Innovia Films

Innovia Films have established sound environmental credentials for their products and processes by using  Life Cycle Assessment and Scenario Modelling-tools in the GaBi Software. Andrew Sweetman, Business Development and Sustainability Manager at Innovia Films describes the benefits thus “When we are looking towards possible process changes, our department is now being consulted to see if there might be any impacts, positive or negative, associated with these changes. So it´s helping to lead our investment programme and make sure that, if we do plan to change anything, we understand the impacts and make an informed choice between different options, before we commit the capital investment.”

Ground-breaking product eco-labelling trial

The French government has launched an eco-labelling program to guide consumers on the environmental impacts of their everyday purchases. With the passing of the Grenelle 2 law in 2010, France set the framework for this project.

A 12-month trial will start in July 2011 with 168 companies volunteering 1000 products. Companies will calculate simplified Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) of their products that will serve as the basis for the eco-label. The diversity of products and companies will help identify possible challenges in data collection and other aspects of undertaking credible LCAs.

Several working groups in various sectors have been collaborating to define the methodologies of the eco-labelling framework including outlining the goal and scope of the simplified LCA for the different product categories. PE INTERNATIONAL is an active member in the setting up of this eco-labelling program and is supporting companies during the trial phase. GaBi software and databases enable premium quality results and extremely high flexibility in addressing this simplified LCA.

At the end of this trial, the government will submit an evaluation report to the French Parliament to inform future discussions on an extension of the regulation. The aim of the trial is therefore to provide sound information to strengthen the nationwide roll-out of the eco-labelling law.

For more information please contact Laura Guillon

About Grenelle 1 and 2
Following the passing of the law entitled Grenelle 1 (Law 2009_967 of August 3rd 2009), the French environmental institute (ADEME) and the institute in charge of releasing the standards in France (AFNOR) have led the project on environmental labelling of consumer goods. With the passing of Grenelle 2 in 2010, France will now set the framework for this environmental labelling project.

PE INTERNATIONAL and Five Winds are joining forces

PE INTERNATIONAL and Five Winds International have merged and are now forming one company in North America, PE INTERNATIONAL, Inc.

PE and Five Winds started their long-term partnership more than a decade ago and have been working together as a Joint Venture, PE Americas, since 2006. This natural progression of the partnership enables us to provide our clients value-added services and solutions across the globe and brings together the expertise and competencies of both organizations.

Five Winds will become a branded services offering within PE INTERNATIONAL worldwide allowing us to extend strategic consulting methodologies, practices and experience to an even broader global audience. This next phase of our development is focusing on helping our clients with their sustainability needs with our expanding range of software products and services offerings.

This new era is ushered in via reports about the amazing future both of our industry and our company, as well as testimonials from our customers representing the value of our integrated work.

More information: Press Release/Download

Deka-Bank: A business case for environmental and sustainability management

Many large organizations are facing demands to adopt environmentally responsible and sustainable business practices. Various stakeholder groups including investors and customers are calling for a stronger focus on sustainability. But can a business take ecological and social good into account and be economically successful at the same time?

Read how DekaBank saved half a million Euros in two years by implementing an Environmental Management System and centralizing sustainability management using the SoFi Software solution. To the Case study or contact Markus Michalzik

Free webinar: Business Success through Sustainability

It may seem like hard work integrating sustainability into your company’s strategic plan.  It’s not enough to reduce carbon and gain certifications. Your plan has to add value to the business and goals need to be realistic and achievable. This one-hour webinar will be held by David Metcalfe, Director at sustainability analyst firm Verdantix, and John Heckman, Managing Director of PE INTERNATIONAL, Inc.

Webinar How to build the business case for your sustainability strategy
Join our exclusive webinar for business executives and senior sustainability professionals to learn how to build better business cases for your sustainability initiatives.

All attendees will receive an exclusive copy of our free white paper ‘Ten insider tips for building the business case for sustainability’.

