Introduction

Santa was in a pickle. He knew that this "sustainability thing" was not a passing fad. No sir. He couldn't just stick his head in the snow and hope that it went away. Not with the folks from the EPA and the CDP repeatedly leaving him voice mails requesting calls back. He even had to fill out a "supplier scorecard" for a major retailer (yes, Santa delivers toys to stores - talk about private labeling!). Yet, he had other pressing issues to deal with, so he decided to look outside for some help.

He found Summit Energy. Summit's team of sustainability professionals guided Santa and his Elfin Advisory Board through every step to develop a sound, thorough approach to the pressing sustainability issues. The effort covered everything from establishing the organization's carbon footprint, to sourcing renewable energy to effectively managing waste.

Learn more about how Summit helped Santa with his energy by clicking on the links at right or the illustration above.

Santa HQ

Santa's Headquarters is the center of all things Christmas, and Summit wanted to keep it operating as cost effectively as possible. The most valued asset in Santa's entire operation - you guessed it, THE LIST of naughty and nice children - is housed in the HQ under heavy security. Summit helped transition Santa's antiquated paper-based list into their secure, database-driven online reporting system, dashboarDView. Now, Santa has 24/7 access to the list and any changes he makes are available to his entire staff in real-time.

With this improved visibility to his data and activities, Santa can export reports on his emissions profile, analyze his energy cost and usage and track key sustainability projects. Even the elves can login and see data related to their tasks!

Gift Wrap Central

Gift Wrap Central is a picture of precision with conveyors, loading bins, and bar scanners all carefully oriented to serve the operation. Yet, a few areas for improvement were uncovered by Summit's crack team of efficiency experts. For example, when gift wrap was cut, extras were tossed into trash bins. Summit stepped in and suggested that Santa build a recycling center to process the wrapping scraps. In addition to that, Summit helped the Elfin Director of Wrapping Operations evaluate and install a waste-to-heat system that allowed for some of the extra wrapping waste to be used for heating of the facility. The elves were not only less wasteful, they stayed warmer.

Once these improvements were made, Summit helped the Gift Wrap leaders benchmark their energy usage against ENERGY STAR requirements and work toward achieving ENERGY STAR Certification for their facility. The Elves regularly checked the progress of their ENERGY STAR Certification on dashboarDView. The Elves were so excited when the package arrived confirming their site had been certified, they promptly blew the whistle and stepped outside for a celebratory snowball fight.

The Toy Workshop

The legendary Toy Workshop (TW) is an amazing place. It is a flurry of manufacturing activity - from woodcutters chipping away at toy parts to painters brushing on fresh coats of lacquer to assemblers carefully fitting pieces together. But, with that much activity, there were bound to be inefficient processes in place. To unearth these, Summit performed a thorough energy site assessment for the Toy Workshop, and found some opportunities for improvement.

For one, things happened so fast that waste was not effectively recycled. This was a similar problem unearthed over at Gift Wrap Central (GWC), but the Elves in the Toy Workshop had never met most of the Elves over in Gift Wrap Central (those silos!). So Summit convened a best practice sharing session where GWC Elves shared ideas such as how they began reusing and recycling some of their waste. The TW Elves loved the ideas and implemented several immediately, locking down significant energy bill reductions, heating load and waste.

This even led to more sharing and dialogue between the various Elfin departments - creating a stronger internal communication around sustainability initiatives.

Power Center

The Power Center is a critical component of Operation Santa's infrastructure. If it ever goes down, children worldwide could miss Christmas. You have never seen peak demand like the workload around Santa's campus the few weeks before Christmas. Everything spikes - from heating demand, to process load to steam requirements to wastewater pumping - there's a serious need for fuel in December. To help manage it, Summit provided two key services - onsite renewable generation and energy analytics for the campus.

