EME 805 - Renewable Energy and Non-Market Enterprise

So much has changed over the past decade with regards to how organizations approach sustainability along with their use of energy. For start, one hardly sees the term "nonmarket strategy" in use anymore, as the market has become much more savvy with how it addresses what it wants from organizations in terms of sustainability measures and reporting. In this course we will cover topics that I think are going to be more directly relevant to potential clients and employers.

We will begin by looking at how markets already have many "nonmarket" characteristics built into them and how markets are fundamentally socially constructed. (Here, "nonmarket" mainly refers to features of the market that are not readily captured in neoliberal economic theory.)  We will then look at how the rise of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the mid-80s paved the way for what we now tend to refer to as measures of a publicly traded companies Environment Social Governance (ESG) features and how this shapes perceptions of a company's value above and beyond their stock price alone. Then, we move on to do a deep dive into the "eight skills" that are needed for being a Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) and how the role of sustainability officers can move an organization forward. Then, while ESG measures are mainly the concern of publicly traded companies, we will look at other options for sustainable organizations like B-Corps and C-Corps and the role they play particularly for smaller firms and localized enterprises. Finally, we will bring the course to a close by looking at what's on the horizon for sustainable organizational development and how things like an organization's emissions along the whole supply chain need to be at the forefront of our immediate next steps.