Program

ALL TIMES ARE IN MOUNTAIN TIME (MST). SCHEDULE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

All GreenBiz 22 attendees must be fully vaccinated and follow our COVID-19 testing protocols, in order to participate on-site. To learn more about the GreenBiz 22 Health & Safety policy, click here.

View by Day:

Filter by Track:

Net Zero

Tuesday, February 15th, 2022

9:00am to 12:00pm

Tutorial: Looking Beyond the Megawatt in Your Energy Procurement Strategy

Tutorial

As more organizations are turning to clean energy procurements as part of sustainability and net zero goals, the renewable energy market is maturing, with new types of projects and contracts available. Now buyers are able to take into account more holistic criteria when sourcing a new project, ensuring efforts to decarbonize aren’t creating other unintended consequences. Join this session to hear experts share the latest on corporate clean energy trends and join small roundtable discussions to figure out the best next steps for your organization. This tutorial will dive into how to design goals and projects to ensure your sustainability strategy is thoughtful and impactful.

Topics covered will include:

Maximizing avoided emissions through choosing resources and location
Considering land use and habitat to support the local ecosystem
Engaging the local community to create local benefits
Prioritizing energy access and a just transition
Managing materials to ensure technologies have an end-of life plan
Understanding how to prioritize project trade-offs when you can’t have it all

Tutorials are intensive half-day sessions held prior to the start of the conference. These are designed to offer participants an opportunity to dive deeper into a topic of interest and develop tangible knowledge and skills. In addition, attendees will have a greater opportunity to network with their peers in these interactive sessions. An all-access pass is required to participate.

3:30pm to 4:30pm

Building and Executing a High-Impact Net Zero Strategy

Breakout

Targeting net-zero emissions is the new North Star for climate policy, yet doubts remain about the integrity of many corporate targets. Sadly, accusations of greenwashing are too often justified. Some companies are focusing on 2050 instead of taking immediate action. Others are over-investing in carbon offsets. So how can your organization craft a net-zero strategy that brings real climate benefits while also advancing other business objectives? Leading experts from the public and private sectors will unpack the criteria behind high-quality targets and present case studies on how to simultaneously deliver profits and emissions reductions.

Climate-Smart Reforesting After Years of Record-Setting Wildfires

Breakout

Forests are one of our best nature-based solutions to climate change. But after back-to-back years of devastating climate-fueled wildfires in the West, are they still a viable tool? This session explores the consequences for humans, wildlife and the climate when so much forest is destroyed. Should we replant? Will it just burn again? How do wildfires impact companies that use tree-planting to help reach their net-zero goals? Learn how key leaders in post-wildfire restoration are using data to create resilient forests that are more likely to survive an evolving climate. And, we’ll explore the factors companies consider when deciding whether to invest in post-wildfire reforestation.

Wednesday, February 16th, 2022

7:45am to 8:45am

10 Billion Reasons for Sustainable Ag Partnerships

Breakfast Session

Rita's Kitchen

Our purpose starts with the soil and the challenge of feeding nearly 10 billion people by the year 2050. As the world’s largest provider of crop inputs, services and solutions, Nutrien plays a critical role in feeding the future by helping growers to increase food production in a sustainable manner. With a goal to support, track and measure 75 million sustainable and productive acres by the year 2030, Nutrien is moving the agriculture industry and the world forward – today and for generations to come. Hear the reality of what is happening in the field from agricultural experts, and join a network that welcomes collaboration, innovation and candid discussions. Learn more at https://www.nutrien.com/sustainability.

9:00am to 10:00am

Engaging Your Employees on the Path to Net Zero

Breakout

You’ve set audacious carbon neutrality and renewable energy goals. Now what? If you are asking yourself, “How do we actually get there?” this session is for you. We will cover why employees hold the key to achieving net zero and how to engage them to unlock greater impact across the organization on scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, including their personal footprint in hybrid workplaces.

Harnessing Internal Support for Impactful Energy Strategies

Breakout

Successful corporate energy strategies aren't just the responsibility of energy managers. To be impactful and efficient, they require cross departmental support — such as stakeholders from finance, sustainability teams and buildings. Join this session on how to find common language and strategies to ensure support from across your organization.

12:15pm to 1:15pm

Roundtable Lunch: Prioritizing Your ESG Strategy for Risk Management and Growth

Round Table Lunch

Sonoran Terrace

More companies are setting decarbonization goals. With various options available to reduce a company's carbon footprint, let's discuss the hurdles to implementing an enterprise-wide strategy and how this ultimately enhances brand, mitigates risk, and drives revenue.

Roundtable Lunch: From Goals to Gold: Moving Your Decarbonization Goals to Implementation

Round Table Lunch

Sonoran Terrace

During this roundtable, we will discuss how to take the next steps in your sustainability roadmap, moving beyond strategy and goal-mapping into the implementation and execution phase. Focusing on how to create actionable items for behind-the-meter and offsite solutions, we will explore the integrated pathways you can take in order to achieve your goals.

Roundtable Lunch: Roadmap to Net Zero: Practical Decarbonization Pathways

Round Table Lunch

Sonoran Terrace

Black & Veatch’s Deepa Poduval, Vice President and Global Advisory Leader, will open the floor to a moderated discussion on practical strategies to achieve Net Zero emissions. Participants will discuss real-world questions and answers about how to realistically achieve their decarbonization goals, from initial planning stages to solutions currently underway on the ground.

