SSNE RECENT CLIENTS AND PROJECT

Health Care
SSNE and Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) have formed a close collaboration to support hospitals wishing to transform their buildings and operations into “21st century total healing environments.”

Imagine cancer clinics built and operated without known carcinogens, and children’s hospitals without asthma triggers. Imagine natural ventilation, operable windows and great day lighting in facilities serving local, seasonal, organic food. 

With our intensive assistance, a new $200 million facility in the heart of Boston is being designed to demonstrate this kind of leadership. We’ve conducted strategic briefings for Trustees and senior management, convened leading experts to provide input into the design, support the project manager and architects on “green” issues, and much more.

Evidence-based design is driving a revolution in hospital’s complex mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems. SSNE and HCWH are also helping the region’s health care MEP engineering firms research and implement newly emerging best practices.

Large Businesses
SSNE helped facilitate the launch and initial meetings of the newly-formed Connecticut Sustainable Business Network. This Network brings together representatives from a variety of CT business sectors, including Cytec Industries, Fleet Bank, Pitney Bowes, and Robinson & Cole to help each other more effectively promote leading-edge sustainable business practices. While there is growing interest in this in CT, many of the interested parties felt: 1) they needed a more robust understanding of strategic sustainability including learning of what other companies are doing, 2) existing business associations primarily focus on what businesses don't want (e.g., regulations) as opposed to what can be done proactively to address environmental and societal concerns and 3) they wanted cross-sector partners to help build capacity and a strong alliance.

SSNE initiated discussions amongst the diverse interested businesses, helped the group develop and implement its launch strategy, facilitated and maintained minutes for conference calls of the initial steering team, and coordinated its highly successful kick-off event in January '03 at Yale University. We have since provided: content on for several of the network's gatherings (featuring strategic questioning and sustainable business practices); confidential business to business brainstorms to address member company challenges and coaching on building senior management buy-in. See Executive Summary (PDF) and Flyer (PDF) of past event.

State Government
Massachusetts Executive Order 438 mandates (among other things) state agencies develop and implement plans to make their policies, facilities and operations more sustainable. Under very tight deadlines and budget, SSNE helped the Massachusetts State Sustainability Program to design and conduct a training workshop for representatives of about 50 different state agencies and colleges so they could jumpstart development of their agency-specific plans. We then developed much of the Implementation Chapter of the Sustainability Program Implementation Guide, providing a simple five-step road map for assessing environmental impacts, defining actions for improvement in energy efficiency, waste reduction, etc. and implementing actions cost-effectively.

Public/Private Partnerships
The Connecticut Clean Energy Fund (CEF) is a business-focused fund mandated to help develop CT's renewable energy capacity. CEF faced three considerable challenges: 1) Previous attempts in the state to site wind and biomass facilities had led to long, bloody and ultimately unsuccessful battles, usually with environmental organizations leading the opposition. 2) As a newly created endeavor, CEF had no track record with the environmental community, and given its legislative mandate, was viewed with some skepticism. 3) Various aspects of the situation meant key players had issues with one another.

SSNE identified 27 of the region's leading environmental organizations, and brought their respective energy experts together to explore a series of technical papers, briefings and dialogues on barriers and opportunities for siting wind and biomass generation facilities in the state. We also mediated between competing players. This process provided CEF with:

• An understanding of the environmental organization's knowledge of current technology and accompanying issue
• A reputation as an honest broker and provider of high quality content to the environmental community
• A catalog of information needed and actions to be taken to address participants' concerns
• Research priorities
• Strategies for NGO and public education, and
• An outline and cost estimates for a scalable, multi-phase environmental NGO/public education initiative designed to create meaningful long term support for renewable energy generation.

See Executive Summary (PDF).

John V. Anderson,then Chief Technology Officer for the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund said:
"Over the past year the SSNE has demonstrated a quick grasp of the issues, an ability to stay focused on the real problems, and an ability to find consensus among competing interests. These characteristics have made them an invaluable ally in our efforts to develop green power markets here in New England."

University
Harvard University Operations Services (UOS) manages an $800 million budget, providing the campus and much of Harvard's extensive commercial real estate with energy, water, solid waste, transportation, parking, IT, facilities, EHS, engineering and other services. To launch Harvard's Greening the Crimson initiative, UOS needed to provide the senior management team with an understanding of the underlying science of sustainability, and an ability to apply systems thinking to realize financial, social and ecological benefits for their divisions.

SSNE strategy was to conduct a half-day working seminar for the management team, with extensive facilitated discussion on possible next steps. This provided a baseline of understanding, and led the team to make numerous new connections, eliminated the need for them to spend time convincing each other, enhanced their capacity to engage division staff in finding good solutions, and in the client's words, "…made the whole process more natural." For extensive material on the program's many successes so far, see http://www.greencampus.harvard.edu/.

Leith Sharp, Director Green Campus Initiatives, said, "Things have been progressing well since SSNE gave its briefing here - it was definitely a great launching pad for University Operations Services (UOS). UOS is saving money and helping the world as it acts on the advantages they see with this thinking."

Faith Community
Episcopal Province One, encompassing all the New England dioceses, faced a considerable challenge in helping their 650 parishes consider and take action on their Bishops' strongly worded Pastoral Letter on the environment entitled, "To Serve Christ in All Creation". SSNE worked with Connecticut Diocese' Committee on the Environment to provide the process, content and facilitator training that will enable the Province to offer its entire community a four-session Discussion Course built around the Pastoral Letter, starting in the fall of 2003. The final course packet includes facilitator guidelines, discussion questions and covered topics such as Spiritual and Theological Underpinnings; an Overview of the Sustainability Challenge; Impacts of Consumer Choices; Climate Change, and Environmental Justice.
View the entire course at: www.ctdiocese.org/environment.pdf . It premiered at the Episcopal Province One Convocation on November 22, 2003, attended by some 220 regional members and the church's national educational program.