An Interview With Monica Sanders
Quantify, quantify, quantify. Even if every metric cannot be predicted, work out the business case with the business you are trying to help. When you have an option to invest in certain things, you run through the numbers of monetary impacts and possible risks. Sustainability needs to be managed in the same way. Quantify the impacts you have today, and quantify the options you have. Quantify what it means and how you will benefit from each of them.
According to the University of Colorado, “Those who are most affected and have the fewest resources to adapt to climate change are also the least responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions — both globally and within the United States.” Promoting climate justice is an incredibly important environmental responsibility that is slowly becoming more and more recognized. In this interview series, we are talking to leaders who are helping to promote sustainability and climate justice. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Panu Pasanen.
Panu Pasanen is the CEO and founder of One Click LCA, a global software platform for life-cycle assessment and environmental product declaration in construction & manufacturing, founded in 2001. He has extensive experience in life-cycle assessment, embodied carbon, and sustainability, and collaborates with governments and corporations to advance regulations and policies for effective decarbonisation. He is personally driven to create user-friendly, automated, and robust LCA software towards this mission.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit. Can you tell us a bit about how you grew up?
I grew up in a rural area in a working-class family. There was no focus on sustainability whatsoever. My first touchpoint with sustainability happened when I was 13 years old. I came across a report from the United Nations that showed how much farming negatively impacts the environment — particularly the amount of land required for animal agriculture, which is orders of magnitude higher than for plant-based food. That report’s findings stayed with me, and they anchored the idea of sustainability for me for the rest of my life.
Everyone has a cataclysmic moment or marker in their life which propels them to take certain actions, a “why”. What is your why?
When I started my career, Finland had an open energy market but steered only on price. We have had renewable energy for decades, but there was little new investment in renewables. This got me to work on renewable energy, which later transitioned to life-cycle assessment and broader decarbonization.
You are currently leading an organization that is making a difference for our planet. Can you tell us a bit about what you and your organization are trying to change?
One Click LCA’s mission is to power the makers of a zero-carbon future. We are a global end-to-end sustainability software platform for construction and related manufacturing — with easy-to-use, automated life-cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental product declaration (EPD) solutions, among others. One Click LCA’s software is used in 170+ countries, supporting 80+ global standards, integrated with 20+ BIM and other software, with the largest global LCA database of 250,000+ LCA datasets. We help the construction value chain decarbonize and make projects and products more sustainable.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company or organization?
Here’s a story I will never forget that made a big impression on me. Back in 2017, One Click LCA signed a fairly sizable contract with a Mediterranean country focusing on the hospitality industry. After we signed, one of the company’s most senior executives came to me and asked, ‘Panu, to be sure, carbon is bad, right?’ I let him know that, yes, carbon emissions are bad. This conversation opened my eyes to the fact that people are very far from understanding this space. Despite the level of understanding, we were able to make progress on the regional sustainability plan. To achieve change, we need to meet the people where they are in order to have an impact. It should be easy and commonplace and not require everyone to become an expert — just to have the right tools.
None of us can be successful without some help along the way. Did you have mentors or cheerleaders who helped you to succeed? Can you tell us a story about their influence?
I am deeply impacted by what I have seen in the energy industry over the past 50 years. After the energy crisis of the 1970s, energy management and simulation have gradually become required in almost all countries. Practically all countries have limit values for energy use. Private companies drove this forward. I see this as a template for my own work today. It is my model to create something that is easy to adopt across an entire industry. My biggest motivation is to scale this horizontally across industries.
Thank you for that. Let’s now move to the central part of our discussion. Let’s start with a basic definition of terms so that everyone is on the same page. What does climate justice mean to you? How do we operationalize it?
The fundamental thing here is that according to UNICEF estimates, there will be 1 billion kids who will be negatively affected by climate change or environmental hazards. This is terrible. These children could be any of our children. The outlook is not great in many developing countries especially. You cannot close your eyes to this kind of thing. These are young lives that will be ruined or otherwise harmed. This, for me, is the beginning of climate justice. We are causing damage impacting billions of vulnerable young people, who may lose the opportunity to go to school or even basic livelihood conditions due to climate change, and we must act now.
Science is telling us that we have 7–10 years to make critical decisions about climate change. What are three things you or your organization are doing to help?
