Month: May 2023

Duke Energy’s dragon boat race team practiced for this moment.

Seasoned racers showed the newcomers how to execute an A-frame technique, how to cut their paddle through the water at the exact second a teammate pounds a drum to keep time, how to win, together – and that’s exactly what they did.

They pulled their long, thin wooden boat into the shallow waters of Lake Norman, and once the starting horn blew, the paddlers gave it their all, ultimately gliding across the finish line at the Charlotte Dragon Boat Race and Asian Festival in first place for their division.

Each person’s reason for joining the team is unique: Some are in it for the fun, others for the thrill of competition. For teammates Schuyler McKay, Manoj Karki and Thomas Doan, the race has a deeper meaning: The ancient tradition connects them to their heritage. It’s a direct line to their ancestors, cultures and a shared Asian American identity they’ve each found in their own way.

“It signifies diversity, but also unity,” Doan said. “We are a diverse group of people from different backgrounds, who work across different departments in different roles. But in the boat, we’re all the same. We’re one group, working toward one goal, while still holding true to all of the things that uniquely make us who we are.”

Doan is an engineer in the Charlotte Distribution Control Center and has been a part of Duke Energy for four years. He’s also one of the founders of the Charlotte Asian Inclusion Network (AIN) employee resource group.

“I remember first learning about AIN after reading about the Cincinnati chapter,” Doan said. “I wanted to be a part of something like that.”

AIN is one of 10 Employee Resource Groups at Duke Energy. The groups are networks of employees formed around a common dimension of diversity. ERGs help employees value the differences and similarities among teammates, customers and the communities the company serves, while providing professional development opportunities, like mentoring.

“ERGs play a crucial role in our company culture,” Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Sharene Pierce said. “They provide a supportive environment for members to share ideas, perspectives and experiences, which often leads to fresh insights and creative problem-solving.”

Today, the chapter is more than 100 members strong, and its success is something Doan said he is proud of. It offers members a space to safely express their interests and identity among people who likely share similar life experiences – something Doan says he hasn’t always felt comfortable doing.

“I struggled with my Vietnamese American identity from a young age,” Doan said. “I didn’t have many Asian friends growing up. I really didn’t tap into my heritage until my college years in Charlotte. I was around my siblings there, and they taught me a lot about our culture. It means so much to me now.”

Opportunities to participate in community events like the dragon boat race are meaningful. In 2022 they took home the bronze medal.

“It takes a lot of practice to learn how to row as a team,” Doan said. “We have 21 people in the boat, 10 rows of two people, with a person up front who is the drummer. They beat on an actual drum to maintain a consistent cadence. We paddle with the beat of the drum and, hopefully, move in unison.”

“That’s the hardest part,” Karki said. He’s a business development manager who has been with the company for 10 years.

“One team member can’t do all of the work.”

Karki moved to the United States in 2005 from Nepal, an area he feels isn’t always top of mind when people think about Asia. Drawing attention to his heritage, and the Indian subcontinent, is important to him, and he said AIN Charlotte offers him a great space to do it.

“It’s so important to have AIN, because we have such a diverse team of people working here at Duke Energy, as well as diverse customers across all of our regions,” Karki said. “We need to understand the needs of every community we serve.”

He said Duke Energy’s consistent participation as a sponsor in the Asian American festival proves the company understands that – and takes it seriously.

“We get a chance to show visitors that Duke Energy is a very diverse company and that we welcome talent from every community.”

McKay says he is, too. The IT infrastructure analyst started his career with Piedmont Natural Gas and has now been with Duke Energy for more than 12 years.

He’s also a dragon boat race veteran, participating in at least 10 competitions.

McKay was born in Seoul, South Korea, and adopted when he was 3 years old by a family from Hendersonville, N.C. While he had a wonderful childhood, he said it was difficult to connect with his roots.

“I was the only boy with Asian heritage in my high school, and I was very conscious about it.”

That all changed for McKay during his time at Appalachian State University. A friend pushed him to join the Asian Student Association.

“It was transformative for me,” McKay said. “And, you want to know something funny? That’s where I met my wife.”

