CA World Preview: Carbon Management: The Next Frontier Of Collaboration Between Corporate IT And Corporate Real Estate
A CA Community blog by Christine Needles
The Energy & Sustainability team is very excited to have Michael Jordan of Jones Lang LaSalle on tap at CA World to lead a session on “Carbon Management: The next frontier of collaboration between corporate IT and corporate real estate." Michael Jordan leads JLL’s corporate energy & sustainability services in the Americas and is the firm’s SVP of sustainability strategy. Michael is a LEED AP, a six sigma master black belt, and a trained facilitator in The Natural Step sustainability framework. His current clients include Deutsche Bank, Coca-Cola, Apple, and Pfizer and he sits on the supplier sustainability board for Procter & Gamble. Michael lives near Portland, Oregon with his wife and 4 sons and took up kayaking last year.
We asked Michael a few questions about his session in a recent email conversation:
Q. Tell us about your upcoming session at CA World 2010.
A. I’m excited to be participating in CA World this year. Although I am now in the commercial real estate industry, I spent 10 years in high tech in a company called Sun Microsystems (perhaps you remember it). Long before sustainability was an issue, there were challenges aligning the Corporate Real Estate and IT departments. And since Sun was basically one big IT department, the opportunities were many. I thought that although the need for alignment is not new, sustainability does bring it to the forefront in new ways. Let’s explore this symbiotic relationship.
Q. What are the top 3 things you want attendees to learn from your session?
A. There is no doubt that IT professionals possess core weapons that are important to the battle against climate change. (Insert your favorite D&D metaphor here if you like.) For one, I find my friends in IT to be tremendous systems thinkers. We’ll talk a bit about how systems thinking applies in corporate sustainability and where IT and Facilities fit in the system.
At the end of the day, I’m at this session representing Facilities Managers (and Energy Managers) in corporations everywhere. We have something to say to you, IT People! We need things from you. I can’t promise you bigger offices in return, but if you bear with me, you can improve your power over the planet and perhaps earn some sort of eternal salvation (so you’ve got THAT going for you, which is nice.) Let’s look at trends in SMART BUILDINGS that can affect corporate networks, not to mention the fact that sustainability is a new driver for employee mobility and mobility has implications for corporate technology.
We will also talk about where all this is coming from. What’s going on in the outside world and how can IT and Facilities stand together with the right data and information (“right” being what’s needed by our business colleagues around the company).
Q. Tell us about some of the end user cases you will highlight in your session.
At one company, we were exploring energy efficiency opportunities in datacenters and I think we’re still waiting for access to the consumption data. Elsewhere, we’ve used some great analytical tools to help improve energy efficiency.
I’ll also talk about corporate efforts at managing and reporting energy efficiency programs within the IT department. What is in this report that makes the CFO read it?
Elsewhere, Facilities is plugging in more devices that generate more data. We’ll talk about what the devices are that were installed and what else that company would like to have done.
Q. What do you hope to take away from attending CA World 2010?A. I will be there to take the pulse of the community. Follow my experience on Twitter @thetravellingmj.
Be sure to visit the Jones Lang LaSalle Green Blog for the firm’s take on sustainability and energy topics.
For additional information on the Energy & Sustainability focus area at CA World 2010, visit our topic page here.
For the latest event updates, follow @CAWorld2010 or search for our event hashtag #CAWorld.
Background on Jones Lang LaSalle
Jones Lang LaSalle (NYSE:JLL) is a financial and professional services firm specializing in real estate. JLL manages 1.4 billion square feet of property worldwide. JLL is an EPA ENERGY STAR Partner of the Year, having saved clients in 2009 about 840 million kilowatt hours of energy consumption equating to 465,000 tonnes of carbon and over $100 million in cost savings across 20,000 facilities. They have over 500 LEED APs on staff and have advised clients on over 110 LEED certification projects around the world. For further information visit
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