To help managers of small and medium-sized businesses (also called small and medium-sized enterprises, or SMEs) learn how they can respond to and profit from actions to address the climate change challenge, the Pembina Institute is offering a series of presentations and workshops along with this publication.

This Guide includes a step-by-step approach to show how your business can plan and implement a response to climate change that will help lower costs, improve productivity and increase competitiveness.

The Guide:

• introduces readers to climate change;
• identifies how climate change could affect your business;
• gives examples of how leading businesses are profiting from their response to climate change;
• provides practical worksheets that you can use immediately to plan and implement your response; and
• describes over 50 government and private sector resources and tools to help you learn more, and to obtain expertise, tools, and networking and financial assistance.

The Guide was written mainly for managers and owners of manufacturing SMEs with more than 25 employees or whose annual energy costs exceed $50,000. Smaller businesses will find much of the information valuable, and a simplified approach is suggested for them. Much of the Guide is applicable to non-manufacturing businesses, but there is a bias towards manufacturers, particularly in the examples. Depending on the maturity of their climate change strategy, companies larger than the “official” definition of an SME (i.e., more than 500 employees) will also find much of value in this Guide.

Summary

• Climate Change is here to stay; it is firmly established as a critical environmental issue in the minds of the public, on the government policy agenda, and for leading businesses.
• The solutions to climate change are win-win: leading businesses are already responding to climate change in creative and innovative ways that help lower energy and other costs, improve productivity, and generate new sources of revenue.
• Greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change will increasingly become a business risk that needs to be managed and will also create substantial business opportunities.
• There are many examples of small and medium-sized businesses in Canada that are taking a win-win approach to improving their energy efficiency, reducing their greenhouse gas emissions and responding to the climate change challenge; four are summarized in this chapter, nine more detailed examples are given in Chapter 3.
• To develop a climate change strategy for your business, you need to understand your specific risks and opportunities, where you want to take your business, and how you propose to get there.
• As you develop and implement your response to climate change, it is important to consider both the management and technical dimensions of your plan, and to anticipate potential obstacles so you can incorporate ways of overcoming them into your plans.

Visit Cool Business Guide: Lower Costs, Higher Productivity and Climate Change Solutions Download Page

You can download full publication in PDF format.

About the Pembina Institute
The Pembina Institute is an independent, citizen-based think-tank specializing in the fields of energyenvironment, climate change and environmental economics.

The Institute engages in environmental education; policy research, analysis and advocacy; community sustainable energy development; and corporate environmental management services to advance environmental protection, resource conservation, and environmentally sound and sustainable resource management. Incorporated in 1985, the Institute’s head office is in Drayton Valley, Alberta with additional offices in Ottawa and Calgary, and research associates in Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Saskatoon, and other locations across Canada. The Pembina Institute’s mission is to implement holistic and practical solutions for a sustainable world.

The Institute’s Climate Change Program works to design, develop, promote and implement actions that protect the climate through improvements in the efficiency of fossil fuel energy production and use, and through a transition to the renewable energy that will power the world’s economy in the 21st century.

For more information on the Institute’s work, visit our web site at www.pembina.org

About the Author
Duncan Noble joined the Pembina Institute to lead a project facilitating small and medium-sized businesses in Ontario and Alberta to take action on climate change.

Duncan has over 15 years of experience in engineering, business and implementation of product sustainability solutions. He is also an associate with Five Winds International, a management consulting firm that helps organizations improve the business, environmental and social performance of their products and services.

Prior to joining the Institute, Duncan spent 10 years in financial and environmental management with Nortel Networks. In his most recent position as Advisor, Sustainability and Design for Environment, he developed the business logic, pilot projects and integration necessary to implement solutions throughout the product life cycle. Among other projects, he led a project to improve manufacturing energy efficiency using energy performance contracting.

Duncan holds an MBA and a B.Sc. in Engineering Physics from Queen’s University.

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