John Pflueger

John Pflueger, Ph.D., is Dell’s Principal Environmental Strategist.  In this role, John is responsible for driving Dell’s strategy on issues around Environmental Sustainability – including energy, GHG emissions, materials of concern, material use/recovery/reuse, water and the application of technology to environmental issues.  In addition, John is Dell’s lead on understanding Net Positive and how it relates to Dell’s current and future business.

Prior to this role, John was Dell’s subject matter expert on data center energy efficiency and managed initiatives to help customers improve the productivity of their computer systems and facilities. Since graduating from MIT in 1991 with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, John has been in a number of roles including product definition, development and manufacturing, as well as corporate and social responsibility.

Over the past several years, Dell has come to believe that, to understand a company’s full impact, it needs to measure not only its footprint, but also the social and environmental outcomes resulting from its products,  technology and operations, increasingly referred to as ‘handprint’. Dell embarked on a series of studies to learn how to measure outcomes. This has included both direct studies on specific IT-based solutions and methodology studies aimed at establishing broader approaches to measurement.

• Dell has just finished a study looking at the connection between open data, mobility systems and positive sustainability outcomes. This work led directly to an engagement with the NYC Open Data Initiative and a hackathon in early March to explore approaches to mitigating the impact on the planned closure of the L-Train tunnel between Manhattan and Brooklyn in 2019.
• Some of the key findings and conclusions from our study of IT, ERCOT and Wind were…
• One of our more recent methodology investigations has been a look at emissions at an economic sub-sector level, then explore how technology has affected the emissions profile for that sub-sector (more on this in the next couple of months).