Johnson Controls Chairman and CEO George Oliver testified in front of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee April 15, 2021, at a hearing on climate change.

In his prepared statement to the committee, Oliver said Johnson Controls has been reporting its emissions and taking action to reduce its footprint for 20 years.

“At Johnson Controls, sustainability is our business.” he said. “We were among the first industrial companies to join the UN Global Compact and through an aggressive series of enterprise-wide initiatives, we have cut our energy intensity by more than 50% and our greenhouse gas intensity by more than 70%.”

Oliver also discussed how performance contracts between the private sector and governments can maximize climate-friendly building infrastructure improvements.

Oliver, who also serves as chair of the Business Roundtable’s Energy and Environment Committee, noted that the Roundtable was the first broad-based business organization to recognize the threat posed by climate change and to acknowledge the need to address it.

“The science has evolved over the past 14 years and it has become even clearer the world must address the causes of climate change if we are to avoid its worst effects,” he said.

Other participants in the hearing, titled “The Cost of Inaction on Climate Change,” included David Wallace-Wells, author of “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming”; Dr. Robert B. Litterman, Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Dr. Joseph Stiglitz, Professor of Economics, Columbia University; and Richard Powell, Executive Director, ClearPath Inc.

“This is one of the most impressive panel of witnesses ever gathered on climate change in the U.S. Congress,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D- RI).