Best Practices and Performance Management now in SoFi

The new SoFi Software 4.3 has been released, the most-widely used enterprise solution for sustainability management,  featuring 100,000 best practices in energy and resource efficiency from over 12,000 companies.

The Best Practice Library provides insights into investment costs versus benefits and enables clients to easily find improvement projects that have been successfully implemented by their peers in the same industry or geographical region.

The new release also features an advanced module for sustainability performance management - Strategic Planning & Forecasting - that is designed to help sustainability professionals identify the most suitable projects for their own operations based on the highest return on investment. The module enables decision-makers to develop the optimal action plan that meets their corporate sustainability targets by employing  advanced analytics such as cost abatement curves, benchmarks and projected performance against targets.
For more information please contact Neil D´Souza.

Real estate investors are fishing for green building portfolios

A big shift in the real estate market is looming on the horizon: the investment in Green Buildings has dramatically increased in recent years. Green Buildings offer tenants energy-efficient, eco-friendly and healthy office or living spaces with lower operating cost. That’s why more and more investors opt for real estate that meets this growing demand so that they can reap the benefits of higher rents and lower risk premiums.

Along with market demand, the importance of voluntary Green Building certification systems has grown rapidly. Additionally, governments around the world are demanding the integration of energy efficiency and sustainability into new building regulations. In order to meet market demand and compliance with legislation, asset managers require sound insights into the sustainability performance of complete building portfolios.

Together with our Partner Drees & Sommer, PE INTERNATIONAL has developed Portfolio Carbon Management (PCM), the solution for sustainable asset management. PCM measures real estate performance holistically, uncovers opportunities and risks, enhances the building attractiveness and elevates the long-term value of the portfolio. PCM is the only solution that has been designed specifically for asset managers to achieve portfolio sustainability targets.

Download: Portfolio Carbon Management.pdf (780kb)

For more information please contact Matthias Münzing

PE INTERNATIONAL at the Siemens PLM Connection Americas User Conference

The Siemens PLM Connection is the 4th in a series of conferences on Product Life Cycle Management tools and it will be held this year in Las Vegas, Nevada on May 2-5, 2011. This important user conference serves as a forum for business, software developers and users to come together to address the growing use and application of PLM software and add-on tools.


PE INTERNATIONAL, will be a leading participant in the conference. We have a lot planned and want to invite you to attend all the activities including:

Presentations & Sessions

Partner Roundtable Session – Product sustainability – Tools and techniques for embedding sustainability into the product creation process

Day/Time: Wed. 2:30-3:10

Room: Palma G

Learn about some of the latest in sustainability tools and solutions. Presentations and demos will be conducted by PE INTERNATIONAL’s experts and will focus on product sustainability and the tools and techniques for embedding sustainability into the product creation process. Check out the conference website for the full list of presentations and posters topics and sessions.

Exhibit Booth

Stop by booth #26 on Monday or Tuesday, to learn about new features and functionality within our life cycle assessment software platform GaBi 4 or to pick up a free demo version!

Learn about some of the latest in sustainability tools and solutions offered by PE INTERNATIONAL.

Talk to our GaBi and SoFi software experts to understand how these platforms can help you understand your business practices, improve their sustainability performance, and to ultimately succeed in the marketplace. 

We will have short scheduled demos throughout the day on GaBi 4, i-report and GaBi DfX.

Join us for a demo or setup a time to discuss a specific GaBi or LCA topic with us!

Any questions about presentations please contact the GaBi Software Sales and Support team at; +1 (617) 247-4477 x2 or email p.canepa@pe-international.com.

Siemens PLM Connection Americas 2011

Date
May 2 - 5, 2011

Location
Las Vegas, USA

Organizer
Siemens PLM

More information
www.plmworld.org

New Arabian online platform for suppliers of green building products released

The first portal of its kind to originate in the Arab world, The Future Build assists architects, engineers and contractors in identifying and sourcing building products and materials that have been independently assessed to ensure they deliver the environmental benefits claimed. It also provides the latest green building news, as well as sustainable procurement and supply chain consulting and training services.

