REPORT
Making decisions just got harder.
Responding to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) pressures is adding complexity to investment decision making and planning. The demands on organizations to operate in a more sustainable and socially-conscious manner have been increasing for the past few decades as investors, customers, and employees continue to elevate their expectations. Surface-level commitments to ESG initiatives and vague vision statements will no longer suffice. What was once largely a voluntary effort is now a business imperative.
The bottom line: organizations must strike a balance between meeting existing business commitments—and delivering on increasingly important ESG-driven outcomes.
Copperleaf® has been helping companies do this for more than a decade. Our decision analytics software is designed to optimize value for your business by leveraging your definition of value—even when that definition of value is evolving as the business world progresses and expectations change.
Making Value-based Decisions is Easy with Copperleaf
A transparent, rigorous and repeatable approach to achieve your financial and ESG targets
Copperleaf’s entire business is focused on helping organizations respond to stakeholder pressures—with decision analytics and a proven methodology for defining and utilizing a value framework to optimize value. Extending your current approach to business cases to include ESG criteria is what a Copperleaf Value Framework is all about. It evolves as your business evolves.
We can help you identify what factors contribute to your definition of value. These can be financial, environmental, social, or related to governance, including risk. We identify the most appropriate metrics to quantify these factors and enable you to use them to justify each project or program. Leverage best practice models from the Copperleaf Value Model Library to get started quickly with a value-based decision-making approach.
ESG-driven Decision Making
When it comes to valuing potential investments through an ESG lens, organizations are leveraging Copperleaf’s solutions to lead the way:
- Manitoba Hydro, an electric power and natural gas utility in Canada, includes the benefits of carbon reduction in its value framework, enabling trade-offs between risk, cost savings, and the environment
- National Grid Gas Transmission in the UK sets carbon output limits to ensure carbon reduction targets are considered during the planning of an investment portfolio to drive sustainability performance
- Essential Energy, an Australian electricity network operator, mitigates the impacts of bush fires using CSIRO geographical shape files to determine the appropriate spend levels to achieve sustainable risk management
- Elia Group, Belgium’s transmission system operator, is developing project portfolios for the next 10 years to address the necessary grid extensions required by the German Energy Transition as well as the replacement of existing assets
- TransAlta, a leading Independent Power Producer in Canada, has integrated sustainability into governance, decision making, risk management and day-to-day business processes
- The BC Government established a rigorous process to ensure spending decisions are aligned with the initiatives that are most important to citizens and local businesses
Decision Analytics for Net Zero & ESG
How should utilities integrate the increasing importance of ESG and net zero into their asset management and investment planning in a time of massive infrastructure growth and renewal?
Download this report from Utility Week to find out:
- How a Value Framework can help you optimize investment portfolios
- How decision analytics technology can support delivery of ESG and net-zero goals
- The cost and operational efficiency gains associated with Asset Investment Planning and Management (AIPM)
Prioritizing and planning investments has become increasingly complex. Many factors must be considered to end up with a feasible investment portfolio that is aligned with our strategic goals and objectives, and that uses our available resources in the most optimal way.”
Sometimes the legislature will make laws that apply to us about the types of investments we need to do. Sometimes the commissions will enact rules. We take that into account and make sure we value investments appropriately for what’s important in those states.”
With Copperleaf’s solution, we have established a more rigorous process to ensure we’re aligning our spending decisions with the initiatives that are most critical to citizens and businesses in BC.”
The thing that stands out as innovative in the Copperleaf optimization approach is how our values are taken into account so that the best decisions can be made, not only on a cost basis, but also for the environment and for customers.”
BC Government Aligns Investment with Environmental & Social Goals
Each year, the BC Government invests approximately $100 million in capital on IT to bring the highest quality services to residents in British Columbia. Investment requests are evaluated in the Copperleaf Value Framework, using 46 different measures related to environmental protection and sustainability, a strong economy, healthy citizens, family affordability, safe communities, and other key strategic objectives.
Best-in-class Asset Management Governance at Manitoba Hydro
Copperleaf helped Manitoba Hydro define a set of value measures to support each of its five key corporate objectives related to safety, financial, system reliability, environmental impacts, and corporate citizenship. These measures are represented in the value framework and form the basis upon which investment decisions are made across the company.
Manitoba Hydro established a corporate governance body to oversee the evolution of the value framework and ensure alignment of the asset management strategy and decision making across the enterprise on an ongoing basis.
