With the increasing focus on sustainability, major corporations like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Walmart are setting aggressive targets, aiming for carbon neutrality and net-zero emissions as early as 2030, some extending to 2040.

But even if your energy service business doesn’t work with giants like these, you might find yourselves working with any of their tens of thousands of suppliers … who will also be held to account for their sustainability practices.

As an energy professional, how do you lead these conversations and become more relevant and vital to your customers?

Building the Business Case for Sustainability

Sustainability is no longer just about being eco-friendly — it's become a strategic advantage that can drive business growth, improve your resiliency, and impact the bottom line.

If your customers don’t immediately grasp the benefits of sustainability, peel back the onion on what’s truly important – and back it up with solid data. The more proof points and solid resources you can provide, the easier it is to have a productive, strategic conversation and win over the customer.

Here are some of the things you’ll want to talk about:

Cost Savings

The bottom line is always a compelling argument, and fortunately, it’s not hard to demonstrate how energy efficiency projects can translate into a better balance sheet. According to the International Energy Agency, energy efficiency projects will have up to a 40% impact on global energy savings by 2040.

And according to the World Green Building Council, green buildings not only enhance operational performance by up to 15%, but they also can increase building values by as much as 13%. What’s more, energy-efficient projects have an average ROI of 18%.

Even if the leadership team isn’t swayed by the environmental impacts of sustainability efforts, they can’t ignore dollars and cents.

Brand Reputation

What else can businesses not ignore? Their customers. More and more, the market is demanding sustainability.

• According to the Harvard Business Review, Gen Z and millennial customers are 27% more likely to purchase from a brand if they believe it cares about its impact on people and the planet.
• Additionally, 87% of consumers said that they would consider purchasing a product from a brand that advocates for both climate sustainability and social issues.
• 66% of consumers say they would consider spending more for those sustainable brands.
• And 19% of millennials will only buy from brands that promote that sustainability as a prominent attribute to their offering.

Brand is definitely top of mind for your customers, especially larger ones. When viewed as a marketing opportunity, an investment in sustainability is a no-brainer.

Market Access and Opportunity

Another proof point to bring up as you sell your customers on sustainability? New business – and being in a position to capitalize on opportunities.

According to a recent article by McKinsey & Company, 70% of companies consider sustainability when making their procurement decisions. Oftentimes, these businesses will have very stringent requirements when it comes to greenhouse gas reduction, renewable energy, and general sustainability practices. At the enterprise level, the bar only gets higher. Failure to meet those requirements could result in being disqualified from their vendor programs and missing out on very lucrative partnerships.

Talent Management

If your customer is struggling to attract and retain top talent (who isn’t?), bolstering their sustainability efforts could help on that front, too. All things being equal, a millennial job candidate is more likely to accept an offer from a company with sustainability measures than from one without: Studies show that 64% of millennials consider a company's social and environmental commitments when deciding where to work.

And it’s not just a boost to their conscience. Employees working in green-certified buildings have been shown to experience a 26% boost in cognition and an 8% increase in productivity. Let your customers know an investment in sustainability can result in a more productive, happier workforce with longer employer retention.

Ethical and Social Responsibility

The Edelman Trust Barometer has revealed that 81% of consumers need to trust a brand in order to buy from them.

Sadly, nearly two-thirds of respondents believe companies are doing mediocre or worse at keeping their climate commitments, and fewer than half trust CEOs to be honest about climate change and what needs to be done to address it.

The bright side? You can guide your customers by pointing out that this is an excellent opportunity to stand out from the competition and prove that when it comes to ESG, they walk the walk.

Plus, it’ll make investors look twice: According to Edelman’s 2021 Institutional Investors Trust Barometer Special Report, 88% of investors are scrutinizing ESG as much as operational and financial factors.

Regulatory Compliance

Regulatory bodies are getting very serious about sustainability and energy consumption. According to the World Bank, 80% of countries have some form of environmental regulations in place. Falling afoul of these regulations can come with hefty penalties.

If regulations aren’t impacting your customers now, they soon will be. This puts your business is in the perfect position to help these customers stay on the right side of the rules.

Regulatory compliance can Sustainability initiatives can also help keep your client compliant with regulatory requirements.