The Future Build is an initiative of Masdar City and offers an unrivalled platform for suppliers of green building products to bring their products and materials to the attention of all elements of the construction industry, particularly in the United Arab Emirates and wider Arab world, concerned with sustainable construction.

As LCA consultants to MASDAR City, PE INTERNATIONAL supports suppliers with its knowhow in Life Cycle Assessments  and tailored solutions like Portfolio Carbon Manangement (PCM).

More information: www.thefuturebuild.com

LCA for Fuel Cells & H2 Technologies - Invitation to Public Consultation

The project FC-HyGuide aims to develop a Guidance Document for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies on hydrogen production and fuel cell technologies. FC and H2 are technologies with a broad range of functions, applications and input processes. PE INTERNATIONAL has the function of the project coordinator and supports the project with its broad experience in the field of life cycle assessment.

Based on the ILCD Handbook procedure and together with specific examples the Guidance Document will offer step by step guidance for LCA practitioners in industry as well as for researchers.

After several months of project work, the project team led by PE INTERNATIONAL and ENEA wants to now invite Stakeholders and interested people to critically comment on the advanced Guidance Document for hydrogen production and fuel cell technologies.

The main goal of this step is to make sure to meet practical requirements of real life cases in a comprehensive way, in the final Guidance Document. Here, individuals and organisations involved in these fields have the possibility to give their inputs and articulate possible concerns.

This public consultation will be carried out from April 1 2011 until April 30 2011. Two documents (one for hydrogen production and one for fuel cell technologies), the templates for comments and further information can be found on: www.fc-hyguide.eu/pc

For more information please contact Oliver Schuller

The project is financed by the Fuel Cells and Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (FCH JU), a public private partnership supporting research, technological development and demonstration activities in fuel cell and hydrogen energy technologies in Europe.

Forbo Flooring: GaBi i-report pushes product development and process improvements

“PE’s Life Cycle Assessment software is the base for our green development and evaluating our environmental impacts with our focus on reducing the CO2 emissions and the related irreversible climate change caused by global warming.”

Forbo Flooring, one of the world’s leading flooring system manufacturers, has long been committed to improving environmental performance and has commissioned many peer reviewed LCA and benchmark studies. Forbo recently decided to form an internal LCA team to take on the role of building knowledge in house and allowing more individuals, within the organisation, to get involved with the LCA process.

Fred Seifert states: “GaBi software will enable us to further drive down the environmental impacts associated with the entire life cycle of our products and processes by providing us with the information that we need to identify areas for improvement. The GaBi i-report in particular will allow us to push product development and innovation based on environmental performance information.”

PE opens office in Switzerland

Sustainability management, both on a product and on a corporate level, is steadily becoming an essential element of today’s business strategy. To service the growing number of clients in Switzerland, PE is pleased to announce that we have opened the doors of a new office in Zurich.

Annette Koehler, newly appointed Managing Director of the Swiss subsidiary has 10 years of experience in the field of life cycle assessment and sustainability management. Annette has collaborated with numerous companies from various industrial sectors, international organizations (e.g. WBCSD, UNEP) and authorities and research institutes in the international arena.

Prior to joining PE INTERNATIONAL, Annette worked as lecturer and senior scientist at ETH Zurich and as sales and marketing manager of the ecoinvent Center. Annette´s primary mission will be to help develop the sustainability of businesses in Switzerland and to establish PE’s solution cluster for water footprinting, both on the strategic corporate and product level, using her international leadership position in this field.

First “Gold” for EGGERs Romanian office building

Egger has received a DGNB Gold certificate for its office in Radauti. It is one of the first projects to be conducted under the Austrian DGNB scheme. The building received a score of 84 % and is the first gold-certified building in Romania.

