The City Summit -- Leveraging Business Ingenuity to Meet the Climate Challenge

[draft 9-12). The San Francisco Chamber of Commerce hosted and co-sponsored the City Summit -- Leveraging Business Ingenuity to Meet the Climate Challenge, on Monday morning (9-10-07) at the new UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center.  Other co-hosts included the Climate Group and the McKinsey & Company, co-presenters included PG&E and Bank of America, Catholic Health Care West was a Champion Cosponsor. 

Robert Carrigan, San Francisco State University President and Chair of the SF Chamber of Commerce, introduced the Summit by pointing out the relatively untapped potential for linking the business challenge of sustainability to the resources of the University. As a move in that direction, SFSU's College of Business in its new downtown campus recently launched a MBA program emphasis in Sustainable Management. To complement the summit, the San Francisco Business Times included a 20-page pull-out section on San Francisco's recent acceleration of green building in concert with that of the industry.

The summit Agenda was jam packed, including an opening presentation by Lt. Governor John Garamendi, who emphasized that the transition to an ecologically sustainable economy powered by renewable energy is a huge real-wealth production opportunity and direction of economic security and prosperity that business and government need to seize.  Other presentations included Mary Nichols (CARB) on the challenge and progress in implementing AB32; Diana Farrell (McKinsey Global Institute) on understanding the components of forecast global energy demand and illuminating the consumer end-use sector as an invisible arena where large CO2 reductions can be made; Nancy McFadden (PG&E-Public Affairs) on the power of "we" and the need to continue developing and exporting sustainability leadership models that have kept California's energy use flat in the face of demand growth through conservation compared to the 50% growth in national energy use; and Janet Lamkin (BofA) on the need for, and two examples of, innovation in financial tools for underwriting the new conditions faced in the shift to sustainability practices.  A panel discussion of best practices followed with Jim Davis (moderator, Chevron), Joe Pettus (Safeway), Jeffrey Land (Catholic Healthcare West), Darren Boulton (PG&E), and Stefan Muhle (Orchard Garden Hotel).  Mayor Gavin Newsom summarized the City's accomplishments, noting that after picking the "low-hanging fruit" there will be much more to do, including the City's on-going efforts to incubate business innovation for sustainability success and address issues of social justice.

The event was a good "bench-marking" of business and sustainability now:  tremendous acceleration, picking the low-hanging fruit, focus on energy (efficiency, management, renewables), building systems, and on (clean) technology.  There was little discussion of the larger power and potential of sustainability as a new engine of innovation for economic growth, security, and prosperity, or the transformational nature of the challenge, nor how to harness, stimulate, and manage that creative aspect.   

The City Summit was an interesting counterpoint to one of the first business and sustainability conferences I attended almost 10 years ago (9-15-1998) in San Francisco, featuring Paul Hawkins, Ray Anderson (Interface Corporation), and Peter Senge, and co-hosted by SEED systems and Pegasus Communications.  There, the focus was on a wider range of technological innovation, (also) picking the low hanging fruit as the best way to begin, but focusing more on the implications and need for organizational transformation to jump-start, harness, and harvest the creativity and innovation involved in sustainability success.  That conference ten years ago felt like it was held in a tiny dark corner of a room, whereas The City Summit felt like it was held outside in full day light! 

My "take-away" from the Summit is that sustainability is quickly moving into the mainstream through the foresight and innovation of early business adopters and government action because it pays back big rewards in cost savings, economic security, and mission effectiveness, and because it is the right thing to do; but that business needs to move even more quickly to accelerate the required system-wide transformation.  Governments have a partnership role in creating the system conditions through laws, policy, and collaboration that nurture and accelerate the economic transformation underlying sustainability success.

Lenny Mendonca, Chair of the McKinsey Global Institute, provided a parting comment on the "DNA" of large scale social change -- denial, negotiation, action -- noting that we are nearing the tipping point between negotiation and action in general, but that San Francisco and the Bay Area are already in action mode.