Top 3 sustainability resources of 2022

I spend a lot of time seeking out and consuming environmental sustainability resources throughout the year - it's part of my job as a founder and leader of the employee sustainability community @ 微软 . Having a large network inside and outside the company, along with direct access to some incredible thought leaders, gives me a front row seat to some of the coolest stuff emerging in this space. So here are my top 3 sustainability resources of 2022.

1. ClimateTrace Emissions Map Emissions Map - Climate TRACE

Until now, accurate information about sources of global carbon emissions has been limited to the companies, governments, and organizations who voluntarily measure and report them. In a space that lacks a common definition of net-zero, let alone standardized measurements and methodologies , this means where they exist, these self-reported sources of emissions are often incomplete or inaccurate. Enter Emissions Map - Climate TRACE - now for the first time, anyone can SEE sources of greenhouse gas emissions on a single interactive map, sourced from satellite data! This is a real game changer: it democratizes access to this data while centralizing it, provides critically needed transparency, and helps separate signal from noise in a space ripe with greenwashing. For example, the single largest source of emissions on Earth is ExxonMobil's operations in the Permian Basin in Texas - but you'd never guess that reading through their self-reported emissions (if you can even find them on their labyrinthine website).

2. Project Drawdown's Job Function Action?Guides | Project Drawdown

As companies large and small wake up to the urgency of the climate crisis, many are marshaling their resources to reduce their environmental impact and transform their business. But all too often they fail to leverage one of the most powerful and readily available resources they already have - their employees. The challenges are universal: how do you scale sustainability through your entire workforce? How do you educate, inspire, and activate all employees on this issue? How do you evolve your culture and put sustainability at the center of everything your company does? And how do you do it all as fast as possible? Enter Project Drawdown's?Job Function Action?Guides | Project Drawdown . These guides address the unique ways that common roles at all companies are positioned to accelerate sustainable change: finance, government relations and public policy, human resources and operations, legal, marketing, procurement, and sales and client facing roles. Believe it or not, some of the most important work in this space can be done by people who don't have sustainability in their job title and lack formal training. These guides offer the most comprehensive and universal way to do that today, check them out and distribute them in your organization.

3. Microsoft's "Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap" report Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap (microsoft.com)

The number of companies with science-based targets or commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has increased nearly 14,000% since 2015 - a great sign!?But most of these companies lack people with the skills and expertise to turn those pledges into progress.?Meanwhile, the International Labor Organization predicts 18 million new jobs will be needed by 2030 to achieve Paris agreement goals. According to Microsoft's new Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress report, what we are facing is an unsustainable talent shortage. The report "represents the culmination of intensive research conducted by Microsoft and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) with roughly 250 employees at 15 companies that are at the forefront of sustainability innovation and change. It highlights the formidable sustainability skilling challenges we must overcome around the world." I work on employee engagement for sustainability (see my own blog post on this topic Make Sustainability Part of Everybody's Job (microsoft.com) and found this report to be a breath of fresh air in a space that is poorly defined and hardly understood. It provides a big picture view, valuable data, and crucially, concrete recommendations any organization can take to upskill their current workforce and help create a pipeline of green talent that will sustain them for years to come. Anyone can make a climate pledge - it takes skilled people to turn pledges into progress.

Runner Up: Microsoft-Green-Design-Principles.pdf

Are you noticing a pattern here? My favorite sustainability resources are ones that help scale sustainability work through as many people as possible (my mission is to make sustainability part of everybody's job after all). Building on a wave of "greening" existing roles and disciplines (see the Principles of Green Software Engineering ), the Microsoft-Green-Design-Principles.pdf were authored by a grassroots group of climate activists @ 微软 who wanted to know: what role can designers play in advancing sustainability? The principles, and their supporting documents Digital = Physical. Green Design Principles and Sandra Pallier How to design a green website.pptx - Google Slides offer tangible, actionable steps designers of all stripes can take to reduce the environmental impact of their work. More importantly, they offer inspiration by showing how established roles and disciplines can use the unique tools in their toolbox to advance sustainability in nontraditional ways.