ESG criteria: what you need to know
1 min
Level
What exactly do ESG criteria involve, and how do they impact businesses? Letâs take a closer look.
The voice of impact
ESG / CSR
Industries
MEASURE
ACT
COMFORM
Elizabeth Brinton: "Embedding sustainability at the core of business"
Level
After leading and scaling the renewable energies business at Shell, then building and managing global sustainability operations at Microsoft, Elizabeth Brinton recently made an inspiring shift by creating Serenity Spring Farm. This seasoned entrepreneur, who has become a key figure in the energy transition, shares her pragmatic vision of an economy where sustainability would be integrated at the very heart of business models.
LeafMedia: You recently left the corporate world to create your own farm. Do you think corporate sustainability is sometimes disconnected from reality and concrete change?
Elizabeth Brinton: Throughout my career, I've always focused on staying grounded. In all my leadership roles, I focused on integrating sustainability into the business. All the businesses I built and ran had very significant P&Ls. I've always tried to integrate sustainability into how we run the business, how we do things and create the same products or services, but in a way that benefits the environment, is healthy and good for people. Because that's truly what sustainability is all about.
â The biggest risk we have today is this disconnect between seeing sustainability as something separate from the core business. That's a mindset shift that needs to happen: sustainability should be embedded in the P&L, considered an essential part of how you operate your business, how you differentiate yourself, how you innovate. It's a question of "how" rather than "what." â
As for my farm, it was a childhood dream to have a place to raise my show jumping horses. I love nature and being able to work on conservation, rewilding, and the principles of regenerative agriculture. It's a dream come true. But I'm also delighted to start a new chapter, to be an entrepreneur in my own way while remaining involved through board positions and advisory work to continue having an impact and spreading my influence beyond a single company.
LeafMedia: You mention integrating sustainability into P&Ls, into revenue. Do you still have faith in this evolution? How has your perspective on corporate sustainability changed since you left the corporate world?
Elizabeth Brinton: I've been working on these issues for a long time, well before people talked about "sustainability." One of the advantages of this experience is understanding that there are cycles in any business or in the economy as a whole.
I think it's important to be pragmatic and optimistic. I've built my entire career on the principle of "doing well by doing good." If we're in a period where "sustainability" isn't popular or is regressing, as we're seeing with the oil majors currently, that's where economics comes into play.
Take the example of coal: one of the reasons coal plants closed in the United States had nothing to do with policy, but everything to do with economics. The cost of energy, extraction, transportation, and purchasing made these plants unprofitable. That's the beauty of economics and competition: in a commodity environment, the cheapest product wins.
One of the great advantages of renewable energy is its levelized cost. Once you've built and developed the facility, the sun shines for free. These are competitive advantages that are part of the drivers of energy change.
I firmly believe there's no silver bullet. We need a variety of different types of energy and solutions because everything is hyper-local. Weather is local, resources are local, industrial needs are local, culture is local.
â One of the mistakes made at the policy level is trying to apply the same solution everywhere. I believe in outcome-based policies rather than specific technical specifications. Instead of saying "this type of energy is the right answer," we should say "here's the outcome we want" and let innovation, creativity, and competition find the solution suited to each particular situation. â
LeafMedia: If you were to build a new company today, both commercially profitable and sustainable, how would you go about it?
Elizabeth Brinton: That's an excellent question. I'll share some hard-earned principles as an investor and leader over time.
First, regulation typically lags behind innovation. If you want to build a business, the economic model â how the company will make money â must be independent of any subsidy. Government funding comes and goes. With the stroke of a pen, it's there; with the stroke of a pen, it's gone.
The first question is: how can I build a company that sells a product or provides a solution that someone actually needs and is willing to pay for? No one has the right or obligation to buy your product. But if you provide a service, product, or solution that meets an unmet need, you'll build a business.
Sustainability then comes into how you do it. You have choices about how you manufacture, create, market, or transport something. These sustainability choices are part of the "how" and that's where the opportunity lies: transforming sustainability not into a cost, but into a way to innovate and differentiate yourself in a competitive context.
LeafMedia: You mentioned that people's behavior doesn't really change. Can you clarify this idea?
