Powering a business with electricity from wind farms, landfill gas, geothermal heat, and other renewable sources is a bright idea. According to the Green Power Market Development Group, a project of the World Resources Institute and Business for Social Responsibility that is dedicated to building corporate markets for green power, 80% of all U.S. corporations in the commercial and industrial sectors account for 56% of all U.S. energy consumption and 48% of U.S. direct CO2 emissions. Choosing cleaner energy can significantly reduce a company’s -- and the country’s -- environmental impact.

Since it began partnering with the Green Power Market Development Group in 2001, Kinko’s Inc. has added renewable-power purchases at 42 of its branches, for a total of 80 stores nationwide. The company expects new commitments from its stores to add 4.2 million kWh per year in green-power purchases. GreenBiz.com’s Kelley Kreitz asked Kinko’s environment manager Larry Rogero what it takes to plug in to green power.

Kelley Kreitz: Why did Kinko's make the decision to begin purchasing renewable energy?

Larry Rogero: Kinko’s originated in a small college community, and some of the founders had strong environmental ethics. It’s part of our company philosophy. In the early 1990s, we established our first environmental standards and, more recently, we published our environmental vision statement. So we asked ourselves, “Where do we need to focus to minimize our environmental impacts?” One of those areas was energy.

KK: Who typically initiates environmental efforts at Kinko’s?

LR: In our organization, it’s the position of the environmental manager to develop initiatives and convince the rest of the company to participate. My job is to be an environmental “product developer” and internal salesperson, to convince employees that improving our environmental performance is the right direction. Part of that job is education and increasing awareness. Once awareness is established and beliefs and values examined, then you then can begin changing behavior.

KK: Did you face challenges in gaining company support for a green-power initiative?

LR: Sure. Kinko’s is in business to produce and assist people with communicating and putting together information. We’re a large document-production company, that’s our core. Any time you move away from that -- it doesn’t have to be environmental -- it’s a challenge to convince people that it’s important.

Also, working with an outside organization -- in our case, the World Resources Institute and Business for Social Responsibility -- makes it hard to sell the initiative internally as part of your core job. I went to meetings offsite and across the country. It’s somewhat difficult for people who aren’t close to it every day to understand that this is really beneficial and needs to happen in order to keep things moving forward.

KK: Kinko’s operates 1,100 stores throughout the world. How do you implement a renewable-energy initiative on such a large scale?

LR: Before we approach local field management about any implementation, the product must be available in the utility market. Once that was established, I sent e-mails and made phone calls to tell the store management team about these opportunities. Then I prepared a cost-benefit analysis for managers who were interested.

KK: What was the biggest challenge you faced in involving stores?

LR: The hardest part was educating the stores about the benefits of participating. Renewable energy does cost a little more, and the store managers do have responsibility for their profit-loss statements. It basically comes down to trying to convince the local management teams that there are values to help offset the extra costs of purchasing green power. There are things like the potential for avoiding future risks, such as those associated with CO2 caps that might be placed on our company. There’s the true price stability that you can get with renewable energy, and so you stay away from volatile pricing that’s associated with natural gas and hydroflows. Then there’s the potential for being recognized within the community and being a leader.

From the standpoint of sustainability, if you decide not to bear those costs, it’s not like they evaporate. It’s important to educate others that these costs are instead being pushed over into the environment, rather than into social conditions, and those ultimately will come back to impact the economy.

The reality is that, in most cases, when I explain these things, people have a difficult time understanding the interrelationship between the decisions they make running their business and the impacts these decisions have on ecological and social conditions. It’s not core to them; it’s not part of the job description. Even if there is an initial lack of understanding, talking about renewable energy affords me the opportunity to increase the dialogue around sustainable business practices within our company. The next time we discuss these issues we can use the foundation previously established to hopefully move forward.

Sometimes I plead and beg -- and other times I can’t even keep up with the local management teams that want to move forward with renewable-energy purchases. A lot of it comes down to current values and beliefs of the team members.

KK: What are the costs that Kinko’s stores face when purchasing renewable energy?

LR: Renewable energy typically increases a branch’s electric bill by 3% to 16%. Thankfully, the renewable-energy purchases that we have made have not been greatly overbearing to the branches, due to the fact that only about 1% of our cost structure is electric energy, and 3% to 16% of 1% is a relatively small number.

KK: What was the benefit of partnering with World Resources Institute?

LR: It has and will continue to be very helpful to work with nine other companies that struggle with the same kind of issues we do. WRI and BSR did a really good job of facilitating discussions and putting together task forces. They have a general expertise in regulations and potential legislation surrounding renewable power, and they are good at giving corporations not only current opinions but information on future risks and benefits associated with the adoption of different legislation.

KK: What advice do you have for companies that are considering purchasing green power?

LR: Start small. Make that first incremental purchase. Work with the local utilities and see what products they have to offer. There are a lot of very simple products that you can sign up for. There is a big challenge in having awareness of who’s offering what where. But it is possible to purchase renewable energy at a very low rate. Purchasing renewable energy is going to cost more, but it’s not a lot on a percent basis. Also, try to get together with other companies in the region and discuss opportunities to either aggregate loads or to identify offers.

The National Renewable Energy Lab has a Web site that lists more than 90 utilities that offer a renewable-energy product.

KK: Are there any utilities that you think are leading the way in the sale of green energy?

LR: Austin Energy has one of the best products we’ve seen because it includes true cost stability. Austin Energy has separated the cost of its renewable energy from the cost of its energy produced by fossil fuels. They’re able to offer customers who buy green power a stable price, because they remove the variable fuel charge. So I might pay more now for renewable energy, but three months from now, when the utility changes its fuel rates due to geopolitical issues, market constraints, or national-security issues, Kinko’s is no longer exposed to that. So I could be paying less in the future because I actually tapped into the stability of renewable energy. They also did a fantastic job promoting our decision to purchase 100% renewable power in their service territory.

KK: Have you received a positive response from your customers?

LR: We received positive responses only from those that are actually into this. But if you went up to any customer who knew something about renewable energy and said, “Do you think it’s a good thing that Kinko’s is purchasing renewable energy?” I think ten out of ten would say yes.

KK: What’s the next step for Kinko’s?

LR: We’d like to start working on environmental initiatives with our suppliers -- not just greening the supply chain and establishing supplier standards but educating them. We’d like to start getting them to think about sustainability concepts that aren’t yet on their agendas.

KK: What’s the next step for the business community in general?

LR: Sustainability needs to become part of the everyday conversation of CEOs when they are traveling together, interacting at conferences, and making decisions. It has to become the day-to-day dialogue of those individuals. Our CEO has said it’s not like heads of businesses are out there trying to figure out how to do bad things. It’s just that sustainability is not currently on the agenda because it’s not where they came from. I think when those folks start talking to each other about these issues, that’s when you’re going to start seeing a lot of changes.

For that to happen it’s going take people like myself who are within organizations like Kinko’s to bring up these ideas to senior management consistently and persistently, with patience.