Eco-Shift Power Corp (ESP), a recent Bronze Pledging Partner of the Regional Carbon Initiative (RCI), has announced a 20% GHG reduction commitment. Eco-Shift Power strives to help organisations locally in Waterloo Region and nationally reduce their impact on the environment by taking economically sensible steps to offset their energy consumption. The main area of energy reduction, and the current focus of Eco-Shift Power, is in lighting management systems and lighting retrofits. As a leading local organization in the energy management sector, ESP, an Observing Organization in the RCI for two years, decided to move forward and establish its own firm carbon dioxide emission reduction targets.
Realizing the importance of establishing a greenhouse gas (GHG) baseline was the main driving factor behind ESP’s move towards pledging partnership. The philosophy, “What doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get managed”, by the executives at ESP helped gather support from all corners of the organisation.
A team, consisting of three co-op students, was formed to accomplish the task. The Co-op team is composed of Benjamin Marconato and Alex van Ballegooie from the Environment and Business undergraduate program at the University of Waterloo and Francisco Reinoso from the Environment and Sustainability Master’s program at Western University. With the experience provided by the Co-op team, ESP applied ideas from university to real life applications. This included setting up sustainability measures (Green Office Program from Western University adapted to Eco-Shift Power), drawing support in the company from collaboration and learning, and creating an open forum for new projects and ideas to help achieve Bronze pledging membership.
The idea to form an internal green team with the help of our champions, CFO, Jim Hughes, and our Senior Energy Consultant, Mike Leishman, will enable the team to effectively implement office sustainability measures as a first step towards GHG reductions. These first steps can include anything from eliminating paper towels in washrooms to purchasing office supplies from a source with similar sustainability values as ours. Developing a reduction plan towards the three scopes of GHG emissions will be the next step in ESP’s quest for GHG reduction.
As an organisation involved in energy management, we prioritize our corporate responsibility for our products and services and the impacts they have on the community locally and nationally. Having an action plan to reduce our GHG emissions by 20% and a green team to help implement reduction measures is a small indication of our commitment to reducing our carbon footprint.
-Alex
Eco-Shift Power Corp
