Sustainable Energy for AllCommitment and Accountability Framework

Georg Kell

Executive Director, UN Global Compact

Key questions for consideration

1. What is the role for commitments under SEFA?

2. What constitutes a commitment to SEFA?

3. Do we need a screening process? What could it look like?

4. How do we hold organizations (and governments) accountable for the commitments they make?

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Building on Ten Years Experience with Corporate Commitments

• 6000+ companies in 100+ Local Networks

• Voluntary commitment to integrating the ten GC principles into strategies and operations and taking action in support of UN goals

• Key attributes of core UNGC framework include– CEO commitment and Board endorsement

– Continuous progress model

– Accountability framework (annual COP requirement)

– Strict logo policy and brand management

• SEFA framework to drive new effort to systemize corporate commitments to wider set of UN goals on a system-wide platform (business.un.org)

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What is the role of commitments under SEFA?

• Objectives– Mobilize action and partnerships realizing three objectives– Demonstrate widespread multi-sector support for the SEFA

initiative

• Key considerations– Voluntary -- Regulatory– Public -- Private (3GF)– Awareness -- Commitment -- Action– Quantity -- Quality -- Focus– Accountability

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What constitutes a commitment to SEFA? (1/3)

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• A commitment is a promise to take action in the future, alone or in partnership with others, including:• New projects or partnerships;• Scaling up or accelerating existing activities• Adding additional partners to existing projects• Also include renewal of commitments made in the recent

past, if activities to realize commitment are still ongoing

• How do we avoid punishing early-movers?• Ambitious efforts that have been successfully completed

should be recognized and promoted as inspiration for others;

• Special recognition for commitment-makers that are clearly ahead of others in its sector

• Other???

Each sample best practice comes with a detailed description and illustrative case studies

What constitutes a commitment to SEFA? (2/3)

• Fall within the high-impact areas of the Action Agenda• Align with sector-specific best practices (20 industries)

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Chemical industry example

Access to Energy

Energy Efficiency

Renewable Energy

CORE BUSINESS: PRODUCTS &

SERVICES

CORE BUSINESS: OPERATIONS

SOCIAL INVESTMENT & PHILANTHROPY

ADVOCACY & PUBLIC POLICY ENGAGEMENT

Beneficially reuse waste streams to provide access to energy

Improve the energy efficiency of your products

and services

Develop products and services that drive customer / consumer energy efficiency or enable increased

renewable energy uptake

Use more energy efficient techniques to generate electricity and steam and

run operational processes Use more renewable energy sources to satisfy operational energy needs and prioritize

investments in this area

Establish an integrated, enterprise energy management function in your

organization

Support legislation and regulation related to the establishment of a price signal for carbon and renewable fuel standards

Develop more renewable feedstocks and bio-based building

blocks for commodity and intermediary chemicals

What constitutes a commitment to SEFA? (3/3)

• Complete set of suggested criteria: Promise to take action in the future Aligned with high-impact areas and sector specific best

practices• Leadership commitment (CEO signature required for

companies?)• Identify time-bound targets and KPI’s• Include description of resources dedicated to realize

commitment• Commitment to transparency through annual reporting on

progress

• A simple template reflecting this criteria will be developed to ease both submission and review of commitments

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Do we need a screening process?

• Screening, formal or not, is required to – Verify that commitment meet criteria and align with action

agenda– Single out high-impact commitments that should be positively

differentiated (media outreach, speaking opportunities, etc)

• Higher impact commitments• Safeguard integrity of the UN and SEFA

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What could a screening process look like?

• Should be very efficient in terms of both time and cost: Need to process, hopefully, high quantity of commitments within a few months)

• Technical review by experts working on soliciting commitments from the various sectors

• Coupled with oversight by a legitimate body, e.g. a small group of high-level UN officials

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How do we hold organizations (and governments) accountable for the commitments they make?

• Transparency around the commitments made, also in the months and years after the commitment is announced, in itself allows for public scrutiny and thus increases accountability;

• In addition, the main accountability measure suggested is an annual communication on progress requirement:– Brief description of progress made in realizing commitment

and brief description of future plan of action– Included into existing communication to stakeholders– Optional 3rd party review of communication on progress– UN to list non-communicating organizations and governments

• Beyond accountability, communication on progress will allow for aggregated monitoring of progress and facilitate learning

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Next Steps

• Develop “Call for Commitments” materials, including (translation!)– Section on Sustainable Energy for All web site– Brief, sector-specific publications

• Align sector-specific best practices (developed with SEFA, LEAD and C4C companies) with high impact areas of Action Agenda;

• Collect and promote illustrative case examples;

• Work with SEFA as well as LEAD and C4C companies to get first round of high-impact commitments

• Outreach through regional SEFA launches and Global Compact Local Networks 11

Key questions for consideration

1. What is the role for commitments under SEFA?

2. What constitutes a commitment to SEFA?

3. Do we need a screening process? What could it look like?

4. How do we hold organizations (and governments) accountable for the commitments they make?

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Sustainable Energy for All

Draft Commitment and Accountability Framework

How do we make it attractive to make commitments?

• Companies/governments can and should only be expected to make commitments that make good business/policy sense

• But SEFA can cause companies/governments to start earlier, go further and increase collaboration by:– Advocating the need for action and promoting best practices

and leadership examples;– Letting the light shine on commitment-makers (events,

awards, web site, press releases, etc)– Allowing companies (and others) to associate themselves with

SEFA, and by extension the UN, in their own communications. – This could include a special version of the SEFA logo that

commitment-makers could use to increase the branding recognition value of making a commitment (with logo/brand policy)

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