And, and the gentlemen, you matter too. We appreciate you being here, right. But, the work that you're doing, don't ever let that slip. Because it matters for so many of us in this moment, and where we're going in the future. So I just want to say thank you, on behalf of the Department of Energy, and in particular my office, which, I'm talking about the whole pillar, which is the Office of Infrastructure. Because we really do depend on you. Your bold thoughts inspire us and keep us going. And being in this room with all of you today keeps me going. And I am so appreciative of all of your efforts. And let's do it together, because this partnership is needed. Public private and all of the above is what's going to take us to the next level. So thank you for letting me be a part of this discussion today. I'm very grateful. 

[00:25:30] Carrie: So we have really spilled the tea. In reflecting on what I've just heard and thinking about it, I was struck by Heather's story. about realizing that things go to landfill, and big things even go to landfill, and thinking, oh my gosh, the grown-ups don't have a plan. And sometimes I still feel like that when I read the news on climate change, and the hottest summer on record, and the impacts of climate change, and it can make you very, very anxious. But what I realized here today is that in listening to these very powerful and talented women who are sustainability leaders, they have a plan. We have a plan. There are collaborations and partnerships and initiatives that we can all be part of to help chart that future together. So, on behalf of Trane Technologies, I want to thank all of you for joining our Spilling the Tea this morning. It's been tremendous. Again, thanks to Ali Mize and the Neiman Marcus Group for hosting us here at Bergdorf Goodman Tea Room, which is just beautiful and spectacular. And thanks to all of our very esteemed panelists and speakers, you have really shed some light on this topic for all of us and, and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you. 

[00:26:59] Dominique: A big thank you to Ali Mize, Michelle Li, Holly Paeper, Denise Naguib, Roberta Barbieri, Heather Clark, and Keishaa Austin for joining us at this special Climate Week discussion and spilling the tea on sustainability. 

At Trane Technologies, we believe that every job is a sustainability job, and every role provides an opportunity for impact. 

That's why each week on the podcast, we've been featuring how someone is building healthy spaces in their organization or community.  

This week, we're sharing a submission from Hannah Black, Sustainability Program Specialist at Trane Technologies. 

Hannah is making her workplace more sustainable by inspiring others to think about how they can integrate sustainability into their own roles. Hannah leads the company’s Sustainability Ambassador Network, hosting educational events and promoting the sharing of best practices.  

She’s also making her community more sustainable by partnering with a local non-profit in Nashville that’s educating and inspiring students to become champions of change in addressing water-related challenges.  

She even lives in a LEED certified home, which is fully solar powered and includes a backyard chicken coop and a raised bed garden. 

Thank you, Hannah, for all your efforts in building healthy spaces in your workplace and community. 

[00:28:23] Dominique: Thank you for listening to the Healthy Spaces podcast, where we explore how climate technology and innovation are transforming the spaces where we live, work, learn and play. 

[00:28:34] Dominique: If you want to find out more about our conversation today, make sure you check out the show notes. And remember to rate and review us on your favorite podcast app.

Healthy Spaces is a Lower Street Production in collaboration with Trane Technologies. This season was produced by Ryan Sutton, and our sound engineer is Ben Crannell. 

[00:28:50] Dominique: I'm your host, Dominique Silva. 

[00:29:38] Dominique: That's it for this season. 

[00:29:40] Dominique: But don't worry, we'll be back soon with more Healthy Spaces.