Carbon Neutrality Makes the Grade

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How B-Schools Can Help

Indeed, business schools need to tread cautiously as they step into this nascent, unregulated market, says Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. Schools can be most effective at making a dent in this area if they combine projects like the purchase of offsets with a curriculum that deals directly with sustainability and carbon management issues, he notes.

"It expands the benefits of these programs when it can be integrated into coursework, because students can learn a lot more," Dautremont-Smith says. "Otherwise, it just becomes something the administration is doing and students don't have any connection to it."

Business-school students say they are using their financial savvy to make sure that they don't fall prey to these pitfalls. Clinton White, a second-year student at Babson College's Olin Graduate School of Business, recently purchased about $100 of carbon offsets to reduce the environmental impacts of operations at the school's graduate building. To ensure the school was not getting taken advantage of, he purchased offsets through Carbonfund.org, a nonprofit that guaranteed that the renewable energy offset he purchased was "green use" certified and would not be sold twice. The purchase will counterbalance 1% of the annual carbon emissions of the graduate building, which produces 13 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

White, who heads up the school's Energy & Environmental Club, says he sees it as a largely symbolic move. "We acknowledge our contribution in the grand scheme of things is relatively minor, but it's a way to get a message out there and clearly state some numbers that indicate what we've accomplished," he says.

Executive Education's Long Reach

Schools and companies view business-school students as a starting point for initiating larger change on this issue. Some, like Rotman in Toronto, are pegging their hopes on executive education students, who are receiving carbon footprint calculators for the first time this fall. The software allows the students to map out their carbon emissions, while also giving them strategies and tips on how to achieve carbon neutrality. These students are ideal because they typically spend a week or two at Rotman's program and then return to their companies and communities, where they can then initiate change, says Michael Hartmann, executive director of Rotman's Executive Education Program.

"An executive education center is a good hub because we can be closest to people who can make the immediate and biggest difference, as opposed to a full-time student, which can take a while," says Hartmann.

Rotman licensed the calculator through Zerofootprint, a Toronto-based nonprofit environmental organization, which has forged partnerships with at least half a dozen universities and schools in Canada. Ron Dembo, the founder of Zerofootprint, has ambitious plans for partnerships with other business schools in the U.S. and Canada. His goal? To create a network of millions of people concerned and taking action on the same issue.

"Even one executive management program actually touches many hundreds and thousands of people, so imagine what a network of business programs could do," Dembo says. "Suddenly, you've got a very large network of people."

Damast is a reporter for BusinessWeek.com.