1:30pm to 2:30pm

Leveraging Circular Strategies to Reach Net Zero

Breakout

How can circular initiatives be leveraged in pursuit of net-zero emissions? If deployed at scale, circular economy strategies could remove billions of tons from our global carbon footprint, while also cutting costs and regenerating natural systems. Yet very few companies have combined circular projects with emission-reduction roadmaps. In this session, leaders from organizations that have pioneered such approaches will explain how they overcame barriers to integrating these two critical areas of sustainability strategy, and what they have achieved by doing so.

2:45pm to 3:45pm

Exploring the Market for Nature-Based Solutions

Breakout

The explosion of interest in carbon offsets has helped drive a proliferation of different nature-based solutions. Companies can buy credits that promote sustainable forestry, delay timber harvesting, create new forests, sequester carbon in farmland soils or even grow kelp.

To help figure out which of these options is right for your business, we’ve assembled leaders from the companies behind some of the highest-quality nature-based solutions available. In this interactive session, short presentations on the offsets will be followed by an opportunity for small-group discussion with each of the companies.

Leveraging Innovation to Achieve Climate Resilience

Breakout

Climate change is here, and we are feeling the effects of it in communities across the US. How do you get the proper stakeholders involved, and ensure solutions are having a real impact for those who need it most? Hear from three organizations building innovative technology, frontline community-led and nature-based solutions to help answer these questions and more when dealing with the impacts of climate change.

Broaden Your Scope: Engaging Your Suppliers to Drive Action and Transparency Throughout the Value Chain

Breakout

For years, businesses have focused on tracking, measuring and reducing their own direct carbon emissions — and for good reason. That’s where change starts. But in this vital decade of climate action, it’s imperative for companies to accelerate progress by looking beyond their own walls. To achieve a net zero future, today’s companies must use their platform to build a more sustainable business ecosystem. This means not only leading by example but providing partners, suppliers and other stakeholders with the tools to activate data-driven climate action strategies of their own. This session will explore how companies can broaden their scope by driving climate action and transparency throughout the entire value chain. Executives from Salesforce and other leading companies will explore the growing importance of the customer-supplier relationship in fighting climate change and share insights and learnings from leading supply chain solutions like Salesforce’s Sustainability Exhibit, a newly launched program that integrates climate commitments into supply chain contracts.

Thursday, February 17th, 2022

7:45am to 8:45am

What’s Next for Net Zero?

Breakfast Session

Rita's Kitchen

Many companies have made Net Zero pledges, but few have laid a solid path to zero carbon emissions. Salesforce has achieved Net Zero and is empowering others to do the same. In this interactive breakfast, hear from Kevin Vranes, Senior Director, Product Management, Net Zero Cloud, and Michael Herman, Principal, Owner at KPMG Advisory, as they share their expertise and key insights on the journey to Net Zero. Then, make your voice heard in an interactive audience dialogue as you dive into your most pressing challenges around technology, business, and sustainability. You’ll leave with defined areas of growth and a solid business case for achieving Net Zero.

9:00am to 10:00am

Ensuring Integrity in Carbon Credits

Breakout

Two words of advice for any carbon credit buyer: caveat emptor. Carbon credits can deliver emissions reductions and removals that are critical to the fight against climate change. Yet over the past few years, academic studies and investigative reporting have revealed that some carbon credits have little or no impact on greenhouse gas levels. How can your company make sure that the credits it buys are of the highest quality?

Thankfully, help is at hand. Carbon market experts at the World Wildlife Fund, Environmental Defense Fund and Okeo Institut have developed an advanced, open-source methodology for evaluating the integrity of carbon credits. Come to learn what their early assessments are telling us about the quality of the carbon credits in the market and how you can use their guidelines to purchase a portfolio of credits that has real impact.

10:30am to 11:30am

Planning for an Energy Resilient Future

Breakout

How are companies planning for and mitigating climate risk within their operations? In this session, experts will cover how to understand the impact climate chaos may have on your facilities and how to keep the lights on through the unpredictable.

Program

ALL TIMES ARE IN MOUNTAIN TIME (MST). SCHEDULE SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

All GreenBiz 22 attendees must be fully vaccinated and follow our COVID-19 testing protocols, in order to participate on-site. To learn more about the GreenBiz 22 Health & Safety policy, click here.

Net Zero

Tutorial: Looking Beyond the Megawatt in Your Energy Procurement Strategy

Building and Executing a High-Impact Net Zero Strategy

Sponsored: How Technology will Transform Carbon Markets: An Emerging Future for Transparent and High-quality Carbon Credits

Climate-Smart Reforesting After Years of Record-Setting Wildfires

10 Billion Reasons for Sustainable Ag Partnerships

Engaging Your Employees on the Path to Net Zero

Sponsored: Building a Scalable Sustainability Platform

Harnessing Internal Support for Impactful Energy Strategies

Roundtable Lunch: Prioritizing Your ESG Strategy for Risk Management and Growth

Roundtable Lunch: From Goals to Gold: Moving Your Decarbonization Goals to Implementation

Roundtable Lunch: Roadmap to Net Zero: Practical Decarbonization Pathways

Sponsored: From Commitment to Action: How to Make a Commercially Smart Climate Transition

Leveraging Circular Strategies to Reach Net Zero

Exploring the Market for Nature-Based Solutions

Leveraging Innovation to Achieve Climate Resilience

Sponsored: The Many Roads to Net-Zero…with a Special Announcement on Water

Broaden Your Scope: Engaging Your Suppliers to Drive Action and Transparency Throughout the Value Chain

What’s Next for Net Zero?

Sponsored: Protect, Regenerate and Restore: Improving Sustainable Land Use in the Food Supply Chain

Ensuring Integrity in Carbon Credits

Planning for an Energy Resilient Future