Climate Week NYC brings business leaders together to discuss a sustainable future and what it takes to get it done. Our expert Diego Ibarra, Managing Director of Sustainability Solutions Americas, met with Jack McAneny, Vice President of Global Sustainability for Procter & Gamble to discuss what it takes for successful sustainability implementation.
Transcript has been edited for clarity
Diego: We're here at Climate Week NYC, hearing from business leaders on how to bridge the gap between strategy and implementation. We're lucky to be joined by Jack McAneny, Vice President of Global Sustainability for Procter and Gamble. Jack, what characteristics make your sustainability roadmap an investment-ready roadmap?
Jack: That’s a great question Diego, a couple of things jump to mind. The first is having a high level of leadership engagement. I can tell you that we have had active engagement from the highest levels of leadership within our company, both through the development and approval of our efforts and commitments. And importantly, they continue to be actively engaged today by setting very clear expectations for our business leaders. When we sit down to do our business strategy reviews, our efforts towards Net Zero are an integrated part of the discussion.
Something else that was helpful for us was the initial assessment that we did to identify the key materials and technologies that we believe will enable progress towards Net Zero. I am not going to suggest that we have everything figured out, this is a 20-year journey. But, consulting with both our internal and external experts gives us confidence that the strategies we've identified are the right ones to pursue.
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Diego: Very interesting. So the key message is that getting internal and external stakeholders involved, as well as leadership, is very important. They're not easy things to get done, but key characteristics of an investment-ready roadmap. As we mentioned, ‘getting it done’ is the theme at Climate Week so, what would be the main messages you will share with our audience on how they can go back and speed up the strategy to implementation process?
Jack: There are three things that jumped to my mind, collaboration, collaboration and collaboration, right? Nobody's going to solve this challenge on their own. In fact, many of us are working on the same core set of common challenges. So, collaboration with relevant stakeholders is going to be a critical way that we will enable progress going forward. Two pragmatic examples of this are, we are members of the Clean Energy Buyer's Alliance and the Renewable Thermal Collaborative. These are groups of companies and other stakeholders that have come together to understand how we can accelerate the adoption of renewable energy.
The other critical aspect of collaboration for us is with our suppliers. They are going to be critical partners if we're going to advance progress against our goals. The most recent example we have to share is a collaboration between Procter and Gamble and ENGIE Impact. We will be an offtake partner for a new solar renewable energy project that ENGIE Impact will be launching in Texas. This will be our largest solar PPA that we've ever entered into as a company. But importantly, part of our strategy is asking how do we bring new additional capacity online. By working with partners like ENGIE Impact, this project will not only bring new capacity online, which is one of our key objectives but is also going to provide benefits back to the local community. That is just one pragmatic example of how supply chain partnerships will help enable progress moving forward.
Diego: Congratulations on everything you're doing at P&G and thank you for your partnership.
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