CME Group – Darin Bernstein – 2015

Goals

In the summer of 2015, Darin Bernstein was hired by CME Group to investigate opportunities to reduce its energy usage across Chicago-area offices and data centers as well as to accelerate its sustainability efforts. CME Group had a strong history of social responsibility and wanted to strengthen its activities in environmental sustainability.

Solutions

Over the course of his summer fellowship, Bernstein drafted an environmental policy statement and helped with preparations for reporting on corporate emissions and engaging employees around sustainability. Bernstein was able to benchmark energy use at all five Chicago sites and evaluate how costs had risen while proposing several projects to reduce usage – many of which required no investment. Bernstein was also able to produce a statement which could serve as the foundation for a future environmental policy and prepared a template to be used in quantifying CME Group’s emissions footprint.

Potential Impact

If Bernstein’s projects are successful in Chicago, CME Group could then apply them to all of its global sites and realize further savings. In addition, because of Bernstein’s help, CME Group now has a corporate environmental statement to accompany its recently updated corporate citizenship section of its website.