Elizabeth Brinton: As human beings, we don't really like to change. In a business context, time is money. Trying to provoke a "behavior change" to sell your product is very expensive and takes a lot of time.
I prefer to approach a business situation assuming that the person's behavior, whether it's a corporate customer or an individual consumer, isn't going to change. So I ask myself: how can I embed sustainability into my product so they don't have to change their behavior, but the outcome is still more sustainable?
Let me give you an example from Microsoft: we integrated energy efficiency into the design of Surface laptops. We knew people forget to unplug their laptop or turn it off. They're focused on productivity, which is great. So we embedded energy efficiency into the very design of the device. The customer's behavior doesn't change, but the outcome is better for the environment.
LeafMedia: That's interesting, the change is sort of imposed on the consumer without them knowing it, while improving the user experience. This ties into your concept of "win-win."
Elizabeth Brinton: Exactly! I'm currently working on a book about the "win-win" concept. In a business context, if my consumer benefits, if their user experience is better, that will be a win for the business.
In a societal or community context, if you think about what will be good for the climate and the environment, like keeping trees in neighborhoods, you can create a win-win situation by having a neighborhood with a park, beautiful trees, and walkable spaces. It's good for the environment, it creates community and a pleasant place to live, which will increase real estate value. So the developer is happy.
But it requires intentionality in planning, whether in product design or land use planning. I was raised by my mother with this sense of intentionality, this way of creating win-win situations. And I see in our society today, particularly in the United States, so much polarization and conflict that I think: "I need to write this book, I really need to bring this forward because people have forgotten the art of the possible."
LeafMedia: What do you think about "sustainable growth"? Is it a paradoxical concept? Doesn't growth necessarily imply more consumption and therefore more impact?
Elizabeth Brinton: That's a very important question that would merit hours of discussion. Let me start by saying that one of the most important questions for our society is: "what is enough?"
This will be particularly interesting for investors and financial markets, given that the role of public companies is to ensure constant growth quarter after quarter. They are penalized if they don't meet growth expectations.
â In reality, some of this growth may be artificial. Do we really need 500,000 cute cat videos on the Internet? I love kittens, but it's a question of how we use our data. Is it really necessary? I would say that if you love kittens, go to a shelter and adopt one to enjoy in real life. â
The question for our society is what is the right balance between "enough" and growth. I've spent my career in business because I believe that profitability and commerciality drive good behaviors out of economic necessity. So take advantage of the opportunity to do good when there is a financial reward that aligns interests for a better outcome.
If I look at my own farm, it's a business. I need to make money, have a profit margin, have a return on my capital. But you could call it a "lifestyle business" because I deliberately control my growth. I look at my farm, I calculate how many horses and animals I can have on my land while keeping the land healthy and sustainable. I rotate my fields, I think about how much hay I can grow based on available water.
I've built a business model based on achieving my financial goals, but in a way that allows my farm and my land to remain healthy and sustainable in perpetuity. I think more and more businesses will have to ask themselves the same question.
There are remarkable examples like Patagonia, which decided to be a profitable business by making exceptional and sustainable products, without pursuing crazy growth for growth's sake. Or Publix, a supermarket chain in Florida, which is one of the largest employee-owned private companies. They chose to remain a family and employee-owned company, without going public, while being a multi-billion dollar company. These are examples of excellent business models where they are profitable, growing, serving their community, but don't have an artificial growth mandate.
LeafMedia: With all your experience at Shell and Microsoft, how do you now read shareholder pressure? How do you distinguish between important information and background noise?
Elizabeth Brinton: One of the most important things is to understand how financial markets work. Companies are grouped into comparable groups that analysts evaluate quarter by quarter.
In Tech, you have hyperscalers like Microsoft, Amazon AWS, Google. In oil and gas, you have Shell, BP, Exxon, Chevron. These companies are constantly compared to each other in terms of price, returns, etc.
If you understand this context and how an analyst would look at it, you can understand how CEOs and CFOs will communicate their results. They will express themselves based on how they know analysts will compare them to deliver stock value.
When you look at a particular company or stock, first ask yourself what its comparison group is, then understand its business model. Shell, for example, has trading as its primary business model. It's the world's largest LNG trader.
