A Supply Chain for a Circular Economy

We write to provide an update on the progress we’ve made toward the College’s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2030 through our ambitious Climate Action Plan (CAP).   Our last letter, in November, noted that our New England College Renewable Partnership’s solar energy facility went online, providing renewable electricity to meet nearly all of our purchased electricity needs and reducing campus CO2 emissions by more than 3,200 metric tons per year, or 17.5% of our carbon footprint.  We also noted that the centerpiece of CAP, the transformation of our fossil fuel-based infrastructure to a renewable energy-based “low temperature, hot water” infrastructure, had reached a design milestone, but cost estimates were considerably higher than anticipated due to pandemic-related market complications coupled with the complexities of the campus’s underground routing structure. Supply chain disruption also contributed to the College’s decision to delay the anticipated Spring ’22 Phase I start of this generational project. Despite these challenges, however, we are pleased and confident that the completion target of 2030 can be maintained.

Every year, as a part of Stena AB annual report, Stena Bulk assembles an expansive Sustainability Report that tracks emissions and vessel efficiency across its entire fleet. It goes out not only to company management, but also regulators and international agencies. You and your teams may have just finished assembling a similar one. If so, then you’ll know that each report depends on thousands of points of individual data, with almost every one found in a separate document or format. It means endless hours and weeks of late nights  combing through PDFs, Excel sheets, and emails. For years, this process has been a fixture of life in the office, but thankfully, it doesn’t have to be that way. With Orbit’s machine learning and reporting capabilities, it’s possible to reduce the time you and your teams spend assembling reports to a fraction of what it is now. In fact, using Orbit Stena Bulk significantly decreased the time they spent generating Sustainability Reports.