Thursday, May 29. 2008

Bentley Staking Position as an Advocate for Sustainable Infrastructure

The theme for the 2008 BE Conference, a user's event sponsored by Bentley Systems, is "Best Practices for Sustainable Infrastructure." Citing just the recent catastrophic events in China and Myanmar not to mention the pressures from increased energy demands and rising cost of fuel, Greg Bentley, CEO of Bentley Systems said, "The quality of life is connected to our quality of infrastructure. The financial returns on infrastructure investments will be inexorably forthcoming. I have no doubt of the opportunities that lie before us. The first action we are taking is sharing and learning about best practices." The company is putting is money where its mouth is by setting a goal to reduce its carbon footprint by 15% by 2009 and it started with reducing corporate travel. Bentley said that its annual sales meeting was held virtually.

Keynote speaker Andrew Winston, author of "Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage," had some interesting statistics:
1. Wal-mart comprises 2% of the US GDP. It is now asking its suppliers what its "carbon footprint" is. Suppliers that are reducing their carbon footprint get prefered shelf space.
2. Banks are becoming skeptical about funding the development of new coal-fired power plants as they believe that consumers may look toward more "green" ways of reducing power consumption.
3. China wants 50% of their population to be in their "middle class" by 2020
4. Advertising dollars are driving the media to cover the green movement more aggressively as companies like BP, Wal-mart, GE and others are promoting their investment in green technologies and reducing their power consumption.
5. UPS stopped making left turns to reduce idle time at stop lights. By performing route analysis, the company now modifies its routes to do concentric circles. The result was a savings of three million gallons of gas.

[Disclosure: Bentley covered travel, hotel and food.]

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