Ford's Blueprint for Sustainability: The Future at Work An Impressive Sustainability Strategy

Ford Motor Company has published its 11th annual non-financial report, entitled Blueprint for Sustainability - The Future at Work. Our vision is for our sustainability reporting to demonstrate our values, as well as to reflect and drive outstanding economic, environmental and social performance.

Three key aspects of Ford's sustainability strategy show the company's real leadership by Andrew Winston:

1. It's based on hard science. Ford's in-house climate scientists - yes, you heard that right — have bought into an important global scientific consensus: humanity must keep CO2 levels in the atmosphere below 450 parts per million to reduce the odds of catastrophic, species-threatening climate change (many leading scientists have since lowered the goal to 350 ppm — and we've already hit 390 ppm).

Ford then worked back from this necessary future reality, determined the share of global emissions coming from Ford products (around 2%), and mapped out the fuel-efficiency levels required to meet the scientific mandate. As Viera said, "I can tell you 5, 10, 20 years from now, where we need to be." Relying on hard climate science to map out non-negotiable boundaries for your products is, to say the least, very unusual.

2. It tackles both long-term and short-term sustainability challenges. Given those science-based plans, Ford is investing in the long-term — the sexy, new EV market that everyone is going after — and rolling out a series of efficiency technologies in the existing, combustion-engine fleet. The 2011 Ford Explorer, for example, is using EcoBoost engine technology to improve fuel efficiency by 25%. Viera points out that the world may save more fuel between now and 2020 through these incremental improvements than through nascent sales of cleaner cars. "It's not as glamorous," Viera says, "but it makes sense number-wise."

3. It's heretical. In Ford's sustainability report, one statement stopped me in my tracks: "By 2050, there will be nine billion people on Earth...Putting nine billion people into private automobiles is neither practical nor desirable." This is an auto company saying that going after market saturation is not ideal for the company or the world (since cities would cease to function with that much traffic.

Sources: Andrew Winston and Ford