The Art and the Urgency of Measuring Your Carbon Footprint

Add to iTunes
GreenBiz Radio RSS

• 

  Your Email: *

  Your Name: *

  Send To: *

  Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.

  You are going to email the following: The Art and the Urgency of Measuring Your Carbon Footprint

  Message Subject: (Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from GreenBiz.com®

  Message Body: (Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from GreenBiz.com®.

  Your Personal Message: *

  CAPTCHA

  Are you human? Thanks for helping us block auto-spammers.

  

  What code is in the image?: *

  Copy the characters (respecting upper/lower case) from the image.
  
• 
• 
• 

George Ahn is the president and CEO of Tririga, a business whose business is to help firms that manage large portfolios of property. Tririga provides the solutions and the applications that make that management possible. George talks with us today about the environmental issues on the horizon for businesses and the properties they oversee.  

Leslie Guevarra: George Ahn, thank you for joining us today.

George Ahn: Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

LG: Based on your experience and that of your firm as a market leader, what's the biggest challenge facing any company — large or small — today in the property and building management business?

GA: Well, Leslie, it's a great question and there's no question what the challenge is. It's the entire challenge around greenhouse gases and carbon emissions, and buildings represent a staggering 48 percent of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. And as a matter of fact, the numbers, as you pull up data get even worse, depending upon whether you go to the Department of Energy or USGBC.

But buildings represent 71 percent of the electricity consumption, over 65 percent of waste output, 12 percent of water consumption and it goes on and on, and this is definitely an issue that all executives care about, and that we have to take action on. And there's a huge opportunity for all companies to take action on this, whether the company is big or small.

On top of all of this, as you look at not only taking action from an environmental perspective. The point is that there's regulation coming. Over 50 percent of the states have already enacted renewable energy portfolio policies, and the goal is by 2025 to get 15 percent of electricity demand from renewable sources. And on a national level, it's certainly coming.

Both presidential hopefuls have been very clear that legislation will be enacted.  So, this is all happening and it's a huge issue on the minds of all executives in this business.

LG: Now, why is this such a tough thing for people to get their arms around?

GA: Well, it's really interesting there, and one of the things that it's so hard on, is that if you think back to the first step of the challenge, which is simply measuring emissions --  small companies and large companies --  just the concept of being able to measure exactly where you are today, and then drive it in terms of where you'd like it to go, but just getting the first step done of measuring is not necessarily an easy thing, and it's one of the things that we've worked on.  

It's interesting to me, but I'm a competitive sailor, and in sailing, the thing that you always do is you're constantly measuring where you are on the race course. And