Now, McKay said he hopes employees, whether they identify as Asian American or not, know they will always have a place in AIN – and in the dragon boat.

“It’s the ultimate team sport,” McKay said. “Not one person, I don’t care how strong you are, can bring the boat to victory. It takes all 21 of us to be in sync to win. We have to be a team to be successful. We have to support each other.”

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Forests produce the oxygen we breathe, create rain, and shield us from climate change and disease. They are the homes and sources of livelihood for an estimated 1.3 billion people, and the areas with the most biodiversity on land. Intact, primary forests all over the planet — which have 40x higher carbon sequestration potential per hectare than new plantation forests — have already been reduced to less than one-fifth of their original extent through industrial logging and other kinds of deforestation.

Nicole Rycroft, Founder and Executive Director of Canopy Planet, has spent the last 25 years protecting the world’s forests, advancing international human rights, and sparking the shift to a global green economy. She is an Ashoka Fellow, member of the UBS Global Visionaries program, recipient of the Meritorious Service Cross of Canada, winner of the 2020 Climate Breakthrough Award and a 2022 Global Australian of the Year. Nicole spearheads Canopy’s strategic direction and many of Canopy’s senior level partnerships.

Canopy’s partnership with the Cisco Foundation is built on a shared belief that supporting innovation at scale to address significant social problems has the potential to achieve a global impact. We see great synergies between our organizations as Canopy works to catalyze a transformation in the extractive pulp, paper, packaging, and viscose supply chains by spurring the commercial-production of low-impact Next Generation Solutions (Next Gen) to mitigate the climate crisis.

Let’s start with the basics. What is Canopy Planet, and what do you do? 

Nicole: Canopy is an award-winning, solutions-driven NGO dedicated to protecting the world’s forests, species, and climate and advancing Indigenous and frontline communities’ rights. We do this by harnessing the purchasing influence of the global marketplace to transform supply chains that are driving deforestation and forest degradation. Since our inception in 1999, Canopy’s unique model of change has been based on building transformational partnerships with hundreds of the world’s largest brands. We leverage our 900+ brand partners’ purchasing clout to create the economic incentives to transform unsustainable supply chains, catalyze commercial-production of low-carbon Next Generation Solutions, and secure landscape-level forest conservation and community rights. We are dedicated to helping conserve 30 -50% of the world’s forests by 2030.

Can you share more about the impact of logging on ecosystems? 

Nicole: In 2021 alone, we lost more than 25 million hectares of forests globally, releasing ten billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Logging for pulp, paper, packaging, textiles, and solid wood products is a carbon intensive supply chain that perpetuates a ‘take, make, waste’ model that drives the degradation and loss of climate-critical forests.

With forests foundational to life on Earth, we need to accelerate the transition from forest-based goods like packaging and viscose to production that relies on circular and low-impact feedstocks that keep forests standing — places like the Leuser Ecosystem in Indonesia, one of Canopy’s Landscapes of Hope. The Leuser Ecosystem is one of the world’s richest intact tropical rainforest ecosystems. It is the last place on earth where the Sumatran elephant, rhino, tiger and orangutan are found within one area, and it provides habitat for thousands of mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, and plant species. In addition, the Leuser Ecosystem is the life-support system for seven million people that rely on it for clean air, water, flood protection, irrigation, medicines, and their livelihoods. Continued unsustainable demand for forest products puts places like the Leuser Ecosystem at peril.

Cutting down forests is not just about paper. Can you share more about all the kinds of products, packaging and textiles logging supports? 

Nicole: The connection between fashion and forests isn’t immediately apparent, but the third largest group of fashion textiles — rayon and viscose — is derived from trees. So is the packaging in which fashion and many other goods are shipped around the world. Over 3.4 billion trees are logged annually to make textiles and packaging and when you add in paper, that number is a staggering 5.1 billion. Much of this logging occurs in the world’s most ecologically and culturally valuable forests, which Canopy calls Ancient and Endangered Forests. These landscapes are pivotal to life on earth. The pressure on forests is only intensifying: packaging has increased by 65% over the past two decades, while the use of trees to make fabrics has more than tripled. Both are projected to grow significantly in the coming years.

What are some of Canopy Planet’s major accomplishments so far?