There are countless state and federal environmental policies that affect businesses. The list is too long to list here, so be sure to check your local regulations. Here are just a few of the major ones:

• New York Local Law 97 (Climate Mobilization Act): Local Law 97 aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, setting emissions limits and performance standards for large buildings. Buildings that exceed annual maximums can face fines of up to $268 for each ton of CO2 emissions over the limit.
• Chicago Energy Conservation Code: The Chicago Energy Conservation Code establishes minimum energy efficiency standards for new construction and major renovations.
• California Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act: Under this law, companies with annual revenues of $1 billion or more will have to report both their direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions starting in 2026.

Risk Mitigation

If your customers aren’t already sold on sustainability so far, there’s another card in your deck: Risk mitigation.

Climate change, water scarcity, natural disasters, and poor labor conditions can threaten vital supply lines. McKinsey reports that the sustainability concerns can threaten about 70% of a company’s pretax earnings. And 72% of companies said that climate change could significantly impact their operations, revenue, or expenditures. By guiding your customers to pay careful attention to their sustainability practices (and those of their suppliers and partners), you can help your customers improve their resiliency, no matter what Mother Nature brings.

Before diving into the details of project-specific environmental metrics, here are some general concepts that will help frame the environmental dimension of your project with your customer.

1. Usage of Energy

The Energy Star Portfolio Manager assesses buildings and benchmarks them against the standard of similar buildings in the industry – and one of the key metrics they use is called “energy use intensity.”

Essentially, energy use intensity (or EUI) is the total energy used per square foot of the building. This metric is measured in kBTU – Kilo BTU. There are two varieties to consider:

• Site EUI is anything from the panel out to the consuming components of the building.
• Source EUI is anything from when it leaves the generation facility/utility all the way to the end use.

The EUI for your customers can vary widely depending on their industry, making it important to benchmark accurately so your customers can see what improvement looks like for them, not somebody else.

2. Measuring Emissions

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol, established jointly by the United States and Europe, has set out three definitional elements of emissions:

• Scope 1: Any direct emissions from energy use – gas used in trucks, energy used for smelting, etc.
• Scope 2: Indirect emissions via purchased energy.
• Scope 3: Everything else – supply chain, processing, end-of-life, etc.

Scope 2 is where your business can really shine, as you help customers reduce their energy consumption and the emissions that result from those energy requirements.

3. Grid Emission Factor

Reducing kWh at a facility? Great! But … what was the source of those kWh, and how many emissions did they create? If your customer’s utility provider already relied 100% on renewable energy (which is almost never the case), then reducing kWh is good. But if your customer’s utility provider relies on emission-producing energy sources, reducing kWh makes a much bigger overall impact.

That is why the EPA has established the Grid Emission Factor, which categorizes each regional grid’s fuel mix to factor in when calculating Scope 2 emissions.

Project Specific Environmental Reporting: What Metrics to Use

Your customers might be swayed by your business case and strong industry data, but at the end of the day, the numbers they care the most about are their own. 

Some of the project-specific metrics to focus on include reductions in carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane and sulfur dioxide. These are all important elements to provide to customers when benchmarking and developing performance reports, and can be used on any energy conservation measure to assess scope 2 emissions reduction, an example of which can be seen below. It's easy for the customer to see at a glance how much of an impact the project had — in this case, over 140,000 kWh in energy reduction, and over 147,000 lbs in carbon dioxide, just for starters. They can always ask for deeper details, but this overarching breakdown tends to build a strong case.

Selling Sustainability: Making the Best Case for Efficient Energy Management

By providing clear, quantifiable data on how sustainability measures can improve efficiency and compliance, you can make a compelling case that resonates with business leaders focused on the bottom line.

However, there’s another ace up your sleeve, that can really turn the tide.

The good news? We’ve got your back.

Digital tools like SnapCount make it easy to gather the huge amount of data points involved in an energy retrofit project and incorporate them downstream into analytics and reports -- all without the manual lift. So you can easily calculate and report specific metrics to your customers to win the deal (or update them on progress once the job has started) without having to spend hours hunting down the numbers.

Want to see exactly how your peers use SnapCount to build the case for sustainability, impress the customer, and win the deal? Watch our recent webinar, “How to Present Environmental Impact to Your Customers.”