Safe, secure and resilient infrastructure is a lifeline to our future. It’s the differentiator between successful and struggling economies and societies. Thus, it’s not surprising that so much hope and expectation rest on a new era of infrastructure development.

To be durable and future proof, our infrastructure must cope with, and adapt to, a complex and evolving mix of hazards, risks and threats. As a result, resilience must be an essential component of every project across its entire life cycle — integrated from the planning and design phase — and not just added as a last-minute feature.

While there’s agreement that embracing innovation and digital tools will be invaluable, our growing digital dependency has led to fears about the impact of hackers disrupting critical infrastructure. What’s more, civil infrastructure must also withstand the escalating physical threats of terrorism and climate change.

DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL RESILIENCE COMBINED

Today, the two classes of threat — digital and physical — are rapidly converging.

In the era of smart cities, wide-scale adoption of the internet of things (IoT) and cloud technology offer significant advantages across the built environment, from increasing communicability and maintenance monitoring to reducing traffic congestion. Yet this increased digital access also makes infrastructure assets more vulnerable.

Conversely, physical threats, such as those resulting from climate change, also pave the way for digital disruption. Buildings and structures become more vulnerable to cyber or kinetic attacks during natural disasters, and critical infrastructure — such as power, water, wastewater and communications — rely on our digital network to function.

FIVE-POINT PLAN FOR A CONVERGED RESILIENCE FRAMEWORK

This changing infrastructure landscape has created the need for holistic, industry-wide solutions for identifying and managing risks. Resilience is not a one-dimensional or static issue, and successful attacks find and exploit vulnerability. In response, ArchTam has developed an approach called Converged Resilience, which acknowledges the interdependency of the physical and digital worlds — and uses this understanding to build lasting, integrated strategies for infrastructure resilience.

Risk cannot be eliminated altogether; however, infrastructure owners and service providers can become better at planning for and mitigating threats, including those as yet unknown. While each organization and situation is different, it’s possible to apply a common framework to the problem. The goal is to simplify the risk-management process while allowing the flexibility to cope with a broad range of scenarios across both the digital and physical environments. Here’s how:

1/ START EARLY

For maximum impact, a resiliency strategy must be introduced early in the lifespan of an asset. The industry has often viewed resilience as an add-on to the core design-build process, and that’s too late. For infrastructure owners, the goal must be to build in resilience planning as early as possible — the sooner a protection framework is implemented, the more cost efficient and effective it becomes.

2/ UNDERSTAND THE RISK

Having early-stage conversations about risk management makes it easier for an organization to customize a resilience strategy. This means knowing which assets it wants to protect, as well as, understanding the function of those assets and the potential cost of losing or devolving that function. Beyond simple replacement cost, what’s the business case for determining which assets to protect and how?

Through efforts such as 100 Resilient Cities (100RC), pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, municipalities are taking a strategic approach to understanding not only the risks, but also the interaction of the risks and different urban systems and goals.

3/ PRIORITIZE TO OPTIMIZE

It’s impossible to eliminate risk completely. If assets are aging, an infrastructure owner will need to select where it wants to focus its resiliency investment — where most effort and resources need to be focused.

In addition to functionality, the service life of an asset and the feasibility of replacing it must come into consideration. For example, a manufacturing plant for airplane parts may have a 40-year service life. The time and cost of replacing such a facility is tremendous, so the owner will want to make a significant investment in keeping it running throughout its design life. By contrast, a data center with hardware assets that are replaced every two years will have less at risk, as its long-term asset is only the building that houses the equipment.

4/ ACCEPT, MITIGATE OR TRANSFER

With new vulnerabilities constantly evolving, infrastructure owners must decide how to manage the many risks they face.

The first option is to accept the risk and manage it internally with the resources available. A second option is mitigating risk as new threats emerge by adapting or retrofitting an asset. The goal is to restore functionality, either fully or partially, in the fastest time.