Nicole: Some of our accomplishments include:

Helping over 900 brands develop and implement robust environmental purchasing policies for their paper, packaging and viscose textiles.Showing that Being Stylish Doesn’t Have to Cost the Earth. We launched CanopyStyle in 2013 to transform the viscose supply chain and keep Ancient and Endangered Forests off the runways and out of our wardrobes. Today, 536 brands representing USD 905 billion in annual revenues have developed CanopyStyle polices to end sourcing from Ancient and Endangered Forests and to prioritize the use of Next Gen alternatives. More than half of global viscose production is now verified at low-risk of containing high-carbon, biodiverse forests and the first Next Gen textiles are now available and on the market.Launching Pack4Good in 2019 to ensure we don’t continue to mow down 400-year-old trees to make shipping boxes and take out containers. In just three years, the Pack4Good campaign has secured 390 brands worth a collective USD 199 billion in annual revenues. Pack4Good has also been moving the needle on the production side: leverage from global brands has resulted in packaging producers signing policies to end sourcing from critical forest ecosystems and to invest in Next Gen. Momentum is growing every day, so watch this space.Developing Next Gen Solutions over a decade ago. Canopy has been the only NGO promoting diversifying the fiber basket as a key strategy for forest protection. To date, we have directly catalyzed 300,000 tonnes of new annual Next Gen production into the market and we are linked to an additional 1.7 million tonnes of new production in development. Just last month, Canopy’s ambitious plan to catalyze 60 million tonnes of Next Gen in the next ten years was recognized by The Audacious Project, a TED initiative. Alongside of our work with the Cisco Foundation, the support from Audacious will supercharge our work to catalyze the global scale-up of Next Gen production — and in doing so take the pressure off forests so we can conserve more than 220 million acres of forests globally.Securing conservation in 41+ million acres of forests to date through our work with brands and local NGO partners.

Can you tell us more about Next Gen pulp technologies? You previously mentioned partnering with the first pulp recycling plant. 

Nicole: What many people don’t know is that there is a strong pipeline of forest-free, clean-production pulp alternatives ready for market — such as paper pulp made from straw, and textile pulp made from discarded cotton textiles. While we call these Next Generation Solutions, they are actually a new spin on rediscovered inputs used for paper and textiles for millennia — flax, hemp, recycled fabrics. Despite their ubiquity now, forests are actually relatively new fiber sources, having only entered industrial pulp production within the last 150 years.

Next Gen pulps have 95 to 130% fewer greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. They have 88% to 100% less land-use impact, and at least 5x lower impact on biodiversity and threatened species. Further, by using clean production processes and creating a profitable use for inputs that would otherwise be discarded in landfills, burned, or disposed of at a cost to farmers, these pulps contribute to healthier, more profitable communities and avoid secondary pollution issues. And best of all for brands and buyers: Next Gen pulp products perform just as well as their conventional peers — and are projected to be comparable in price or cheaper once produced at scale.

Canopy is supporting independent innovators to scale their technologies, informing commercial-scale approaches for previously niche products, and encouraging adoption by mainstream producers for retrofitting existing conventional mills. Last year, we were on site in Sundsvall, Sweden to celebrate the official opening of Renewcell, the world’s first commercial-scale, textile-to-textile Next Gen pulp mill for viscose production. Instead of requiring huge swaths of forests to be cut every year, Renewcell uses hundreds of millions of old jeans and t-shirts as its input. Renewcell carries five tonnes less carbon per tonne of product than conventional wood-based pulp. It uses 90% less water, is built in the bones of an old shuttered wood mill, and has re-employed 100 of the staff.

In addition to Renewcell, we are currently working with a pipeline of more than 30 other Next Gen innovators who are turning ideas that sounded like science fiction five years ago into elegant, versatile solutions for today. Canopy has also played a vital role in generating strong market pull-through, with hundreds of brand policies and over half a million tonnes in explicit purchase demand from leading brands.

I also understand you use some cutting-edge software for your work, including the Eco-Paper Database (EPD) and ForestMapper. What kind of information do they provide? And how can people access them?

