Innovative features incorporated into consumer electronics products that make them safe for the environment, i.e., efficient and clean energy use; manufacturing processes that reduce use the of environmentally relevant substances (e.g., lead, mercury); durability/end-of-life (reuse, refurbish, remanufacture, recycle); resource conservation.

This year’s  Best of Innovation award went to the “Nest Learning Thermostat,” which illustrates how smart buildings can monitor your actions, learn from them, and take actions themselves to reduce energy and enhance comfort. Whether this will succeed in the market is an open question, but it definitely provides one indication of where “smart buildings” are headed.

Michael Freundlieb and Frank Teuteberg examine online sustainability reporting quality, concluding that current reports focus too much on content and not enough on effective communication modes (graphs, charts, tables, etc.).

This paper contributes to the research on sustainable development in general and on web based sustainability reports in particular by giving an overview of the goals and quality criteria in existing reporting standards and guidelines. Our overview shows that existing standards and guidelines are too focused on the content of the reports and, in view of the stakeholder-focused nature of sustainability reporting, neglect common IS acceptance criteria which have proven to be valid in many other problem domains. In response to these shortcomings, we presented a multi-method framework that directly involves the different stakeholder groups into the definition of quality criteria and the corresponding evaluation. (“Evaluating the Quality of Web Based Sustainability Reports: A Multi-method Framework“
Michael Freundlieb and Frank Teuteberg)

Other papers presented at HICSS include:

“Web-Based Support of Crop Selection for Climate Adaptation” by Daryl H. Hepting, Timothy Maciag, and Harvey Hill, in which crowd sourcing is suggested as a viable means to collect local knowledge about what works and what doesn’t in the face of changing climate conditions.

“Toward Green IS Adoption Behaviors: A Self-Determination Perspective” by Yulia Wati and Chulmo Koo, in which the adoption of green IS (power meter device) is examined.

For a full listing of papers in the sustainability track (“Information Systems and Decision Technologies for Sustainable Development—Co-Chairs: Omar El-Gayar, PingSung Leung, and Arno Scharl) see this link (will be posted soon).

1. Understanding how/why firms excel in sustainability management

Better understanding of why certain firms excel in terms of energy/ghg reductions relative to peers, in particular, the role of information systems and information management capabilities (e.g., energy and carbon management systems, social media) as complements/enablers/drivers of environmental strategies and practices.

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2. Understanding qualitative aspects of residential energy feedback systems

James Pierce and colleagues call on researchers to understand and focus on the ineffectiveness of residential home energy feedback systems. They identify several areas in need of further research:

• what are considered non-negotiable interactions / patterns (e.g., using a clothes dryer)
• unintended effects: sustaining the unsustainable (e.g., do these systems actually promote behavior counter to intended outcomes?)
• alternative aims (e.g,. other objectives such as symbolism and aesthetics of energy).
• design details (e.g., subtleties of how design details shape perceptions and actions)

Pierce, J., Fan, C, Lamas, D., Marcu, G., & Paulos, E. (2010). Some considerations on the (in)effectiveness of residential energy feedback systems. To appear in Proceedings of DIS Conference on Designing Interactive Systems. Arhus, Denmark. DIS ’10. ACM Press, New York, NY.

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3. Understanding and systematizing mechanisms of S2.0 change

We need to extend understanding of mechanisms that underlie individual and organizational sustainability behavior and the role of information systems therein. For example, a simple mechanism that arises from decades of scholarship on organizational use of information systems is what I call “the illusion of information system functionality,” meaning, if a system is well designed and performs its functions as intended (data validity, ease of use, integration with other systems, etc.) then it will be deemed a success. To what extent might Kahneman’s “system 1″ and “system 2″ mental systems drive this thinking (which often leads to disastrous results, e.g., non-use of a costly system and blame game)?

According to a recent article in GreenBiz.com:

a growing body of research identifies [sustainability oriented] employee engagement programs that do work — and many have social media at their core.

The article goes on to detail results from a new survey of leading companies concerning both S2.0 practices and impacts:

Sustainable Brands Insights recently released a survey that showed 50 companies were already using social media in their sustainability efforts.

Seventy-six percent of sustainability professionals believe investment in sustainability-themed social media will help gain market share or increase the size of the overall market.

More importantly, those using social media saw a 10 to 15 percent increase in recognition of their sustainability efforts and, crucially, increased compliance.

On the S2.0 practices side, a recent survey of FTSE G500 firms reveals a “90-10″: while more than half use social media for sustainability, only 10% use it extensively.

On “leading the conversation” as an S2.0 practice :

No communication program today would be complete without considering how to reach target audiences through ever-proliferating social media channels. This is even truer for brands with a sustainability story to tell.

Consumers, the media and other stakeholders are already debating a company’s every environmental and social action and inaction on Twitter and Facebook. It’s time for brands to take part in, and ideally lead, the conversation – particularly those brands with a strong record to stand behind.

Finally, in my research collaboration with Michael Hopps, we demonstrate that social media analytics (including semantic analysis) can provide useful insights into effective use of social media for environmental sustainability (top keywords driving buzz, opinions, etc.).

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Sustainable business practices associated with increased use of IT?

According to Chris Mines with Forrester Research:

In interviewing sustainability leaders at 15 multinationals, we found a wide variety of drivers, barriers, and best practices that are embedding sustainability in corporate operations. One consistent message from these companies is that the more progressive their approach to sustainability, the more they rely on IT systems and skills for collecting, integrating, analyzing, and reporting data and performance metrics.

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S2.0 going mainstream?