LeafMedia: This brings us to your entrepreneurial journey. You chose to go "into the belly of the beast" at Shell to have a large-scale impact.
Elizabeth Brinton: Exactly. If you're thinking about the company you're going to build, where you're going to invest, or where you want to work, ask yourself if you align with that fundamental business model.
In the choices I made in my career, I knew that to solve climate problems and achieve positive outcomes at scale, I needed to go to increasingly larger companies. It's a global, large-scale problem. So I decided to have the courage to go "into the belly of the beast," as you say, at Shell, thinking: "If I change even just 1% because of Shell's size and scale, I can have an immediate global impact."
It took me years of career to gain the experience necessary to be part of the management team and accomplish that. Now, I've come full circle to a very local and agile scale, acting sustainably in a way I can fully control.
â But it's important for everyone to find their niche. Based on your interests and skills, you can make a difference in a particular area. You could be the best croissant baker in the world, using good flour, delighting your customers, and offering an amazing product. That's the beauty of it: everyone needs to do their part, and we can be creative. Life should be fun, work should be fun. â
LeafMedia: Regarding AI, how do you perceive recent developments, especially with the announcement of DeepSeek in China? Are we simply end consumers destined to use these technologies more and more to generate growth, or do they serve a higher purpose?
Elizabeth Brinton: First, like the Internet, artificial intelligence is a generic term that covers many things. What excites me about the DeepSeek example is that this entrepreneur, understanding trade restrictions, innovated on older technology, which turns out to be more efficient. That's really exciting.
I learned early on as an entrepreneur to innovate with fewer resources and limited budgets. Necessity drives invention. What has just been proven and demonstrated is quite exciting and is an important challenge for companies like Microsoft and others: how do we apply capital in a way that isn't crazy, but will actually drive real innovation and cost discipline?
As a business leader, cost discipline is very important. And it's not a zero-sum game. You should be able to innovate with cost discipline, just as you should be able to grow a business and have profitability with sustainability. This zero-sum mindset is simply wrong.
One of the challenges we see today, particularly in the United States, is that people have thrown crazy money at things without cost discipline around technology, and then they say, "Oh, it didn't work. Therefore, sustainability [doesn't work]." No. Actually, green technology does work. If you look at companies that have maintained cost discipline from the beginning, have innovated and pushed themselves to innovate, but within the realm of financial reality, they are successful and withstand the test of time. Their business model grows.
LeafMedia: Since you understand energy markets very well, what do you think is misunderstood by many people regarding the energy transition or energy markets in general?
Elizabeth Brinton: It's about pragmatism. One of the challenges that has led to such polarized rhetoric is that people forget physics, the reality of the constraints we face. You can't go from point A to point Z instantly.
Much of the discourse around green technologies and sustainability assumed that we could make this huge leap, when in reality, a transition is necessary. I think candidness and honesty are really important, and the work is difficult. The idea of win-win, the idea of solving the transition is complex. You have to address grid infrastructure, siting, permits, supply chain constraints, trade issues. These are vast and complex problems.
â When people oversimplify complex problems, you run into misunderstandings and confusion. The reality is that we need everything: all varieties of renewable energy, gas, batteries. It shouldn't be a polarized zero-sum choice. Because depending on where I am on the planet, I'll have a different weather system, different resources, different economic factors. â
We need to be honest and candid with each other about how to apply and solve these problems, trying to do things as cleanly as possible and being intentional about our transition away from solutions that pollute and cause known issues.
LeafMedia: You often talk about sustainability as a "no regrets" decision. Can you give examples where this principle applies and how to manage the complexity of decisions?
Elizabeth Brinton: When you do thoughtful and intentional planning, you position yourself to have data and information that create a known performance space. The key is that complexity doesn't go away, but you create clarity to navigate through this complexity.
Data and information give you the clarity needed to make better decisions. We will make mistakes â people make mistakes, businesses make mistakes. But you reduce the scope of the impact of an error. For example, in terms of safety, you organize plant operations so that if you make a mistake, there isn't a fatality. You design the equipment so that if there's an explosion, it's contained.
