Report
We interviewed two persons responsible for sustainability issues at Ellevio, a company with responsibility for regional power grids in Sweden (distribution lines from transmission lines to en users). The company first got in contact with Södertörn University about opportunities to engage students for thesis work on more sustainable distribution of electricity. We asked for and were granted an interview.
Method
The interview was conducted as a conversation on the topic of what it was like to work with sustainability issues in a commercial company with responsibilities in one of the key sectors of society. From this conversation we deducted ideas that would be useful for designing learning experiences for students.
The respondents had noticed changes in management attitudes in later years. While the sustainability advisors were still not part of the top management group, they felt much more listened to and were constantly asked for advice. Their explanations concerned both the increasing societal awareness and legal requirements, but also their own hard work to raise sustainability issues linked to the company´s field of activities.
Their top recommendations for working with sustainability issues in any company was to learn about the company´s activities in detail. For this they had needed to engage in open-minded discussions with staff members in different positions in the company. The open-minded willingness to learn and to understand had been key to getting into dialogue were both parties to raise concerns as well as opportunities.
The company has a large number of sub-contractors working with installations and maintenance of the electric power grid. This is often a very hazardous work, so much efforts had been directed to increase awareness of the SDG 8 and it´s requirements for decent work, especially occupational hazards. This meant that Ellevio´s own procurement and contracting of subcontractors had to consider the SDG8. It also meant that the sustainability advisors had to ensure that routines were set up for the subcontractors to follow.
Being part of the sector that works primarily on SDG 7, the company had identified as it´s niche to make the power grid smarter, with less power losses in the grid, but also to make their installations more conducive for a sustainable consumption of energy in homes and in business. Thereby they also touch upon SDG 12. It is also in this area Ellevio is looking for cooperation with students to get innovative ideas on how to improve the services of providing grid-based electricity.
Conclusions for higher education
The ideas expressed by the respondents in this interview to a large degree with the Sustainability Skills defined by Unesco, which should be trained in Higehr Education Institutions. We understood the major demand on future employees to be the capability to think about how various activities are connected to sustainability concerns, which require an understanding of complexities. To see how abstract concepts, as in the 2030 Agenda´s global sustainability goals and the theoretical training in different university subject, connects to items and phenomena in “real life” and in company activities could be met by training in systems thinking. The respondents also expressed the need to prepare students to act from a normative perspective, but with a responsiveness in situations where norms collide with other demands, that requires normative skills and critical thinking. Such situations may require an ability to reframe and rephrase the issues at hand, that is looking at the problem from another perspective that makes it possible for the dialogue partner to change position, which would be an example of the skill to see different future scenarios.
Specific suggestions on training on complexity and systems thinking
The capacity of analysing sustainability issues in the concrete activities of a company can be trained at the university. A basic training in systems thinking and complexity combined with student tasks to analyse the systemic nature of a specific activity could be prepared in many courses. Training students to use tools for system framing and relational mapping could create a habit of being systematic in analysis of sustainability aspects to any kind of activity.
Understanding how leverage points act on systems is another capability that can be trained. The way the respondents in the interview talked about normative understandings contrasted to contextual realities is a type of dilemma that can be addressed by an understanding of leverage point.