Nicole: The EcoPaper Database is the world’s largest database of high recycled content and Next Gen packaging and paper. Today, it includes more than 1100 listings of Ancient Forest Friendly™ and other packaging and paper products that use high amounts of lower footprint feedstock including recycled and Next Gen materials.

ForestMapper is an interactive map developed by scientific and mapping experts to help buyers and suppliers locate Ancient and Endangered Forests and identify areas of potential sourcing risk to assist in the transition to more sustainable supply chains. It is the only tool of its kind to visually represent Ancient and Endangered Forests at a global scale and includes information on forests, species, carbon and landscapes. We’re working with leading scientists on an update of ForestMapper for later in 2023.

Both ForestMapper and the EcoPaper Database are free of charge and designed to be user-friendly. They can both be found on Canopy’s website under the Tools and Resources section.

You were at COP27. What kind of engagement did you receive there? 

Nicole: COP27 marked an important milestone for Canopy as partners announced a collective commitment to purchase over half a million tonnes of low-carbon, low-footprint Next Gen packaging and textile alternatives once they’re commercially online. This bold public statement was designed to send a signal to the investment community and help unlock the capital needed to build commercial-scale Next Gen pulp mills as well as conventional producers. Over the next two to three years, we anticipate we will secure the financing necessary to build 12 – 15 Next Gen mills, preventing an estimated 22 million tonnes of GHG emissions annually and providing communities with an alternative to burning straw and landfilling textiles.

The market pull-through announced at COP27 is essential to de-risking these new supply chains and attracting the scale of investment necessary to rapidly scale these game-changing Next Gen alternatives. Canopy will be doing more of this over the coming years but this bold initial commitment by our partners at COP was a positive step forward for the planet and low-carbon supply chains.

How do you assist or partner with local communities, including Indigenous peoples in the areas Canopy Planet works in?

Nicole: Canopy has strong relationships with Indigenous leaders and local NGOs across North America and around the world. We support the efforts of our on-the-ground partners and Indigenous leaders by bringing the influence of the international market at strategic junctures to advance robust conservation of key landscapes and support the development of conservation-based economies for local communities. It is our local and international partners that largely lead policy negotiations with local governments and community economic development. Canopy brings critical leverage that creates the economic and political incentives for industry and governments to change ‘business as usual’. This can range from brands participating in customer roundtables with political and forest industry decision makers to encourage a more sustainable path forward for both the forests and communities. We work with some of our brand partners to directly fund on the ground conservation efforts through investments in robust carbon offset programs or philanthropic programs focused on advancing biodiversity. Many of our brand partners have stopped sourcing from suppliers that have operations in high-carbon, biodiverse landscapes and link future purchasing to large-scale conservation and advancements in human-wellbeing for Indigenous and local communities.

We have also been proud to support conservation efforts by Indigenous leaders and local NGOs in Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, the Cree Nation’s territory in the Boreal Forest, and Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem. To date, Canopy’s market leverage has contributed to the protection of 41 million+ acres of Ancient and Endangered Forests around the world.

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Nasdaq

ESG and sustainability initiatives have been part of strategic business conversations for over a decade, but the last few years have seen a rapid increase in importance and attention. As sustainability weaves its way into the work across many different functions, most organizations still have relatively small dedicated teams. In response to growing external pressures, organizations will need to take deliberate steps towards establishing more mature ESG strategies and processes. 

So, how are decision-makers approaching ESG? Join us for a webinar to gain insights on current ESG and climate trends, and for guidance on ways to overcome key challenges in the market. We’ll plan to discuss:

Top 3 key trends for corporatesAttracting investment in a challenging macro-economic environmentNavigating climate innovation & climate risk management for corporatesAnd more

Moderator: 
Sarah Crowe, ESG Sustainability Channel Lead, Nasdaq 

Speakers: 
Ally Rodrigues, Lead ESG Advisor, Nasdaq 
Charles Neidenbach, Lead ESG Advisor, Nasdaq 
Kim Knickle, Research Director, ESG & Sustainability, Verdantix 
Michael Bennett, VP, Investor Relations, Schnitzer Steel Industries, Inc 

This session will be recorded. The recording will be distributed after the event ends.

Please fill out the form to RSVP