Anthesis Associate Director and Analytics Practice Lead Stephen Russell has been named to the Environment + Energy Leader 100 list for 2020. The E+E 100 “recognizes those environment and energy ‘doers’ who break trail in creating new solutions, programs, platforms, best practices and products to help their companies – or other companies – achieve greater success in commercial and industrial environment and energy management.”
Before joining Anthesis, Stephen Russell served as Manager of Advisory Services at World Resource Institute, leading consulting projects at Global 500 firms including PepsiCo, MGM, Inter-Ikea and Ikea Group, and Tyson Foods to design and implement climate change mitigation programs. Following his time at WRI, Stephen was Technical Manager for the Science Based Targets Initiative, spearheading innovative approaches for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions management, now used by hundreds of companies worldwide.
A few notable contributions to the GHG space:
- Stephen led the development of the first GHG reporting program in Latin America: Brazil’s GHG Reporting Program, a project that built capacity in GHG management across hundreds of firms.
- Stephen led a federal taskforce to create the GHG reporting guidance that is now used by the entire Federal Government under Executive Order 13693 signed by President Obama. This Executive Order mandated that all of the Federal Government report on their emissions, and Stephen is the lead author of the guidance document created to support the executive order, The Greenhouse Gas Protocol for the U.S. Public Sector.
- As Technical Manager for the Science Based Targets Initiative, Stephen collaboratively developed the criteria for scope 3 emissions targets.
Through his work with SBTi and now with Anthesis, Stephen has helped dozens of companies set SBTs. Before Anthesis, Stephen worked on developing the targets, and now in his consulting role, Stephen develops emissions reductions strategies to help firms meet their SBTs.
In his client engagements with Anthesis, Stephen works directly with the client to understand their goals and ambitions, encourages further ambition, helps define the methods, and translates those goals into a roadmap of actions for delivering analysis and calculations.
As a notable example of the scale of influence in his current work, Stephen helped a leading multinational conglomerate corporation calculate certain scope 3 categories that firms of their size and complexity have never before attempted to address, so this work opened a new front in emissions management. The work gave this firm a more holistic understanding of their impacts and opportunities. Though existing reporting standards allow companies like this one to exclude these emissions because the calculations are so complex, the firm voluntarily undertook these calculations by enlisting the help of Stephen and the Anthesis team.
In his work to help clients set and achieve their Science Based Target, Stephen supports the substantial engagement of internal stakeholders, building consensus on what’s possible, and making ambitious Science Based Targets an attainable aspiration for some of the world’s largest global corporates.