- With our sustainable construction and manufacturing One Click LCA Academy, we are training all students and professionals for free, no questions asked. This includes an ever-growing catalogue of hundreds of hours of on-demand training and live, online boot camps throughout the year in a variety of languages.
- We are driving full-scale adoption of life-cycle assessment and environmental product declarations via large businesses. These businesses have the magnitude and reach to scale-up impact as they carry out a significant proportion of work globally.
- We are removing cost barriers by making sustainability calculations automated, cheaper, and faster — but we also offer a free, no-questions-asked version of our software called Planetary, so all countries have access to reduce environmental impact on projects across the world.
Are there three things the community, society, or politicians can do to help you in your mission?
- Communities must demand carbon performance and quantifiably low-carbon solutions.
- Society must enforce strict and ever-stricter carbon limits to make sure businesses act.
- Politicians must keep driving the agenda, irrespective of the economic cycle.
How would you articulate how a business can become more profitable by being more sustainable and more environmentally conscious? Can you share a story or example?
Re-think how you use construction materials. Not all the materials are always necessary — do you need ceiling tiles for your corridors, for example? Could you use natural stone in foundations instead of concrete? All of these materials cause carbon emissions.
If you prioritize limiting materials, you can reduce the capital cost and achieve carbon reductions of up to 10%. This is a win-win. Cheaper projects, less carbon emissions. An easy example is simply reducing the mass of buildings. For instance, in Finland, slimmer floor slabs are now the norm, which reduces total building mass.
Next, if you rethink how you use the materials, you can make buildings more adaptable. Things can be reconstructed rather than demolished. Just reduce materials consumption overall when it does not jeopardize the use of the assets.
What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started promoting sustainability and climate justice” and why?
1 . Get deep buy-in to build impactful change in an organization. Work with many people in your organization. Explain to them why it matters for them professionally, why it matters for their careers, and why it matters for them. People need to understand and internalize what’s going to happen because they need to drive the change. They need to feel it the way you feel it substantially.
2 . Translate the benefits of sustainability into the language of business — from top management to marketing, product, R&D, finance, legal, sales and others. So, to a marketer, you need to talk to them about opportunities. If it’s a person working on legal, you need to speak to them about risk and translate it into what it means for their operations. This allows them to understand and internalize the actions that they have to take and how they benefit from their specific objectives.
3 . Quantify, quantify, quantify. Even if every metric cannot be predicted, work out the business case with the business you are trying to help. When you have an option to invest in certain things, you run through the numbers of monetary impacts and possible risks. Sustainability needs to be managed in the same way. Quantify the impacts you have today, and quantify the options you have. Quantify what it means and how you will benefit from each of them.
4 . Lean into compelling events to drive action and implementation. We have many regulations changes and competitors entering the market, which take a lot of people’s attention, energy and time. People have many things to do in their daily lives, so they have an option to postpone decisions on sustainability. But that is not going to work, and we don’t have a lot of time. A compelling event can be related to regulations, buyers or competitors, and leaning into one will allow you to accelerate the time to decision and implementation.
5 . This is a lifetime gig. And I honestly don’t mind. We are not running out of things to do to improve sustainability, which will require much effort from many of us. And I hope you will be part of this transformation.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
My wife.
How can our readers continue to follow your work online?
Learn more about One Click LCA on our website. We also have an active LinkedIn community and a new YouTube channel with rich, practical content about making the industry more sustainable. And you are most welcome to follow me on LinkedIn, where I regularly talk about industry trends and insights.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
About the Interviewer: Monica Sanders JD, LL.M, is the founder of “The Undivide Project”, an organization dedicated to creating climate resilience in underserved communities using good tech and the power of the Internet. She holds faculty roles at the Georgetown University Law Center and the Tulane University Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy. Professor Sanders also serves on several UN agency working groups. As an attorney, Monica has held senior roles in all three branches of government, private industry, and nonprofits. In her previous life, she was a journalist for seven years and the recipient of several awards, including an Emmy. Now the New Orleans native spends her time in solidarity with and championing change for those on the frontlines of climate change and digital divestment. Learn more about how to join her at: www.theundivideproject.org
How Panu Pasanen Of One Click LCA Is Helping to Promote Sustainability and Climate Justice was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.