With demand for transparency at all time highs, it is not an option anymore for companies to ignore stakeholder inquiries about critical issues such as climate change, diversity and inclusion, and data privacy. As a result of this urgency and interest, more surveys are being circulated, more metrics are being gathered, and more time and resources are being invested to provide accurate and complete answers to customer questions concerning their electric utility supplier's sustainability performance. Fortunately, we are seeing a trend where organizations are coming together to collectively request information, improving data consistency and coordination and reducing the questionnaire fatigue and reporting burden on responders.

EUISSCA and The Sustainability Project (TSP)

How can suppliers to the utility industry benchmark and communicate their sustainability efforts in a way that resonates with and is valued by the customer?

One method is through participation in the new supplier survey tool called The Sustainability Project (TSP). Adopted by the Electric Utility Industry Sustainable Supply Chain Alliance (EUISSCA), generally called the Alliance, and launched during the 2018 Sustainable Sourcing Conference, TSP is designed to facilitate knowledge sharing among utility suppliers on environmental best practices and to enable them to benchmark themselves based on their sector average. In this way, TSP seeks to remove common barriers to adoption of sustainable practices by the supply chain which often include 1) a lack of awareness or access to the necessary information, 2) perceived complexity or expense, and/or 3) no recognition or incentive to do better. TSP’s mission is to provide universal access to the information and tools that make it easy to identify, understand and implement best practices.

There are three core elements to TSP:

1. Learn: browse best practices specific to your industry

2. Assess: assess performance against industry-specific practices

3. Improve: create improvement plans; ability to download this plan and accompanying best practices

The survey questions are grouped into six sub-topics, known as "tiles" in the tool, including:

1. Governance and management

2. Electricity/gas

3. Fuel

4. Waste/pollution

5. Water

6. Data, metrics, targets

Following completion of each assessment, the tool generates a supplier-specific improvement plan. The survey participant/supplier can then estimate from a high-level how significantly their operations would improve if they were to adopt recommendations made in the survey-generated plan.

The Alliance’s 2020 goal for their members participating in the survey is that 100% of members (utility companies) participating and using the results of the Supplier Survey will engage high impact suppliers on sustainability improvements. For the Alliance in the past, it felt like they were giving their suppliers a test once a year to note any improvement, but without any support along the way. The Alliance hopes that this year’s updated version will focus more on supplier sustainability performance improvement and focus on continuous improvement by connecting utilities and suppliers with successful practices and valuable resources. In 2018, of the 254 suppliers that reported publicly across EUISSCA, 179 have created an improvement plan with at least one best practice selected for improvement.

Annual Supplier Survey Due: November 30, 2019

If you serve one of the following electric utilities, and you supply them in any of the following categories then you should have received notice in September from the EUISSCA to complete the annual Supplier Survey by November 30, 2019.

If your business serves one of the following electric utilities…

and you supply them in any of the following categories:

• Architectural design

• Aviation services

• Construction

• Consulting/Advisory services

• Distribution/ Logistics & Shipping

• Energy efficiency contracting

• Engineering

• Engineering, Procurement, Construction

• Environmental consulting, engineering, construction

• Facilities management

  • Full facilities management service

  • Grounds maintenance

  • Janitorial services

• Freight & shipping

• Fuel supply

• General contracting

• Interior design

• Lab services

• Manufacturing

  • Boxes & enclosures

  • Distribution transformers

  • Fabricated metals

  • General manufacturing

  • Wire & cable

• Marketing & communications

• Print services

• Professional services

• Rental equipment & parts

• Value added reselling

• Vegetation management

• Waste management

Feeling overwhelmed with navigating the TSP survey or building your improvement plan?

KERAMIDA can help! Our ESG and sustainability consulting division supports suppliers, industry, and businesses with ESG program development, from benchmarking peers, facilitating materiality assessments, and program planning to program implementation, evaluation, reporting training and reporting. KERAMIDA has also partnered with GRI and CDP as a certified trainer and created a custom training course for SASB to better serve our clients' needs for sustainability services that incorporate the leading reporting standards. Contact us or call us at (800) 508-8034 to speak with one of our consultants today.

Contact:

Becky Twohey, Ph.D.
Vice President, ESG Strategy, Planning and Reporting
KERAMIDA Inc.

Contact Becky at btwohey@keramida.com