Adelante Consulting, Inc.'s Climate Action Contribution
Climate Action Commitments
Current Climate Actions Adelante Consulting, Inc. Is Taking:
Commit to Reducing the Climate Impact of Your Transportation
Organizations making a commitment to reduce the climate impact of transportation should consider practices such as measuring transportation greenhouse gas emissions and setting reduction targets, switching fuels, optimizing the efficiency of shipping operations, and reducing transit- and travel-related greenhouse gas emissions. Businesses can develop a green transportation action plan to map the movement of goods to market and identify opportunities to increase efficiency. Organizations can buy hybrid and electric vehicles within their own fleet, and can reduce the footprint of their workforce through incentivizing public transportation, installing EV charging stations, promoting telework, and locating near transit centers.
Commit to Increase Your Use of Renewable Power
Increasing your percentage of renewable energy sources is a key component of reducing overall GHG emissions. Installing onsite renewable generation, like solar panels, is a good long-term strategy if possible. But renewable energy can also be procured through Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), renewable power purchasing agreements (PPAs), and in some locations from retail electricity providers or local utilities that offers a high percentage of renewable power. Also consider becoming an EPA Green Power Partner.
Commit to Increase Energy Efficiency
Most companies begin by assessing energy usage or performing an energy audit to identify opportunities to increase energy efficiency throughout their facilities and operations. Energy reduction targets can be framed as either absolute reductions or reductions that are normalized per unit of production, such as per tons shipped, per dollars of revenue produced, or other relevant business metric. Some examples of commitments that can be taken include:
- Conducting an energy audit or request a meeting with your building owner to explore scheduling an audit
- Upgrading HVAC system to a more efficient model
- Upgrading lights in your office/facility to LEDs
- Upgrading insulation and windows
- Replacing appliances in your office with Energy Star-rated models
- Instituting a company policy of turning off lights other electronics when not in use.
Commit to Understand and Reduce Your Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Understanding your GHG emissions is the first step to making measurable reductions in those emissions. The EPA provides an overview report and CoolClimate Network provides a simple tool for “low emitters” to better understand sources of emissions, as well as how to use that information to set reduction targets. For this commitment, it is as simple as committing to complete a greenhouse gas inventory for your business or oganization, but in the future your inventory can be used to make a commitment to set a specific goal, such as “reduce GHG emissions by 50% by 2025.
Areas For Collaboration
We are interested in collaborating on the following:
Local Collaboration
- Collaborate on climate and clean energy action, and to advocate for stronger climate policy at the local level
Natural Lands
- Encouraging states to adopt incentive programs for forest management, tree cover expansion, and soil health
Organization details
We baselined our corporate carbon footprint in 2016, and established a short-term reduction goal of 10 percent by 2020. Recognizing that our most significant greenhouse gas emissions sources are transportation (commuting and long-distance) and energy consumption in our home-based offices, we now offer our employee-owners financial incentives for carpooling. Now that we have two office spaces within walking distance of a train station, we are poised to add incentives for public transit. We made immediate investments in energy-efficiency in our leased office spaces, and we cover the cost of whole-house replacement of incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs for all staff. Additionally, because we recognize that we can have a greater impact on GHG emissions reductions if we look beyond our office walls, the company rebates 10 percent of the cost of installing solar systems at our employee-owners' homes. We know that a 10 percent annual reduction in our GHG emissions is only the beginning. We are setting our sights on 100 percent by 2050. Will you join us?