Pembina Corporate Consulting

Sustainability Leadership Training

If Canada is to become "Sustainable Within A Generation" through such actions as shifting to clean energy, reducing waste and pollution, investing in natural capital, and promoting global sustainability, we must create greater domestic understanding of sustainability's principles and applications. The need for this understanding extends to the public, private and NGO sectors. With greater understanding, the private sector will be better equipped to operationalize sustainability, meet Canada's national environmental objectives and seize sustainable business opportunities. The public sector will be better able to support business in its move toward sustainability. For their part NGOs will be better positioned to engage both private and public sectors for action on sustainability.

Education and training in sustainability is necessary to build this understanding.

Customized Sustainability Training Modules

Through its 10 years of consulting to the Canadian corporate sector on management practices and strategies for sustainability, the Pembina Institute has had the opportunity to train thousands of corporate employees across tens of companies. Our training content areas include:

• The business case for sustainable business practices, and how to effectively communicate that case;
• Corporate experiences in applying eco-efficiency/eco-effectiveness concepts to operations;
• Corporate experiences in applying Pembina's Life Cycle Value Assessment-based thinking to business decision-making, with reference to social, environmental and economic challenges faced by companies;
• How to "Design for the Environment" and "Design for Sustainability;"
• The "Cool Business Guide" for SMEs on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while reducing energy costs;
• Other components of management practices for sustainability, including models for effective stakeholder engagement, meaningful performance measurement and meaningful communication of that performance;
• Scenario planning as a tool for corporate strategic planning;
• The various roles of the ENGO community, their definition of Corporate Environmental Responsibility, and corporate/government approaches to working with ENGOs.

Training Experience

In addition to customized education, Pembina has much experience in developing sustainability training through technical colleges and institutes. Pembina staff have lectured at Mount Royal College, the University of Calgary's Haskayne Business School and Environmental Design department, and the Sustainable Enterprise Academy at the Schulich School of Business.

Our Training Network

Over its years of consulting and training Pembina has developed an impressive network of leading-edge sustainability practicioners and thinkers. When designing modules it can quickly draw upon other sustainable business consultancies, former executives and CEOs, industry associations, ENGOs, ecological economists and learning organization theorists, to name but a few. A broad vetting network will help ensure that any final product meets its starting goals and objectives.

Education as a Pembina Core Competency

Pembina has had an equal amount of success in helping Canadian teachers to design and deliver environmental education programs in the classroom. The Pembina Institute's web-based, regionally specific, curriculum-tied GreenLearning.ca resource was launched last year in Alberta. Over the next three years GreenLearning.ca will be expanded to British Columbia and Ontario, and over the next six year is positioned to become a national sustainability learning resource for K-12 teachers.

Currently the Pembina Institute is designing a multi-fold approach to educating the Canadian corporate sector on how to operationalize sustainability. Watch this space for updates.

Who do I contact about Sustainability Training?