The third approach is to transfer the risk; for example, by creating a back-up facility that can quickly take on the functionality of the original asset. When this is not feasible, a company or municipality may look to transfer a much larger proportion of risk to the insurance market. It’s important to understand, however, where that risk is transferred in order to ensure its managed effectively.

5/ ENHANCE

Building infrastructure resilience cannot be a one-time investment. Just as being healthy requires a certain lifestyle, resilience demands a new way of operating.

Having put a strategy in place, it’s essential that the protection plan is revisited and updated regularly. Continuous risk mitigation must be the goal. As threats are constantly evolving, so are business and industry, government, the environment, compliance and technology — it’s crucial to stay engaged and agile.

THE BUSINESS CASE FOR RESILIENT INFRASTRUCTURE

Investing in infrastructure resilience can be an expensive and time-intensive process, but it’s a necessary one. Early planning not only mitigates the impacts of disruption, it also creates net benefits. Organizations of all shapes and sizes should take heed. Risk affects every one of us. The public and private sectors have a responsibility — whether it’s to their shareholders or constituents — to balance the books and generate growth. Building resilience is a critical part of this business case.

This blog post is part of a series covering critical infrastructure-related topics in the lead up to and during Infrastructure Week and this year’s theme #TimeToBuild.

*Note: Adapted from ArchTam’s Future of Infrastructure report, you can find the full article and source material at: https://www.archtam.com/infrastructure-resilience

The post Resilience in a shifting world appeared first on Blog.

As part of CHOGM, the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council and the Commonwealth Secretariat convene business leaders to meet with the ministers and national leaders to discuss how to ensure a prosperous, vibrant and sustainable commonwealth. I was honored to participate in the meetings this year and speak on the topic of climate and disaster resilience.

Key areas of debate included the impacts of rising sea levels, understanding and managing risk, climate adaptation and sustainable wastewater management.

In one of the CHOGM sessions on island resilience, Dominica Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit noted that the nation now has the opportunity to be the first climate-resilient island as they look at rebuilding the majority of their infrastructure. They want to build back better, but must do so with a different model than historically followed, taking into account a broader approach, rather than just rebuilding what was damaged.

Island nations, especially those impacted by recent tropical cyclones in the Caribbean and South Pacific, face the compound challenges of more frequent and severe storms and the constant and increasing threat of sea-level rise. Dominica, for example, suffered $1.3 billion in damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017 — an amount equal to 224 percent of the island’s gross domestic product (GDP).

My comments as part of this session were focused on the need to understand the risks each country faces in designing a resilience plan, but also how we can use adaptive design to ensure continued responsiveness to a dynamic future. There’s a need to balance the costs and risks of resilience. Some risks can be managed by transferring them through insurance or other mechanisms, and other risks must be accepted. However, there are things we can do to mitigate the real and significant risks faced by these small islands and do so in ways that are appropriate for each situation and cost effective. Sometimes we just need to build smarter, with resilience top of mind. The additional benefit of investing in resilient infrastructure is that it creates jobs and economic growth.

Another discussion at CHOGM focused on the causes and drivers of state fragility and how developed nations can better support fragile states and help others avoid this fate. The discussion with ministers, non-governmental organizations and business leaders was chaired by former UK Prime Minister David Cameron on the occasion of a report from an independent panel he also chaired on state fragility causes and solutions. With two financial industry participants, I was asked to comment on the report and remarks by Rwandan President Paul Kagame on the challenges leaders face in fragile states. We stressed the need to look at climate issues, especially adaptation, as they are the principal drivers of fragility, leading to conflict, mass migration and loss of gross domestic product to drought and famine.

I was honored to close out my time at CHOGM with a brief conversation with HRH The Prince of Wales on the challenges of sustainable wastewater management in small island nations. Prince Charles spoke of his interest in addressing the energy and waste management needs of small islands, while protecting the oceans from pollution and helping people grow their economies sustainably. Through his foundation and sustainability team, The Prince has been deeply involved in these issues, and I look forward to continuing to work with his team on their efforts.

It was clear to me that there is a great desire across the entire commonwealth to be leaders in the issues related to climate change. Today, with innovations in technology and the ability to create hybrid gray and green infrastructure, we’re seeing greater potential to leverage these challenges as opportunities and find solutions that are long-lasting, adaptable and create healthier, more resilient economies and societies.

*Note: The Commonwealth of Nations comprises 53 states across six continents and represents nearly one third of the world’s population. Most member states were once part of the British Empire, the majority being island nations (counting Australia and the UK). With the exception of the United States, most of the English-speaking world belongs to the commonwealth. Queen Elizabeth II is the symbolic head of the commonwealth.

The post A resilient commonwealth is a prosperous commonwealth appeared first on Blog.

We often say walking and biking are the most sustainable forms of transportation. They are definitely low-emission and good for fitness. But I’m not sure I know anyone, except for a few crazy friends, who thinks a bicycle can replace the car or the airplane.

I am writing this while sitting on a “high-speed” train from Washington, D.C. to New York City, traveling at more than 100 mph. That makes it faster than a car or bus but slower than an airplane. This big train, Amtrak’s Acela Express, runs on electricity, and it takes a lot to move it up and down the East Coast. As the grid gets greener each year, it could, theoretically, become carbon neutral if the power generation were sustainable. My other choices for inter-city trips of less than 300 miles are a car, bus or airplane. Compared to those, based on current technology, this train is a greener choice.

But today’s high-speed trains have a physics problem called friction. The train experiences two types of friction: rolling resistance from the steel wheels on the rails and air resistance or drag. Drag is, well, a drag, because it increases with speed and makes very high-speed trains less energy efficient. High-speed trains in France (TGV), Germany (ICE), and Japan (Shinkansen) spend a large portion of their energy overcoming this friction problem at speeds over 200 mph. Even the most streamlined shape does not put a big dent in the energy costs of air resistance. Ever wonder why planes fly at 35,000 feet? It’s because the air is much thinner and less resistant at that altitude, and they need less fuel to overcome the drag. In space, a near total vacuum with very little matter, we can fly astronauts at speeds of nearly 25,000 mph.

This brings us to the hyperloop, which operates in a tube with a low pressure environment, allowing speeds of nearly 600 mph. In terms of sustainability, hyperloop is somewhat like an electric car that can fly in space but is restricted to where the tube is built.

Resilience is about how we adapt to shocks and stresses so we can absorb or quickly recover from those disruptions. Hyperloop has two key resilience attributes. First, it’s new, and because it’s built from scratch, it can be designed to adapt to the changes we know are coming. Much of our existing transportation infrastructure is old, and it’s often hard to retrofit older systems to be resilient to changes that were not known or anticipated when it was designed. The other resilient attribute of this new technology is that it provides additional capacity and another system. In a disaster, some systems will work and others will fail for reasons we can’t always predict. Disasters are often, by their very nature, unpredictable. Having more options is good for resilience. While it is possible that this system could be compromised like any other mode of transportation, more choices are better.

I don’t think governments and private organizations are going to invest in a system like the hyperloop solely because of its sustainability or resilience attributes. If you can deploy a safe and cost-effective ground-based transport system that travels at airline speeds, I think it’s safe to say you will have a market. However, as cities around the word race to adopt sustainability and resilience standards, it will be a major factor in how they consider their future infrastructure investments.

The post How sustainable and resilient could Hyperloop be? appeared first on Blog.

Two years ago, after returning from the very successful COP 21 in Paris, I remember a conversation about corporate engagement with former U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern. Noting a sea change in private sector support for an aggressive plan to address climate change, Stern said that at COP 15 in Copenhagen (2009), companies had actively fought against the efforts of the negotiators to craft a new climate agreement, but that in Paris, the companies were pulling the negotiators forward. What I noticed in Paris was that many large, well-known companies were holding events, meeting with officials, and even making public statements of support—but corporations were still ancillary players. This was not surprising as the COP is, at its core, a meeting of negotiators from the 198 nations that have adopted the UN Framework Compact on Climate Change.

This year, the COP felt different. Under a concept called one conference, two zones, there was still an official segregation of the negotiations in the Bula Zone and all of the other activities in the Bonn Zone. Thanks to my good friends at Georgetown University, I was privileged to be credentialed as an observer in the Bula Zone; therefore, I had access to the entire conference. But I spent most of my time in the Bonn Zone because it wasn’t just companies and NGOs making their pitches to whomever wandered by. It was a true partnership between governments, NGOs and companies having substantive discussions and announcing new initiatives.

In addition to the World Wildlife Fund PandaHub event I described in my last post, I participated in or attended events at the national pavilions of the EU, Fiji, France, China, Turkey, Indonesia, Germany and the UK. One UK event on city sustainability in Scotland was followed by a sampling of that great Scottish export, single malt whisky. There was no U.S. national pavilion this year, but in a series of igloo-shaped tents just outside the Bula Zone, the U.S. Climate Alliance (#wearestillin) hosted a series of meetings, presentations and panel discussions with American governors, mayors, NGOs, companies and members of Congress. All discussed the importance to the U.S. economy of investments in both climate change mitigation and adaptation.

My final speaking event at the COP was in the U.S. Climate Action Center. Along with representatives from PG&E, Ingersoll Rand, Johnson Controls, and Jupiter Oxygen, I spoke on a panel of U.S. firms engaged in the clean energy and technology market. On another panel, Bank of America, S&P Global and JP Morgan Chase discussed the very good performance profile of sustainable companies. Other companies such as Microsoft, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Mars (the M&Ms people) talked about their sustainability commitments and initiatives. Mars involvement led to one session moderator, Tim Juliani of Edison Energy, raising a specter that should lead to broader concern for the risks of climate change—the possibility of a world without chocolate.

As I head home from Bonn and compare my experience with previous COPs, I am struck that the private sector is now acting as an equal partner to the government and NGO players in the fight to address global climate change. Governments and NGOs clearly understand that without corporate engagement and action, the plans and goals to reduce carbon emissions and prepare for the impacts of climate change will be just that, plans and goals. Companies are where the words become actions. And speaking of actions, I think I need to stop in duty free and stock up on some chocolate in case Tim wasn’t kidding.

The post Companies are the X factor appeared first on Blog.

On my third day at COP 23, I chatted with a climatologist from South Africa, delegates from Tunisia and Senegal, a professor from China, and NGO representatives from California and Peru—and that was just on the commute! Due to the number of attendees, many of us were unable to arrange for accommodations in Bonn, so I stayed in Cologne, 25 km to the north.

I spoke at two sessions on Monday. The first was a discussion on climate adaptation finance in developing nations organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI). Former UN Climate Change Agency Executive Director Yvo de Boer led representatives from Bangladesh, Kenya, CPI, the Green Climate Fund, the African Development Bank, and the private sector (me) in a panel discussion. Following some opening remarks by OECD Director Jorge Moreira da Silva, Saleemul Haq, from the International Center for Climate Change and Development in Bangladesh, made a point that reminded me climate change is a problem for everyone. He said, “You can be poor and resilient and you can be rich and vulnerable.” Wealth can make climate adaptation easier, but it doesn’t ensure it. We must all work together to be safe and prosperous.

Later in the day, my London ArchTam colleagues Emily LeCornu and Lawrence Avery and I (pictured below) co-hosted a climate adaptation event with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) at their COP pavilion, known as the PandaHub. A WWF official noted that their Panda icon is the second most recognized NGO logo in the world after the Red Cross. I have to admit, seeing the Red Cross logo in a disaster always makes me feel better, but the Panda is a lot more fun. And they have a ginormous one on the side of the pavilion. Not to be outdone during their presidency year, the Fijian pavilion features a native boat, examples of cultural dress and lots of island décor and music. Truly the spirit of Bula has been brought across the ocean by the warm and welcoming people of Fiji. The adaptation event was a big success, and we released a report ArchTam just completed with WWF on resilience and sustainability screening of infrastructure projects by international financial institutions.

What is very clear to me from all of the sessions I have spoken at and attended is that both climate mitigation (reducing carbon) and adaptation (preparing for the impacts of climate change) are being pursued by governments, NGOs, and companies. More on the corporate involvement in the COP in my next update.

I have seen a lot of old friends and colleagues and met many new ones this week. However, I may have missed my best VIP (pronounced “whip” by the Germans) encounter. As I was sitting in the hallway charging up my phone and responding to some emails, a gaggle of security folks went running by. A few minutes later, a full herd of officials, handlers, press, and the security team came walking down the hall. I couldn’t see who was in the middle, but assumed that some head of state or other minister was making a speech or press conference. Nope. Turns out it was the Terminator himself: Arnold Schwarzenegger was back (sorry, but I can’t pass on a bad pun). I may not have seen Arnold, but it’s clear that all of the scientists, government officials, policy experts, and business leaders here this month are deeply committed to addressing the causes and impacts of climate change, and that makes them all action heroes in my book.

The post Climate action heroes appeared first on Blog.

Bula! This traditional greeting from Fiji is ubiquitous in Bonn, Germany, this month as the nations of the world gather for the annual climate change meeting and negotiations—the UN Climate Change Conference. This is the 23rd conference of parties (or COP 23) initiated as part of the UN Framework Compact on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the treaty ratified by 197 nations to address the existential threat of global climate change.

Following Morocco last year and France the year before, the Pacific island nation of Fiji holds the COP presidency for this year’s event. Even with the meeting held in Bonn, the headquarters of UNFCCC, the Fijian influence and culture is well evident as one moves around the various meeting venues. A low-lying area of the world, Fiji is particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Speaking of the country’s leadership role, Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, said: “Our concerns are the concerns of the entire world, given the scale of the crisis.”

I arrived in the second week of the meeting when much of the high-level negotiations had been completed—now the focus is on knowledge sharing and partnership. This is a critical component of COP 23, as mitigating and adapting to climate change requires strong engagement and collaboration between the public and the private sectors. It’s the role and responsibility of the private sector that I will be speaking to during three sessions this week.

As an American business representative participating in COP 23, I have been asked a lot about the U.S. commitment to the 2015 Paris Agreement and to climate change action in general. I’ll speak more about this in a later post, but while the executive branch of the federal government is not as visible, our state, local and private-sector interests are clearly here in force. In less than 36 hours, I’ve seen four governors and two U.S. senators and believe the commitment of my own country continues to be strong.

Saturday marked the start of Carnival season in Germany (yes, they start early), so in addition to ministers and climate negotiators from around the globe, I’ve seen a lot of young Germans dressed as their favorite comic book character or mythical creature. As I look down the hall in the train station, it’s my hope that many of these people will act as climate heroes in addition to superheroes as we continue to make steps to champion knowledge and action when it comes to reducing carbon emissions and addressing global warming.

The post Bula from Bonn—Knowledge sharing and partnership appeared first on Blog.

Ancient mariners caught in storms often called upon Poseidon, ruler of the seas, to save them and their ships from danger. The Greek god — or Neptune, if you prefer his Roman name — also had the power to cause earthquakes and tame wild horses. He might be a good guy to know these days, if you live in a coastal city facing sea level rise and other climate-related threats. In fact, statues of this powerful but capricious deity can be found in coastal cities in England, Sweden and the United States, among others.

Holding back the sea is more than just an academic discussion. Rising sea levels, caused by climate change, more frequent and intense storms and coastal erosion are all issues now gaining more attention, especially in the United States. Last month a Senate committee held a hearing on the reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program, an initiative that aims to reduce the impact of flooding on private and public structures and is set to expire this September. Time magazine recently profiled the efforts to keep the water at bay in New York, New Orleans, Boston and Miami. ArchTam can’t claim to have a direct line to Poseidon, but we do have multidisciplinary teams working in all four of these cities to address their coastal resilience needs.

One of our assignments the article explores is New York’s Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency project. ArchTam’s team is working to create a new vision for the shoreline that balances urban design and coastal engineering. The project grew out of a design competition in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and is now in the feasibility study and conceptual design phase. What’s remarkable about this project is that its scope goes beyond just what to build; we are also working with New York to develop the funding strategies that leverage the value of managing the risks posed by a changing climate.

In the Gulf Coast region, ArchTam has been deeply involved in many aspects of the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. We are assisting Louisiana and other Gulf Coast states to develop and test new resilience strategies and coastal restoration efforts. In partnership with Texas’s Rice University, we recently convened a group of experts and stakeholders to look at new ways to make Houston’s Galveston Bay more resilient to the challenges of storm surge and storm water flooding. The regional port facilities are critically important. Not only do they drive critical commerce in and out of Houston, but they support strategic energy assets critical to the region and the nation. This work builds on our port and harbor resilience efforts on both coasts as well as in cities such as London, Rotterdam, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney and Shanghai.

Miami is another port city facing challenges from the sea. Here a group of officials representing the cities of Miami and Miami Beach along with Miami-Dade County have started to work jointly as part of the 100 Resilient Cities program, pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, to develop a regional resilience strategy. With strategy support from ArchTam, this group is looking at the big picture by connecting the environmental issue of flooding to social and economic issues, ranging from affordable housing to criminal justice to employment opportunities. The goal of this holistic approach is to help Miami develop a plan that provides different assets and opportunities to balance the needs of multiple stakeholders impacted by sea level rise.

We’re proud of our efforts supporting the 100 Resilient Cities program in Miami and across the globe. Ancient sailors called out to Poseidon or other deities to help them overcome the challenges of the sea. Today, national governments, individual jurisdictions, NGOs and the private sector are working together to develop and implement both short and long-term solutions to the challenges we face in our coastal cities from climate change and other threats. The historical record is a little fuzzy on whether Poseidon and the other gods and goddesses were actually helpful to those who reached out. But with our work with cities on six continents as evidence, I place my hope in the growing level of public-private and multidisciplinary collaboration. Only this approach can match the scale and complexity of our changing world.

The post Does anyone have Poseidon’s number? appeared first on Blog.

Moderated by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, a panel of innovative mayors from Louisville, San Jose, Charlotte, South Bend, and Phoenix took off their political hats and discussed what they have done and the challenges they face in being disruptive and making their cities work for all of their diverse citizens. From using data and technology to drive better decision making to partnering with universities, NGOs, and local companies to drive economic growth, these mayors have shown how the US is a world leader in being innovative. As I have traveled the world, I have seen many of the ideas being developed in these cities now being explored across the globe. We can learn from other countries, and they can learn from us.

San Francisco and San Jose are leveraging their proximity to the tech hub in Silicon Valley to drive innovation at a municipal level, but each of the cities has built these partnerships with local experts at universities, tech startups, and old line companies, finding new ways to address the same problems all cities face. It was clear that no matter where you are, there are innovation partners like ArchTam and others in the private sector who can bring value to the city and are motivated to help because these are the places where we live and work as well as being clients.