The Austrian office of PE INTERNATIONAL undertook the audit. Prior to this, PE had collaborated with EGGER to produce Environmental Product Declarations for numerous of EGGER’s building products which, in turn, provided essential support for the certification process

Helping Tesco drive 30% cut in supply chain emissions by 2020

© Tesco

PE INTERNATIONAL is supporting UK retail giant Tesco in a major project to drive sustainability in its supply chain and help it play a leading role in the transition to a low carbon economy.

PE INTERNATIONAL is working with Tesco’s climate change team to reduce the carbon footprint of the retail giant’s supply chain by 30 percent by 2020. Tesco has set itself this ambitious target having found that the carbon emissions in its supply chain were approximately ten times bigger than the direct emissions of Tesco itself.

As the third-largest retailer in the world, Tesco aims to lead a revolution in green consumption through working with its suppliers and helping its customers to play their part too. So along with the 30 percent reduction in supply chain emissions Tesco wants to halve its direct emissions from existing and new buildings by 2020 and also help its customers halve their carbon footprint in the same period.

The project to reduce carbon emissions in the supply chain sees PE working closely with Tesco to assess supplier information, provide support and drive the sustainability project within selected commercial teams of Tesco, as well as through direct supplier engagement.

The pilot phase of the project, which commenced in September 2010, involves three product groups: milk, canned foods and wine. PE is building awareness and understanding of sustainability among the buyers and technical managers responsible for each of these groups to establish Carbon Footprinting as a major issue in business activities with suppliers in future.

Working with Tesco category directors and buying teams, PE’s first challenge is identifying and defining the ‘hotspots’ in each of these product categories where most of the carbon emissions occur so that the emission reduction effort can be focused where it is most effective.

Then using its deep knowledge and technical understanding of best practices in specific categories, PE identifies and evaluates both industry level and company level best practices. It examines not only their effectiveness at reducing carbon but also how easy they would be to transfer between different suppliers.

The next challenge is engaging and motivating suppliers to reduce their product emissions. Suppliers have multiple questions and may even challenge Tesco’s targets, so PE is working closely together with Tesco in finding the best approach to effectively motivate suppliers to see the benefits of carbon reduction and take effective measures to implement them into their businesses.

On completion of this pilot phase, which is expected in the next couple of months, the plan is to roll out the project to all of Tesco’s product groups, taking onboard the lessons learned from the pilot

Implementing carbon emissions reduction programmes in a supply chain is both complex and challenging; getting it wrong will put a company’s reputation at risk. PE INTERNATIONAL’s extensive experience helps partner organisations such as Tesco to address each aspect of this complexity in a thorough, technically powerful yet pragmatic way to manage those risks and deliver results. This leads to cost savings, carbon savings, improved reputation and a legacy of a better capability to drive carbon and cost out of supply chains in a collaborative yet rigorous way for the future.

Commenting on PE INTERNATIONAL’s role in the project to reduce supply chain emissions, Louise Willington of Tesco’s climate change team says: “Tesco wants to take a leadership role which means setting ambitious targets, changing the way we do business on every level of the organization. We think there are multiple benefits for our business, the environment, our suppliers and our customers.
As with anything new there are always challenges. This is pioneering work and we required a knowledgeable partner to help us carry out the work in the right time frame. PE INTERNATIONAL was able to grasp the complexity of the project and use its experience when looking at the challenges faced by Tesco. Its expertise is helping towards giving us a holistic picture to guide our road map for the next few years.”

