About

ICF International (NASDAQ: ICFI) is a global leader in providing strategic climate change services. Since 1969, the company has partnered with government and commercial clients to deliver consulting services and technology-based solutions in the energy, climate change, environment, and transportation markets. More than 3,000 employees serve these clients worldwide.

The firm combines passion for its work with industry expertise and innovative analytics to produce compelling results throughout the entire program life cycle, from analysis and design through implementation and improvement.

Climate change mitigation has been a core competency of ICF since the mid-1980s. With more experience in the field of carbon management for consumer-facing companies than any other professional services firm, ICF has provided carbon strategy expertise to more than 60 companies among the Financial Times Global 500, including HSBC, News Corporation, and Time Warner. ICF also recently provided carbon strategy assistance

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Strategy

Going Carbon Neutral

In April 2008, ICF offices became carbon neutral. We looked at our decision to become carbon neutral for many reasons – corporate responsibility, environmental stewardship,  and business reasons -- but as a leading provider of climate change mitigation services, we knew that it was critically important to demonstrate that we take seriously the advice we give our clients by practicing what we preach.

As ICF chairman and chief executive officer, Sudhakar Kesavan, said, “ICF is a major provider of carbon mitigation and adaptation services to companies and governments around the world and will lead by example and make our facilities carbon neutral by following the same rigorous methodologies we apply for our clients. We have been in this business for more than 20 years, long before it was fashionable, and we will always strive to remain on the cutting edge. By reducing the impact our operations have on the climate, we hope to encourage our industry peers to do the same.”

Our commitment is consistent with our business mission that guides us as a professional services firm to conceive and implement solutions and services that protect and improve the quality of life. In all of our major markets, we provide advisory and implementation services that address many sustainability issues.

In response to the increased focus on corporate responsibility and environmental stewardship, progressive thinking companies, governments, and organizations around the world are pledging to fight climate change by reducing their carbon footprints and, in some cases, going carbon neutral. But that’s not all. Other considerations include

• Employee recruitment and retention: In the case of ICF, ours is a people business, and we have to be able to recruit qualified staff effectively. Many of our employees come to us because we are a leader in providing environmental, climate change and energy efficiency services. They are often very dedicated and passionate about practicing what they preach, and so it is an essential part of our business strategy to take corporate responsibility very seriously.
• Compliance with regulations: We believe more regulations and legislative activity will force businesses to consider this. ICF always intends to be ahead of the curve on this, but for those who may not want to move that aggressively, we think the long term trend for what they will eventually have to address is compelling
• Reduced energy demand: It is relatively straight forward to calculate the payback periods of making energy efficiency changes. It makes basic economic sense.
• Bottom line: Many of the changes required are not that costly, once “green” thinking is incorporated into a business processes.

Well before we became carbon neutral, ICF had launched a number of initiatives to increase energy efficiency and reduce electricity demand, including

• Increasing energy efficiency in offices
• Becoming a partner in EPA’s Green Power Partnership—purchased renewable energy credits
  equal to 24 percent of total electricity use for all of ICF’s U.S. offices
• Replacing face-to-face meetings with video conferencing/web solutions to reduce
  travel
• Recycling waste through programs such as WasteWise
• Increasing telecommuting and schedule flexibility; encourage commuting by modes
  other than cars through programs such as Metrochek in DC area, other mass transit
  benefits, and bike to work programs
• Selecting building locations with high energy efficiency and transportation alternatives

Another important component of any company’s climate strategy is employee engagement. At ICF, employees around the globe are proud to be part of a company that not only helps their clients be greener, but encourages staff in a variety of ways to understand and increase their environmentally friendly activities at work and at home. In several ICF offices, volunteers dubbed “Green Teams” are providing leadership in this area. These motivated employees work together to aggressively seek and implement new ways to “green” the company.

We’ve also empowered employees to take steps to mitigate their impact on the climate by joining programs such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR® Change A Light, Change the World campaign. Five hundred employees participated, replacing as many light bulbs with ones bearing the ENERGY STAR rating, reducing enough kilowatt hours to equal the planting of more than 100 acres of trees. 

Carbon Footprint

Before we could become carbon neutral, we needed to develop one of the critical building blocks of our climate strategy, the greenhouse gas inventory, for our global operations. The inventory focused on calendar year 2006 and was designed following the guidelines set by the World Resource Institute/World Business Council for Sustainable Development GHG Reporting Protocol.

We opted to use an “operational control approach,” as defined in the WRI/WBCSD GHG Protocol, to set the organizational boundaries in the development of our inventory. The inventory covers all ICF buildings (domestic and international) owned or leased by ICF, as well as ICF vehicles and air travel. The emission sources included in the inventory are electricity and fuel consumption for the office buildings owned or leased by ICF, hydrofluorocarbons from refrigerant leakage, air travel emissions,
and ground transportation emissions from use of corporate vehicles for project operations. In 2006, ICF’s global operations emitted 7,135 metric tonnes of CO2eq—5,911 tonnes in facilities, 28 tonnes in ground travel, and 1,196 tonnes in air travel.

ICF’s carbon neutral strategy combines new and existing energy efficiency measures and the purchase of high quality offsets. The company invested in two offset projects that were both carefully reviewed for environmental additionality. The first project is an A3MW wind farm in Tamilnadu, India to offset 5,000 tons. The second project is an A30 MW wind farm in China’s Heilongjiang province to offset 2000 tons.

This is the company’s first corporate-wide GHG inventory, and we recognize it is a continuous improvement process. We are committed to refining and updating our inventory in the coming years and taking aggressive actions to reduce the size of its carbon footprint from our operations.

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