SUSTAINABILITY FOR THE PLANET, AND PROFITABILITY.

More North Carolina businesses are integrating sustainability into their business strategy, realizing they can do well by doing good. Business North Carolina gathered a panel of experts to discuss their sustainability programs and how they are working to improve conditions in our state as well as improve their bottom line.

PANELISTS

Amy Aussieker executive director, Envision Charlotte

Mike Lizotte sustainability officer, UNC Charlotte

Bonnie Loomis interim executive director, E4 Carolinas

Olee Joel Olsen CEO, O2 Group Ventures

Ryan Tillman co-founder, Raglan

Daniel P. Wright vice president of engineering, Pike Engineering

Raglan and UNC Charlotte sponsored the discussion. It was moderated by Ben Kinney, publisher of Business North Carolina. It was edited for brevity and clarity.

NORTH CAROLINA HAS A RICH HISTORY IN SUSTAINABLE PROGRAMS AND CONTINUES BUILDING ON THAT. TO GET THINGS STARTED, PLEASE TELL A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR ORGANIZATION.

AUSSIEKER: I'm Amy Aussieker, executive director of Envision Charlotte. We're a nonprofit that's been around about 12 years. Our first big project was our energy efficiency program. We worked with the largest buildings in Uptown Charlotte to reduce energy use by up to 20% over five years. We saw a 19.2% reduction in 61 buildings, which was $26 million in savings. From there, we started looking at sustainability a little more holistically. In the last few years, we've really transitioned to the circular economy approach. Basically a zero waste society. We've gone from focusing just on energy to looking at sustainability because it gives businesses a lot more opportunities around savings and doing better by planet Earth.

WRIGHT: I'm Daniel Wright, I've been with Pike Electric for 15 years. I was on the construction side for 14 years, and recently I've been on the engineering side, which is my academic background. Pike is a 78-year-old, privately owned company started in Mount Airy, which is my hometown. We engineer, construct and maintain the electrical infrastructure for over 300 customers, who are predominately investment owned utilities, cooperatives and municipalities. We're working in more than 40 states. Predominantly we're mostly concentrated in the southeast with our engineering headquarters in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

LOOMIS: What we have here in the Carolinas is a true energy industry cluster and we're in the midst of working to integrate with the economic development community. E4 Carolinas works to connect the dots on the fact that energy is no longer just an enabler of other more traditional economic development dusters such as automotive, aerospace or life sciences. Energy has become its own cluster. Our organization is an energy trade association. We have over 150 member organizations from all aspects of the energy industry--small, large, investors and utilities service companies, consultants, lawyers, education. We're working to connect the organizations who have any footprint in the energy industry in the Carolinas. Our mission is to grow the Carolinas' energy economy. We do that primarily through economic development and workforce development. On the workforce development side, we have programs with Historically Black Colleges and Universities. We also have a leadership program from an economic development perspective. We have various research activities that are taking place to identify the value chain associated with different aspects of the energy industry, advanced nuclear, hydrogen energy storage and electric vehicles. One of those most recent grants is through UNC Charlotte's award from the National Science Foundation's Regional Innovation Engines. We are a little over 11 years old and enjoy a growing membership.

TILLMAN: At Raglan, I think we're emblematic of the changes that are occurring within North Carolina. My co-founder and I, and most of our...