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Kaihan Krippendorff addresses corporate responsibility and climate change and why the energy industry is adding environmental practices to business growth strategies.

Our planet is facing an uncertain future. The impact of climate change has reached a point of crisis, and it is up to the organizations of today, and to all of us, to take action.

This week our guest on the Outthinkers podcast, Michael Raynor, author of The Strategy Paradox and co-author of The Innovator’s Solution, emphasized the immediate need for companies to incorporate the climate crisis into their strategy. Also this week, our network of chief strategy officers, leaders from $1B+ companies all over the country, was joined by Chris Marquis, Professor in Sustainable Global Enterprise at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business and author of Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism. Chris’ work focuses on how organizations are turning ESG (Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance) practices into a powerful differentiator and competitive advantage.

Today, we’ll focus on the E of ESG — the environment — and how three trends in the energy industry are leading the way toward a more hopeful future.

THE URGENCY OF THE CLIMATE CRISIS 

In this week’s podcast episode, among his reflections on strategy, Michael shared that the climate emergency is the only thing that matters.

“It’s not something to incorporate into what we do. It’s something to constrain and override pretty much everything we do,” he said.

Michael is a managing director with Deloitte LLP, where he is part of the team working on developing and implementing Deloitte’s two-track response to the global climate crisis. The first track focuses on reducing and eventually eliminating the firm’s carbon emissions, while the second track comprises a portfolio of efforts designed to mobilize larger ecosystems of organizations — commercial enterprises, NGOs, governments, etc. — to generate an impact on the scale of the problem.

Key points include:

• Heightened focus on renewable energy sources
• Green regulation and incentivization
• Decline in production and use of fossil fuels

Read the full article, How ESG Practices are Updating the Energy Industry, on Kaihan.net.