Interview with Perri Richman, Chief Marketing and Sustainability Officer
At Albireo Energy, sustainability is not a buzzword. It’s a way of doing business, focusing on topics with the highest value for our people, customers, and investors. In this blog post, we chatted with Perri Richman, Chief Marketing and Sustainability Officer at Albireo Energy, to uncover how the company has been making choices to advance sustainability and how she recommends others get started on their journeys.
Where is Albireo Energy in its sustainability journey?
Since its inception, Albireo Energy has been focused on making buildings better, creating a safe and engaged working environment, and operating ethically and with the highest integrity. In earnest, our formal sustainability or Environmental, Social, and Governance efforts began two years ago in line with a refresh of our overall business strategy and our goal of serving customers as a platform company. We are about two years into our journey – and it’s one of continuous evaluation and improvement.
How did you determine the initial focus areas for advancing sustainability?
As an aligned leadership team, we looked at the topics that were most material to our industry. We listened to our stakeholders and then we prioritized these topics based upon impact. These were topics like supply chain risk management, human capital management and safety (both critical in a service business), cybersecurity, opportunities in green buildings, walking the talk with environmentally responsible operations, and more. Our leaders recognized that these weren’t “special topics,” rather ESG was a “special lens” to view these topics – to ensure we were considering all stakeholders when addressing them.
What’s an example of “special lens” on business topics?
Let’s take Human Capital management as an example. Skilled engineers, programmers, salespeople and technicians in the right places at the right time are vital to running a successful building controls and energy services company. Yet there’s an industry-wide shortage of critical talent. Attracting, developing, engaging, and retaining people can be a huge risk or a tremendous opportunity when we do it right. Placing a sustainability lens on Human Capital has strengthened our people strategy, KPIs, policies, governance (including Board responsibility), and customer reporting.
How will Albireo Energy’s sustainability journey evolve over the next few years?
In addition to continuously improving performance in key material topic areas (like value created from our own portfolio of verified Sustainability Solutions, our talent and safety metrics, cybersecurity), we continue to monitor and evolve the universe of sustainability topics for our business and our customers. For example, over the past year, Artificial Intelligence risks and opportunities are now part of our universe (with clear internal ownership), and a topic that we help our customers address.
What advice would you give to other companies just starting their journey to advance sustainability?
After you understand compliance and requirements for companies of your size and industry, work with your leadership team to make choices about where you lead, comply, or follow. It’s not possible to be exceptional in all areas of sustainability – it’s important to prioritize and develop a simple roadmap for continuous improvement.
Albireo Energy’s full ESG report can be found here.
Learn how Albireo Energy can help meet your sustainability goals.