The onsite renewable generation took the form of some wind turbines installed at key locations around the facility and across some of the nearby plateaus and mountain ridges. The North Pole gets a tremendous amount of wind, courtesy of Old Man Winter. So, it was a natural fit for Santa's operation to leverage that renewable energy resource. And, they were even able to work in a small amount of solar generation - the cloudy climate doesn't deliver many sunny days, but similar to places like Germany and New Jersey, the solar incentives were great!

In addition, Summit's energy analytics team installed metering equipment at each facility. They helped ensure that each site was properly commissioned and the data was feeding correctly into the centralized data warehouse. Once this was in place, the real-time energy usage information at their fingertips enabled the sites to work more closely with the Power Center to ensure reliable supply.

The Sleigh

Santa's Sleigh is actually a fairly efficient mode of transportation. It runs on renewable fuel (Christmas Cheer) and has had the same 8 reindeer pulling it since the dawn of Christmas. All that exercise keeps his team young and operating at peak efficiency. However, one opportunity for him to green his ride was identified in the form of a new, "no rooftop idling" policy Santa instituted. Historically, when he hit the rooftops, he would just leave the reindeer running. It sped up his trip to the next home. However, by educating Santa on how much he could reduce his team's carbon footprint, he was willing to make some changes. But, he wanted to make sure the results could be measureable - he didn't want his stellar reputation tarnished by accusations of greenwashing.

So, Summit helped him identify his fuel consumption and associated carbon footprint for 2007 and made that their baseline year. After consulting with Donner, Blitzen and of course, Rudolph, Santa set a reduction goal for 2008 of 15%. By instituting the no rooftop idling policy, Santa hit that goal and shaved off some of his carbon footprint. But, Santa wanted to go all the way. So, he decided to take his travel each year and offset it completely, ensuring that his delivery method was completely carbon neutral.

To achieve this, Summit lead the process of finding qualified providers of carbon offsets. This entire process was verified by a third party, ensuring that Santa's claims would withstand the scrutiny of external individuals from little Connie in California to Sven in Sweden. Now, Santa can confidently assert that he flies carbon free!

Recycle Center

The North Pole Operation made great strides to meet their waste reduction targets by recycling. First, there was the establishment of the Recycle Center to begin with. It was no small feat to get the Elfin Union, the Clauses and other key staff to agree on the investment, the location and how the facility would operate. However, with some key data and analysis provided by Summit, consensus was achieved and the site became reality. They placed it on the northern edge of the campus, within eyesight of the Carbon Offset Forest.

Second, there was the measuring of the impact of the facility. Once agreement was reached on how success would be defined, the right systems, processes and tools were put in place to measure the facility's impact. In the first year of operation, the facility generated millions of dollars in economic impact, from direct energy cost savings, to more efficient usage of materials to reduced freight costs (using leftover gift wrap for packing material was a good move).

Finally, the conversion processes implemented had a positive impact on the operation. In one case, the recycle center Elves were able to find creative ways to resupply other parts of the operation with gift wrap, shipping crates and even pallets created from previously discarded materials. In another case, the team created an efficient Reindeer-to-Energy Conversion process, making productive use of all that biomass!

Santa

Santa knew that he needed to get serious about Sustainability. With pressure from all directions - the Carbon Disclosure Project, the EPA and even the North Pole Protocol - he couldn't continue operating the same way he did in years past, without regard to miles traveled, toy making processes, packaging materials wasted or paper used in making his lists. He needed a strategy. So, he asked Summit to help him build a strong, comprehensive sustainability strategy that would garner buy in from key stakeholders such as the Elfin Union Boss and Mrs. Claus. In addition, the plan had to include solid sustainability messaging that would be well received by Santa's most important constituency - all the young children worldwide, also known as, the "customers"!

As Summit and the big man nailed down the sustainability strategy, they created the roadmap to implement the plan. This roadmap included plans for renewable energy sourcing, waste reduction initiatives, portfolio optimization and carbon footprint reporting. It left no stone unturned - it even included a plan for converting reindeer "biomass" into energy.