National Grid’s Nouel says his team issues open RFPs to encourage innovation: “We say, here’s the problem; give us the solution.”
The costs of global ecological overspending are becoming increasingly evident around the world, in the form of deforestation, drought, fresh-water scarcity, soil erosion, biodiversity loss, and the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But the trend can be reversed, if we moved Earth Overshoot Day back 4.5 days every year, we would return to using the resources of one planet by 2050. Global Footprint Network’s research team is able to work by calculating the number of days by which Earth Overshoot Day would move if the solutions they identified were implemented.
An increasing number of companies are making public commitments to power their operations with renewable energy, but convincing senior management that the investment is worth it can still be a difficult task. Evidence of improvements to ESG ratings and reputation make the task easier.