I had the opportunity to ask the mayors how we can be better partners in this effort, and what I heard from South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, and others on the panel was that they need easy-to-implement solutions, as cities are always challenged in having enough staff to implement new ideas. Cities need turnkey, simple solutions that can be quickly and effectively brought online without a lot of investment of staff time. Mayor Lee also asked for help in creating better understanding for citizens on the salience of infrastructure projects and how large projects like the San Francisco sea wall project relate to their everyday life. Flood protection, transit maintenance, and wastewater treatment aren’t things most people think about – until it’s too late. What was very clear to me from this discussion was that mayors need help, and in many of our cities they are looking for new ways to do things and new ways to work across the public and private spectrum.

The post Mayors and innovation: there is much to do and they want help appeared first on Blog.

This agreement is a major achievement and much credit goes to the thousands of negotiators, scientists, and politicians who did what many said was impossible – brokered an agreement among countries whose very existence is threatened by a lack of action and others whose economic livelihood or industrial development are dependent on fossil fuels. But there is still much work to do.

No matter what we do to cut carbon today, we are and will continue to feel the effects of climate change in all parts of the world for many years to come, and the nations have agreed to ramp up efforts to address this issue. The need to focus on climate adaptation – preparing for those impacts – is now, more than ever, critically important in rich and poor nations alike. You need only look at the Climate Central maps for any coastal city, and just the impact of 1.5 C will show that our cities are at risk. As more and more people move into the cities and we face the combination of sea level rise, more frequent and severe storms, and extended drought, we must prepare our infrastructure and other parts of our communities for these changes.

With the Paris agreement to reduce carbon emissions comes a commitment by the more wealthy nations to provide $100 billion a year toward climate adaptation support for poorer nations. How firm this commitment is and how quickly the money will flow is yet to be seen. There is already political posturing on both sides in the U.S. relating to public money for this effort, so it is clear that there is work to do. Regardless of the outcome of this debate, public funds can’t solve the entire problem. Much of our infrastructure is privately owned, and we need to make sure our cities and our industries are prepared for the changes that are coming. This is a problem that will require the public and private sectors to work together as we have seen many times in the past when we faced a major crisis. We have done it before and we can do it again.

Josh Sawislak is global director of resilience for ArchTam.

The post Notes from COP 21: after the agreement appeared first on Blog.

But these annual climate meetings are not just about the negotiations. While some of our ArchTam staff and clients are directly involved in the negotiations, we are here in part because this event brings together corporate, NGO, and academic experts from across the globe to talk about how we can all work together to address two critical questions: how do we keep things from getting worse, and how do we prepare for the impacts that we are too late to stop?

I caught up with some friends and clients from six continents yesterday, and we all agreed there is much to do but the best way to act is to do something, even if it is small, because success breeds success. One of the events yesterday was a forum on renewable energy sponsored by Google at their very cool office in central Paris. Claire Bonham-Carter and I spent the afternoon with a hundred or so corporate, government, and NGO leaders talking about things we can do today to implement clean, renewable energy in cities, data centers, stores, and homes.

Google talked about the fact that they consume approximate 4 terawatts of electricity annually (terawatt=million megawatt) and about 37% of their power comes from directly purchased renewables and the current renewable portion of grid power. They also reduce the demand for their data centers (their biggest use) by 50% over “typical” data centers. Goggle also pointed out that they are putting their own money into this problem by investing $2.5 billion USD in renewable energy projects. It’s important to note this is not a PR move; they have a strong business case for these investments.

We also heard from companies like IKEA and Marks & Spencer, who produce and sell retail goods. They have both seen the bottom line value in making their operations run on renewables, and in IKEA’s case, are actually now selling solar PV technology directly to consumers. In part their customers are expecting them to be sustainable, but they are able to show their accountants the financial business case for these investments and strategies.

As world government leaders work out agreements for how quickly we can reduce emissions, it is the companies and people who will have to implement these commitments. It was great to hear from some of these leading companies on how this is not about just being good corporate citizens: This is smart business.

Josh Sawislak is global director of resilience, ArchTam

The post Notes from COP 21: role of companies and consumers appeared first on Blog.