â You must anticipate mistakes, anticipate failures, then progressively reduce the margin of error. That's good management. It's about understanding your risks, framing them, then transforming these risks into opportunities for growth, business, and innovation through problem-solving. â
How do you do this? By getting details, because details matter. This creates clarity. It's about recognizing that a situation is complex, then asking yourself: what data and information do I need to make the best possible decisions in this complex situation? How can I anticipate and make moves without regret? What are the highest risk areas where an error could occur, and how can I prevent a very serious error from happening?
Then it's about learning, establishing leadership with your teams where you're constantly learning. You try something, you get a result, it's a surprise, you learn from it, then you improve next time.
LeafMedia: You took risks in your career from the beginning. Was there something in your childhood or your relationship with your parents that made you want to take these risks? Did you have a role model?
Elizabeth Brinton: My mother is an incredible inspiration to me. I have an interesting story because my mother passed away when I was 18. I was an only child raised by a single mother. My father disappeared from the family picture when I was a baby.
My childhood was incredibly special. My mother was my best friend. We had an amazing life together, then suddenly she was gone. She gave me this incredible foundation of knowing I was loved. She was an extraordinary entrepreneur. I learned business around the kitchen table with my mother. She was an incredible businesswoman.
She passed on to me her love of land, nature, and land development. I learned from her how to promote conservation of land, nature, and wildlife through really smart development of areas around urban growth and density. She loved people as much as she loved nature. My mother gave me that, and she was one of the very first women commercial real estate appraisers in the United States. She was an incredible role model. So I received from her this courage to make a difference, as well as the principles and values of integrity and hard work.
Then, she suddenly left. It was sudden, I was just a child. And all at once, I found myself alone, I had to figure out how to support myself. The courage at the beginning, I had no choice. I literally had the choice between being homeless or figuring out how to support myself and have a place to live. It was that binary. I became an entrepreneur out of necessity. I had to figure it out.
From there, I said yes. When opportunities presented themselves, like the chance to go to Australia or the Netherlands, or the opportunity to move and do different things, I said yes. One of the best pieces of advice I can give is to do things that fuel your passion, that align with who you are, then have the courage to say yes.
LeafMedia: Who would you like to see in your place in this podcast and what topic would you like to hear them discuss?
Elizabeth Brinton: I think of one of my heroes and mentor for years, Mary Nichols. She was the former chair of the California Air Resources Control Board. She was my partner when I was in California and we were creating some of the first legislation in the world on renewable energy portfolios. She's an incredible thinker.
I think it would be really interesting to have a podcast with someone like Mary, who was a pioneer at the beginning of our movement, and simultaneously with someone young, maybe 25 years old, who is now doing something new, from an entirely different generation, who is building on the work of a pioneer like Mary.
The beautiful thing is that I built my career on the shoulders of someone great like Mary. I learned from her and applied that. Which has been a stepping stone in my career. And then I think of some amazing young people in their twenties. What are they doing? How do they envision their career? What impact are they having right now? How do they see things?
â It would be a really interesting conversation because we need to remember and honor the leaders who came before us. And we need to embrace and encourage the leaders who are emerging. â
LeafMedia: You're right to emphasize the heritage of what we take from people who worked in sustainability before us and how we honor their work.
Elizabeth Brinton: One of the things I learned from Mary by example is to be moderate and pragmatic, to work with all parties and listen to them. She refused to become extreme or polarized.
The sad thing is that she was turned down for some incredibly important positions at the federal government level because she wasn't considered "green" enough or Democratic enough, when she is the architect of the most important climate policy in the United States. But because she was pragmatic, worked with industry, was thoughtful and got things done, she wasn't considered political enough.
That needs to change. Because if you look at who really gets things done, they're the leaders who are pragmatic, who work with industry, who recognize that businesses need to be profitable, need to generate value for shareholders, need to grow if they're listed companies, and who at the same time want to save the planet, reduce emissions and pollution.
These leaders have demonstrated pragmatism, real listening, real negotiation, deep thinking to get the right outcome and bring everyone along. Because it wouldn't be fair either to make consumers pay the price of the energy transition with overpriced products.
â We need to think about bringing everyone along, having a just transition, having an economic solution where consumers earning a normal wage can actually afford to live. â
Watch Elizabeth Brinton's full interview just here đ
Close
More Articles
View all