Katherine Canoy is a seasoned skilled with greater than 17 years of expertise within the vitality, sustainability, and local weather industries. With experience in renewable vitality procurement, vitality effectivity, provide chain local weather initiatives, and greenhouse fuel measurement and reporting, Katherine brings a client-focused perspective to her work. She has led tasks at Walmart, lowering provide chain emissions by 20 million metric tons and advancing their renewable vitality objectives.
Katherine resides in Durham, North Carolina along with her husband and two youngsters. She holds an MBA from the College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a MEM in vitality and coverage from Duke College, and a BS from the College of Mary Washington.
Take us by a typical workday. What are a couple of of your ongoing duties?
I lead the local weather technique consulting follow at 3Degrees, and my days are splendidly diversified. I colour code several types of duties on my Google calendar, and each day seems like a rainbow!
I handle a workforce of 20 vivid and gifted local weather consultants, so I normally have a workforce assembly or a one-on-one with one in every of my workers in addition to some individuals administration duties.
Our workforce works on 10-12 consumer engagements at any given time, so I get to leap in and discuss to the workforce about tasks starting from Scope 3 inventories to local weather goal setting to provide chain decarbonization to the position of carbon credit in an organization’s local weather technique. On most days, I get to speak to my shoppers concerning the challenges they’re dealing with and the way 3Degrees can assist.
I do a good quantity of enterprise growth, so I’m continuously speaking to potential shoppers concerning the kinds of consulting assist they might want as a way to set and meet their international local weather targets.
We’re at all times eager about new and higher methods to assist our shoppers on their local weather journey, past the Scope 1-3 options that we already present. Whether or not it’s creating a brand new TCFD instructional workshop or creating a completely new service class, I get pleasure from eager about modern methods to assist corporations as they decarbonize.
What are among the greatest challenges your organization/group might be tackling in 2023 and past?
3Degrees’ mission is to assist organizations take pressing motion on local weather change. And because the local weather emergency intensifies and increasingly corporations are setting aggressive decarbonization objectives and local weather targets (web zero, SBTi, and many others), their want for assist has grown at a fast tempo. So a part of our problem is simply scaling quick sufficient to have the ability to present this assist effectively and successfully. We’re always attempting to rent quick sufficient globally to maintain tempo with our clients’ wants.
The fascinating factor about our trade is that it’s always evolving, from new applied sciences to new country-specific rules and insurance policies, to a lot extra in between. So it’s on us to repeatedly replace and innovate on our providers and deepen our experience, in addition to keep on high of the worldwide coverage panorama, as a way to guarantee we’re offering one of the best assist potential to our shoppers. Some current circumstances in level: we introduced the launch of our new local weather tech advisory providers throughout COP27 in November since expertise is taking part in an more and more vital position in organizations’ decarbonization efforts, and in addition just lately revealed a weblog on SBTi’s new FLAG steerage to assist our shoppers decipher what it would imply for them.
How can an organization develop its ESG Technique to optimize organizational resilience?
I discover that almost all massive corporations (and lots of medium-sized corporations) function in silos. Sustainability work requires cross-departmental collaboration that always results in enterprise efficiencies and information sharing. We at all times stress how vital that is at first of any of our consulting engagements with shoppers. Making certain upfront alignment throughout all stakeholders at first of the work, after which continuous sturdy communication and updates all through the undertaking, might be instrumental to a profitable sustainability initiative.
What was a profitable undertaking or implementation you labored on at your organization you can share? Do you may have any suggestions that may assist colleagues at different corporations who’re considering comparable tasks?
Background
In assist of its local weather dedication, a big expertise firm was seeking to assist its product suppliers within the Asia-Pacific area in transitioning to 100% renewable vitality (RE) by 2030. The consumer approached 3Degrees to instantly have interaction one in every of its main suppliers, a big manufacturing firm with operations in two nations within the area, to assist obtain this objective.
How We Helped
3Degrees labored with the consumer to develop a template renewable vitality implementation plan for its manufacturing suppliers after which individually coached a single provider on learn how to populate the plan. We validated vitality use and different company-specific info offered by the provider and educated them on renewable vitality choices obtainable within the two designated nations. Deliverables included:
- Feedback on the consumer’s draft RE implementation plan template for all suppliers
- Detailed information requests tailor-made to the provider
- Renewable vitality choices “playbook” presentation for provider
- Instructional session to current renewable vitality choices within the designated two nations
- Detailed leave-behind RE choices “playbook’’ that included advisable choices and instant subsequent steps for the provider
- Direct provider assist within the type of calls and emails
Outcomes
On account of 3Degrees’ assist, the consumer and its provider have clear, actionable suggestions for each instant renewable vitality options in addition to pilots and advocacy actions that may set the provider up for long-term success in renewable vitality procurement.
What tendencies do you anticipate to see available in the market within the subsequent few years? What challenges will the trade face and what applied sciences or organizational modifications will overcome them?
Many organizations which have made good progress on their Scope 2 emissions/renewable vitality initiatives at the moment are increasing their focus to Scope 3 emissions, which incorporates provide chain and might be way more difficult to deal with. We already do fairly a bit of labor with our shoppers to assist them measure these emissions and give you an environment friendly and efficient decarbonization plan, however we anticipate this development to speed up since Scope 3 emissions typically symbolize such a good portion of an organization’s general footprint. It’s almost unimaginable for corporations to realize their local weather targets with out getting this piece of the puzzle found out. There’s additionally a robust intersection between provide chain and expertise, which brings me to the second level.
The local weather tech area has completely exploded lately. One of many major drivers of this development is the chance offered by Scope 3 emissions measurement, which I simply talked about. Whereas the variety of corporations coming into the local weather tech area has continued to multiply, I don’t assume that may proceed ceaselessly, and predict that we’ll start to see some consolidation on this sector. Additionally, it’s necessary to notice that whereas local weather tech is an extremely great tool to hurry up information assortment and enhance information integrity, crucial profit is that this information can then unlock insights that drive actual motion each in an organization’s personal operations and upstream and downstream in its worth chain.
Join with Katherine and the remainder of her workforce at 3Degrees
2023 E+E Chief 50 Nomination Type
We invite you to appoint people who’ve demonstrated excellent contributions to advancing sustainable options and reaching larger success in environmental and vitality administration inside their corporations. Whether or not they’re main small startups, established enterprises, or something in between, we’re on the lookout for people who’re creating and advancing new options, applications, platforms, finest practices, and merchandise to make a optimistic affect.