PE INTERNATIONAL becomes CDP gold partner and launches CarbonExplorer

PE INTERNATIONAL has signed a gold partnership agreement with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), the leading independent registry for climate change information. PE INTERNATIONAL has been working with the CDP since September 2009 and the gold partnership will further strengthen the collaboration between the two organizations.  For the growing number of companies participating in the Carbon Disclosure Project PE INTERNATIONAL has launched the SoFi CarbonExplorer solution. SoFi CarbonExplorer enables clients to develop a high-performance carbon management and reporting program quickly and in a cost-effective way. The new solution combines the proven carbon management capabilities of the SoFi Software solution with PE’s leading carbon consulting to help clients overcome challenges such as resource constraints, lack of internal expertise and dispersed incomplete greenhouse gas emissions data. With the easy and secure web access SoFi CarbonExplorer enables an easy start for a solid carbon management program that supports strategic company objectives.

Learn more about SoFi CarbonExplorer

New report ranks PE as Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting Leader

On February 8, 2011, Groom Energy Solutions released its report entitled “The 2011 Enterprise Energy and Carbon Accounting (EECA) Software Market -- A Buyers Guide”. The report evaluates 75 vendors across several dimensions to determine the strength of the technology and of the company. The main focus was on customer deployments and quality of customer references, along with the solution capabilities for carbon management and energy management.


“We selected PE INTERNATIONAL as a 2011 EECA leader for the fourth time in our report because the capabilities of the SoFi Software solution reflect the 20 years of sustainability domain expertise and market insight of the company, “ said Paul Baier, Vice President Consulting at Groom Energy Solutions.  “The large number of new customer deployments in various sectors and regions confirms the ability of PE INTERNATIONAL to provide enterprise sustainability solutions that deliver superior business value for its clients.”

New whitepaper about the environmental performance of chemical products

The environmental benefits of chemical products are often unknown to the public. PE newest Whitepaper describes the pathways for quantifying and improving of the environmental performance and shows how to choose the right option.

Read more about it in PE’s new whitepaper.

Making sustainability measurable – Rhein-Galerie certified with Gold status

© ECE

Located in Ludwigshafen, Germany the 220 million euro Rhein-Galerie Shopping Mall is a building at the cutting edge of sustainable construction and operation.

PE INTERNATIONAL was involved in the planning phase and as advisory support throughout the certification process which led to the Rhein-Galerie receiving its Gold status for sustainability.

A life cycle assessment (LCA) screening study was undertaken for the pre-certification stage followed by a detailed calculation upon completion of the building. The assessments were carried out using GaBi 4 and GaBi Build-it, the new PE building LCA tool.

The German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB) certification scheme defines sustainable buildings across six fields with a catalogue of some 60 criteria, weighted in accordance to their importance. Points are granted against each criterion according to the performance of the building. In order to reach Gold status, buildings must score at least 80 percent. The building LCA results can contribute as much as 13 % of the overall rating.

ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe presents Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs)

ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe is the first manufacturer to document the environmental performance of its products for the building envelope in such a comprehensive way. The Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) cover the company's full range of single-skin elements and sandwich panels for facades, roofs and walls. The company produces the steel construction elements in its Color/Construction business unit.

EPDs make the environmental performance of building products and building materials transparent. More and more architects and building designers are specifying these declarations so that they can achieve optimum sustainability even in the product selection phase. The EPDs for the construction elements comply with ISO standard 14025 and were prepared in association with PE INTERNATIONAL.

The EPDs document and quantify environmental impacts over the full product life cycle, from raw material production to recycling: They include direct environmental factors such as effects on climate, air, water and soil, as well as health and safety aspects in production and processing. The composition of the rigid foams and mineral wools used for the sandwich panels is examined in the same way as the environmental impacts caused by product packaging and transportation.

The "Clever little bags" by Puma are now available in North America and Europe

The "Clever little bag" from Puma replaces their old shoebox. It takes 65% less paper to make and reduces water, energy, and diesel consumption during manufacturing by over 60% a year. It also reduces the carbon emissions by 10,000 tons a year. It is now available in select stores in North America and Europe and with select products in Fall 2010.

The LCA-report "Life Cycle Assessment of different shoe packaging design" conducted by PE Americas can be downloaded on the Puma website.