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Sarah King is an associate at GreenOrder, a strategy and management consulting firm specializing in sustainable business.
 What are some of the specific accomplishments and practical results you have achieved in helping businesses become more green?
SK: GreenOrder helps businesses understand how environmental issues relate to their core business, and how considering environmental issues can help businesses excel at their business objectives.
Two specific recent examples come to mind.
We helped a large apparel manufacturer and retailer optimize their supply-chain logistics. By using more ocean and rail shipping and less truck and air freight, and by having a few more distribution centers to reduce product miles traveled, our client is able to significantly reduce the environmental impact of their operations and save more than $1 million per year.
In another recent engagement, we worked with a leading financial services firm to help its leadership understand how this is not about "doing the right thing" or a topic for “treehuggers,” but that environmental and energy risks are a business issue ... that if the organization wants to give world-class advice to its clients, its bankers need to first understand environmental issues and integrate the associated risks and opportunities in financial analyses and long-term projections. This mindset change was not easy, but has helped our client achieve a leadership position among its peers in growth segments of its practice.
What actions do you take in your daily life that might be unusual but green?
SK: Living in a dense urban environment like Manhattan might not seem "green," but it can have a much lower impact than suburban or rural lifestyles. For example, I walk to work, which is emissions-free and super-convenient. And although I live on the 26th floor of a high-rise, my daughters and I are growing a small vegetable garden with squash, zucchini, tomato and basil on our balcony.
At the office, I try to strike the right balance between being face-to-face frequently with clients and cutting back on emissions-intensive air travel. By using videoconferencing and the telephone, the GreenOrder team typically travels much less often than most management consultants, which helps reduce our carbon footprint.
What policies, if any, would you like to see enacted on the local, state or national levels to make this nation more green?
SK: On the federal level, GreenOrder supports a market-based program for capping greenhouse gas emissions to avoid dangerous environmental and health consequences of climate change. We believe in market-based approaches, such as a cap-and-trade or carbon tax because they don’t choose a technology winner, but encourage reductions to be made across the U.S. economy where it is most cost-effective. We support a national renewable electricity standard, with a trading mechanism, to require a baseline percentage of energy to be generated by renewable sources.
On the state and local level, GreenOrder supports performance-based programs that reward states that make progress on energy efficiency through the allocation of federal funding. We also support improved codes and standards for lighting, appliances and buildings to allow us to achieve significant increases in energy efficiency across the U.S. economy. These policies are needed even though energy efficiency is already cost-competitive but does not occur because of split incentives (e.g., renters vs. owners of buildings), upfront costs can be high, and other market failures.
Many tech startups have arisen and become successful with no government aid. Why does alternative energy need government aid?
SK: Early-stage technologies need R&D support before they can be produced on a reasonably large scale. Alternative energy is not unique in receiving government support; other sources of energy, such as the oil and gas industry, have and continue to receive large subsidies.
More significantly, fossil energy is cheaper only when significant "hidden" costs to the environment and human health are not counted. Ideally, policies do not pick winners but instead 1) put a price on externalities, such as greenhouse gas pollution, and 2) encourage rapid acceleration in development and deployment of the most promising low-carbon energy options. Thus, in addition to supporting a market-based carbon cap, GreenOrder believes subsidies for renewable energy need to be stable and predictable over several years to allow the capital markets to put their full support behind the technologies we need.
Are there any other points you'd like to make about the environment, alternative energy or allied issues?
SK: As with any other new business reality, global environmental issues will produce winners and losers. If managers are not clear how environmental issues affect their business, and do not have a plan to address them, they are exposing their company to significant risk ... and missing opportunities to secure long-term competitive advantage.
Editor's note: We're glad GreenOrder responded to our call for comment, as we'd like to learn about a company that tries to make environmentalism profitable. Sarah King is an associate principal at the firm.
Previously, King was a project leader at the Boston Consulting Group and an executive at Revlon. She holds a Grande Ecole diploma from HEC School of Management in Paris and an MBA from Columbia. GreenOrder is a New York City-based strategy and management consulting firm specializing in sustainable business.
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