Todd Gates

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NAPLES — Smart business leaders are always looking for ways to reduce the cost of doing business.

Visionary business leaders understand future success in this changing world depends entirely on the ability to adopt sustainable business models based on efficiency and sustainability and to think globally.

The economy is changing rapidly. The environment is changing. People — workers and consumers — are changing. The world is changing before our very eyes on a daily basis. Past and present economic powerhouses will need to adapt to countries like China, India, Brazil and many others as the world economics and environment are influenced by these enormous populations.

Sustainability, resiliency and always being mindful of the global economy we live in are the keys to the future.

To that end, the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce, working through its Chamber Alliances, has formed with a growing list of other partners the Sustainable Collier Task Force to lead the business community and the community in general toward a more sustainable and resilient future.

Working in tandem with the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, Sustainable Collier has tapped a wide range of expertise from business, the environmental community, academia and government to build within Collier County and Southwest Florida a plan to ensure our wonderful paradise remains a paradise for generations to come.

Faced with the increasing cost of energy, the need to wean ourselves off foreign oil and the potential problems presented by climate change, Sustainable Collier will address those potential threats and work to overcome or mitigate difficulties down the road.

The first step of this process is to reduce energy use in Collier County businesses and public facilities, thereby saving money and reducing the contribution of Collier County to global challenges. In doing so, we are joining with hundreds of thousands of communities all over the world working on precisely the same problems at their own local levels.

The city of Naples is leading the greater Collier community in this first phase of work by commissioning an energy audit to discover which departments and functions of municipal government consume the most energy. The audit will be used by the city to cut back on its energy consumption.

Collier Audubon and the Conservancy of Southwest Florida teamed up to help the city pay for that audit and all three organizations will help lead the greater Sustainable Collier effort down the road.

At an Aug. 26 meeting of the Chamber Alliance, which gave rise to the creation of the larger Sustainable Collier Task Force, we formed working groups to broaden first-phase energy audits throughout the community. While it is my honor and pleasure to serve as chair of the Sustainable Collier Task Force steering committee, our working groups are made up of volunteers from many businesses and entities.

In addition to our own company, Gates volunteers with other leaders from businesses and organizations such as the Naples Hilton, the Naples Daily News and Marco Island Eagle, the East Naples Civic Association, Morgan-Stanley, WilsonMiller, Astorino Architects, Kraft Construction, the city of Naples, Collier County government, Marco Island Chamber of Commerce, Temple Shalom, Unitarian-Universalist Church of Naples, Keystone Water, Twenty-Fifty Solutions, the Florida Climate Alliance and the Gulf of Mexico Alliance. Many others are stepping forward each day.

The office of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Sarasota County government (Sarasota SustainAbility) and the Leroy Collins Center have all provided technical assistance.

The task force will lead the community through five specific milestones:

1. Conduct energy audits: discover how energy is being used, how much energy is being used; establish a baseline for energy consumption.

2. Adopt energy reduction targets for initial year, out years.

3. Develop action plans for meeting targets.

4. Implement policies and procedures outlined in developed action plans

5. Monitor and verify results.

In Collier County and greater Southwest Florida, we believe the broad goals of this effort should focus on:

■ energy use reduction.

■ sustainability.

■ resiliency.

Working together, we can help our own challenging economy and ensure a future for our community that is not only sustainable but growing in new and better ways.

If you want to enlist in this important work, please write or call Steve Hart, vice president for public policy, Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce, at 403-2907 or e-mail shart@napleschamber.org.

Todd Gates is chairman of Gates, and a vice chair and board member of the Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce.