Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability is a two-headed dragon. “Shareholders vs. Society”, the never-ending battle between profits and the environment. Businesses operate to generate profits, which allows for job stability, employment growth, research and development, and revenue to feed the economy. Shareholders love profits, it gives them comfort to reinvest, supporting exponential growth targets.
CAPEX dollars are coveted, Sales, Marketing, HR, R&D, Advertising, they all want those dollars.
The challenge is to maintain profitability, all while benefitting the environment. Do you use your profits to reduce operating expenses, targeting a conservative quantifiable approach to increase profits? Or do you invest those funds to target a riskier direction to exponentially grow your business? If you could do both, would you think “it is too good to be true?”The world recognizes the need to reduce energy consumption, a direct correlation to carbon footprint reduction.
Motivations to lower energy consumption are directly related to financial gain. Countries in Europe, Asia, South America, Australia and Africa all have utility rate costs up to five times greater than the United States (excluding Hawaii). Each of these countries are motivated, and have transitioned from traditional HID, fluorescent and incandescent lighting to LED.
With average kilowatt reductions of 62%, sustainability up to ten times longer, and the use of mercury free materials, the US needs to, and has begun the transition.
How do we satisfy the two-headed dragon? The answer was simple, the methodology was difficult. All you need is a program that allows for commercial, industrial, and retail environments to change all their existing lighting to controllable energy efficient LED lighting that enhances the quality of light, reduces energy costs, eliminates maintenance expenses, all while benefitting the environment. The program must also not require any CAPEX expense, be cash-flow positive day one (monthly payments are less than savings), and can be treated as an off-balance sheet (FASB 13 compliant) expense.
