The tools for navigating the bewildering array of renewable energy incentives in the U.S. just got a bit better. There are thousands of such incentives, and their purpose is to accelerate the adoption of renewable energy in the United States. There are so many incentives, and they change so often, that it can be a full-time [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘sustainability’
January 14, 2010
Carbon on Company Balance Sheets?
Despite the fizzle after the great fanfare of the Copenhagen Summit, many companies remain intensely focused on the strategic implications of climate change. Some believe that a requirement to monitor, report and reduce their carbon emissions is coming and is just a question of time. Indeed, some observers believe that carbon accounting is destined to be embedded [...]
December 9, 2009
Bloomberg Makes Green Investing Easier
Bloomberg LP, the financial information and news company, attained phenomenal success by becoming an indispensible tool for financial professionals such as traders, financial analysts and investment bankers. There are Bloomberg terminals on over 250,000 desktops worldwide. And these are not ordinary desks: the people who sit at them influence possibly trillions of dollars of financial [...]
November 4, 2009
Buffett Buys Burlington Northern: The Green Dimension
Warren Buffet’s decision this week to acquire railroad freight company Burlington Northern Santa Fe highlights questions about the the business cycle in the U.S. and the prospects for rail transport. It also shines a light on the influence of sustainability on corporate strategy. It is well established that rail transport is the most efficient form [...]
October 8, 2009
The Supply Chain a Focus of Sustainability Strategy
I am excited to highlight my newly published research report on supply chain sustainability. The report draws on a survey of supply chain executives at 74 companies as well as interviews with firms such as Alcatel-Lucent, Coca-Cola, Diebold, Dow Chemical and Staples. Eric Klein, a quantitative market research jock formerly of AMR Research, designed and [...]
September 22, 2009
Savvy Strategy Guides Carbon Disclosure Project
The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is an organization with a clear goal, a simple premise and a savvy strategy. A research project on sustainability in the supply chain that I just completed (link forthcoming when the report becomes available for purchase) clued me into just how effective its strategy has been. First, its goal. CDP [...]
September 15, 2009
Carbon Footprinting at CPGs
At the Sustainability Stakeholder Engagement conference in New York today The Carbon Trust, a UK non-profit tasked with reducing carbon emissions, presented alongside PepsiCo International. The two have worked together to calculate the carbon footprint of dozens of Pepsico products. Pepsico got involved in footprinting its products in the U.K. in respose to rising consumer [...]
July 28, 2009
My Clean, Green, Sustainable Reading List
Over the last few months I’ve been reading through the literature on clean tech, energy and sustainability. In case you are looking for suggestions, I can recommend any or all of these. If you have any reactions or suggestions for further reading, please consider leaving a comment. Solar Revolution: The Economic Transformation of the Global [...]
July 16, 2009
Reusable vs. Disposable Cups: Saving Money and Energy
You might think that disposable tableware–such as plates, cups and flatware–are an affront to the environment and should be avoided at all costs. But the truth is more nuanced. Image via Wikipedia To compare the environmental impact of reusables (such as glass, porcelain or reusable-plastic cups) with disposables (such as plastic, paper or polystyrene foam [...]
June 2, 2009
The Cost of Corporate Carbon Footprinting
Many factors influence the cost of conducting a corporate greenhouse case inventory, including company size and complexity of operations. We can find examples of corporate inventories that cost as little as a few thousand dollars to conduct up to the $1 million annually that UPS spends.
May 14, 2009
Soda Machines Return $1 Million: Facts & Figures from a Green Conference
I attended a conference produced by Executive Council today in New York City entitled “The Green in Green.” Here are a few facts and figures I gathered from the discussion. Cost of Carbon Bob Stoffel of UPS said the company expects that emitting carbon will soon carry a price tag in this country and assumes [...]
March 27, 2009
Sustainability and Corporate Strategy
I was at The Economist’s 2009 Sustainability Summit this morning. (Thanks for having me, Economist.) It kicked off with a review of the global economic situation by Leo Abruzzese, Editorial Director for North America of the Economist Intelligence Unit. (They foresee a return to slow growth in the US sometime in the third quarter of [...]
January 21, 2009
Dell and the Complexity of Sustainability
Claims and Skepticism Dell received a lot of attention for its claim last summer that it had become carbon neutral. The company claimed it was “saving more than $3 million annually and avoiding nearly 20,000 tons of CO2 through facilities improvements and a global power-management initiative.” Dell’s claim of having achieved carbon neutrality became the [...]