The Discovery Channel’s new show “The Green Room” airing November 19, 2011 leads with the S2.0 story:

We’re starting off the show here in the midst of California’s Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, what many consider to be the birthplace of information technology, except that today it’s technology designed more for greener business.

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ECEM software experiencing rapid growth in adoption?

Software for managing energy and carbon emissions in organizations is predicted to grow at compound rate of 83% (Daniel Krauss, Forrester).

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Social media used by individuals to monitor / pressure organizations?

According to the 2010 Ceres report “The 21st Century Corporation: The Ceres Roadmap for Sustainability, social media delivers “radical transparency” [and radical pressure] into a firm’s sustainability performance.

Advances in digital communication over the last two
decades have reduced not only the time it takes to build
a reputation, but also the time it takes to destroy one.
Communication is increasingly disaggregated across
multiple social networks. Facebook has over 65 million
users, and is growing by more than 200% per year.
Twitter, while having a “mere” 7 million users, has shown
year-to-year growth of over 1000%.6  Using these types
of tools, it has never been easier for people to track  
a company’s sustainability performance and to widely
disseminate their perspectives on it. We have entered  
an era of “radical transparency.”

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Digital innovation generates new solutions to old problems?

Innovative digital business practices transform what was previously impossible in the realm of “computational sustainability.” For example, Master Card teamed with Brighter Planet to develop a corporate charge card that automatically tracks carbon emissions of employee travel and other difficult-to-measure dimensions of Scope 3 emissions, thus transforming speed, accuracy, and reliability of emissions data, paving the way for real-time analytics and dashboards, and better decision making.

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Smart cities emerge as a driving force?

Cisco demonstrated the possibility of smart urban development in its “Connected Urban Development” initiatives, including the Green u-City in Busan, Korea.

From Forbes:

What’s happening in Busan gets at what Fuller sees as the next step in smart grid, the nexus of smart buildings, smart mobility, and smart energy. “This is where investment is flowing and where a lot of our partners – Toyota and DeutscheBank, for example – are making aggressive investments in their part of that nexus,” Fuller says. “Toyota is looking well beyond the Prius and asking how mobility solutions can be not only green but also smart in their connection to the grid and to buildings. Right in the middle of that is this underlying digital infrastructure where we’re focused.”

In a 2011 CHI Conference paper, Heller and Borchers use human-centered approaches to gauge user feedback to different types of energy feedback. They used rapid prototyping: instead of designing/building the above alternatives, they implemented them in software on the iPad. They also used an interesting framework to structure feedback system types:

14 users were asked their views of the five designs in an informal experiment. Result? The LCD design (e) was rated higher than others (though not [statistically] significant). Overall, the authors summarize their work in progress  as follows:

The results of our study show that the ambient
visualizations are perceived as aesthetically appealing,
but the relation to the actual power consumption is not
obvious enough. We will therefore revise the design of
these ambient visualizations in a user-centered
approach to tackle this problem. After that, we want to
evaluate which two ambient visualizations work best,
implement them in our hardware prototype, and again
compare them to PEMs. The hardware prototype has
the advantage that ambient effects, like the colored
glowing light, are more visible behind some furniture.

Green IT, IT for Green, on-demand sustainability data, etc.

Jennifer Pollard tells an interesting story about how Microsoft came to focus on “IT for Green” starting at the 23 minute mark. Jennifer discusses “within the 4 walls reporting” and then moving that data to the cloud to facilitate product-level reporting.

Suzanne Pahlman (Connecore): “Digital tools are disruptive, they can completely change the face of reporting.”

• the same tags are used by all companies to facilitate data sharing
• tags have meaning to humans
• tag library expands to fit user needs

I’ve written before about how XBRL may transform sustainability reporting here and here. However, the announcement by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) that it is developing an XBRL taxonomy for its G4 standard is a major shift towards transforming how data are collected, shared, and used for value add among various sustainability stakeholders: reporting firms, third parties such as CDP, institutional investors, Bloomberg, etc.

GRI and Deloitte said the taxonomy they are developing will enable companies to tag their sustainability data in reports, which will help investors, auditors and other users to access and compare GRI data more easily and quickly. The two organizations said the taxonomy will also help organizations improve the quality and integrity of their sustainability performance data. [more]

As Deloitte puts it, this “major shift” may have far-reaching consequences for transparency, data quality, and the emergence of value added services.

“We are experiencing a major shift towards electronic information delivery,” said Cees de Boer, CFO and COO of Deloitte in the Netherlands. “This development is already very important in financial reporting and is increasingly being used for both numerical and textual non-financial information. [more]

It goes beyond “delivery” (see iTunes).

My own research (currently under review) using 2008 data shows wide variation in corporate carbon performance (Revenue / Emissions) within industry (denominator is Scope 1 + Scope 2). The following box plots illustrate the range of each distribution.

Note also that variation depends on the industry. For example, Consumer Staples and Industrials have lower ranges relative to other low emitting industries (note y-axis scale difference across the two panels). Bottom line? Whether from the perspective of IT sustainability or overall sustainability performance, data illustrate wide variation within industries. Why might this be the case? That’s the subject of a future post.

SAP’s Carbon Impact system offers several approaches:

• EDI used to automatically input utility bill data into Carbon Impact (do all utilities in all countries use EDI?, are there extra fees?).

• Workflow management requesting data from business managers including survey and campaign functions (still manual, though better than email, can business managers upload spreadsheet data directly?)

• Reference library preloaded with required parameters such as emissions factors (every utility in every country is covered?)

It would be interesting to compare data import procedures (just one of many implementation challenges) across different platforms.