The growing trend of heightened consciousness of the social and sustainability implications of purchasing decisions along companies’ entire supply chains provides numerous opportunities for EO to engage with consumer stakeholders. EO supports this trend by raising awareness and encouraging ethical purchasing decisions by energy consumers (people and companies) of all types and sizes. An integral part of EO’s strategy is to create demand signals for responsibly produced oil and gas in an effort to encourage certification of extraction sites and/or the purchase of EO certificates. In addition to incentivizing better practices by oil and gas producers, informing consumers and encouraging their participation in the EO system increases consumers’ awareness of their connection to energy development impacts and the spectrum of development practices within the industry, from negligent to exemplary.
In support of those consumer participation goals, EO recently joined the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council (SPLC), a consortium dedicated to leveraging the purchasing power of large organizations to improve the sustainability profiles of value chains across sectors. This mission is well-aligned with that of EO, making this new alliance a perfect fit for ongoing consumer outreach initiatives. Both public and private sector organizations utilize SPLC programs to guide trillions of dollars in collective purchasing power toward goods and services that simultaneously meet the needs of their organizations, society, and the planet. Through its membership, EO will be able to consult and collaborate with leaders from government, industry, academia, standards organizations, and NGOs to develop technical profiles and procurement guidance in the energy and fuels sectors.
EO joins SPLC as a Supplier Member, the member category that includes distributors; manufacturers; Tier 1+ suppliers; service providers (including professional services); certifiers; standards developers and member organizations representing suppliers (e.g., trade associations). In this role, EO will work with other members toward solving the biggest obstacle to sustainable institutional purchasing: a lack of standardization in how sustainable purchasing is defined, guided, measured and rewarded. EO’s comprehensive standards and consumer market system, not only provides tangible benchmarks for industry performance, but also offers the opportunity for large-scale purchasers of oil and gas to make procurement decisions that consider the site-level impacts of related oil and gas production. We hope that EO’s membership in SPLC will raise awareness about different options for the purchase of oil and gas products and introduce practical tools -- such as the EO100 Standard -- that empower purchasing managers to base decisions on established and verified responsible production practices. EO’s Director of Certificate Markets, SarahCoulter, said, “We’re excited to become members of the SPLC – it will not only help us socialize the EO System to a core consumer constituency, it will allow us to contribute to and learn from SPLC’s innovative thought leadership activities in the institutional procurement space.”
Launched in 2013, the Sustainable Purchasing Leadership Council builds on four years of work by the Green Products Roundtable, a multi-sector and multi-stakeholder forum convened by the Keystone Center in 2008. The Council’s mission is to support and recognize institutional purchasing leadership that accelerates the transition to a prosperous and sustainable future. Today, more than one hundred member organizations are working together to advance this mission.