US Government: Greening the Supply Chain

Accenture helped the US government develop a program for reducing the carbon footprint of the entire government supply chain.

The US Government supports state agencies with facility management and procurement services to foster an effective, sustainable and transparent government.

The government called on state agencies to establish an integrated sustainability strategy and to make reduction of greenhouse gas emissions a priority for government agencies. It wanted to support them by developing a procurement methodology that would contribute to reducing the government’s carbon footprint.

The government wanted to begin by assessing the carbon management and reporting practices of the 200 largest government contractors and suppliers as a first step in requesting the same information from the entire government supply chain.

The government chose to work with Accenture because of its close relationship with the nonprofit Carbon Disclosure Project, the world’s largest repository of corporate greenhouse gas data. Another potential benefit was Accenture’s experience in government procurement and research analytics.

Accenture leveraged this experience to help identify useful information to help the client establish a government-wide program for requesting greenhouse gas data, and a procurement protocol that ultimately serves to reduce the government’s carbon emissions.

As part of its responsibilities the government had to submit its strategy by May 2011, and with Accenture’s help it was ready by March 2011. Accenture used data from the Carbon Disclosure Project’s independent survey of 3,000 reporting companies to gain insight into the cost and potential benefit of reporting on greenhouse gas performance in the private sector.

Accenture provided the government with an analysis of corporate approaches to reporting on and reducing greenhouse gases. Building on these insights, it provided strategic recommendations for requesting carbon reporting from government suppliers. These recommendations were aligned with the government’s principles of ease of use, transparency, parity, contribution to overall reduction in the government carbon footprint and leverage of existing systems.

Accenture also delivered recommendations for engaging government suppliers and their supply chains to help determine the most time and cost-effective mechanisms for requesting supplier data and integrating it into the procurement strategy.

A final component of Accenture’s contribution was a strategy for educating the government contracting community on sustainability. With Accenture’s help, the government now is better equipped to proceed with its ambitious and vital task of reducing the carbon footprint across its vast supply chain.