Building a Sustainable Business

Building a Sustainable Business

From Transforming Tomorrow by The Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business

April 20, 2026 · 37 min · Season 3 · Episode 28

About this episode

Dan Lavinskas discusses how understanding energy use can lead to more sustainable business practices.

Find out how knowing more about your energy use can help businesses operate in a more sustainable way. It’s time for some sustainability analytics! Dan Lavinskas is the founder and CEO of Citera, a Montreal-based company who lead on digital energy and emissions calculations and consultations. And it all started for him when he studied a unit on environmental accounting at university. Dan tells us about the challenges of founding and building a sustainability business, the need to be willing to fail and start again, and how his company use their data expertise to analyse companies’ energy usage and emissions. Dan questions how we might address crucial global consumption issues if we are to become more sustainable, enlightens us on what Scopes 1, 2, and 3 are when it comes to emissions for companies, how businesses can get information on all three, and what they need to know and do with that information. We look at the carbon impact throughout a building’s life cycle, and how you can make decisions that alter that impact; and how politics are changing priorities around ESG, sustainability and energy efficiency in North America. Plus, we find presenters on the extremes of the coffee…

People in this episode

Host: The Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business

Guest: Dan Lavinskas

Topics covered

  • sustainability
  • energy use
  • emissions
  • business challenges
  • environmental accounting
  • ESG
  • energy efficiency

Keywords

  • sustainability analytics
  • energy usage
  • emissions calculations
  • Scopes 1 2 3
  • carbon impact
  • ESG
  • sustainability business

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Citera

Books & works: James Hoffman

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