In Recession, Business Keeps Going Green

by Joel Makower

Given all that's been going on—the global economic meltdown and the tectonic political shifts—going green should be the last thing on the mind of any CEO. In such challenging times, "saving the Earth" should rightfully take a back seat to "saving the business."

Or, maybe it need not? Consider these announcements—all since Nov. 4, Election Day:

• Bank of America (BAC) plans to phase out loans to companies that use mountaintop extraction as their primary means of coal production. It also will give $1 million to Harvard to study the implications of capturing the greenhouse gas emissions generated by burning coal.

• Clorox (CLX) has expanded its year-old Green Works line of eco-friendly cleaners, which has met with such success that the company raised its sales projections six times in 12 months.

• Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE), the largest bottler of Coke beverages, will more than double the size of its fleet of hybrid vehicles. It will soon have 327 green trucks on the road in the U.S. and Canada.

• Heinz (HNZ), Sodexo (EXHO.PA), Sysco (SYY), and Unilever (UN) are among 30 large growers, food buyers, and environmental groups that formed the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops, a coalition to incorporate sustainability from the field to the table for specialty crops.

• Wal-Mart (WMT) plans to partner with the World Environment Center to help more than two dozen suppliers in El Salvador and Guatemala improve energy and water savings and reduce waste, raw material use, and emissions.

I could go on.
Only Nudging the Needle

In good times and bad, the greening of mainstream business marches on. Although the people—and their political representatives—have only recently taken notice, companies have been integrating environmental thinking into their operations increasingly for years.

It's all good, but it's not good enough. It's true that more companies are doing more things to correct years of environmental neglect. But all these efforts collectively move the needle of environmental progress only slightly, if at all.

To be sure, there's much to celebrate. We're using an ever-shrinking amount of energy, water, and toxic materials to produce a unit of gross domestic product. Green building is on the rise, spurring technologies that save energy and money while creating more healthful workplaces. There is a green race taking place in the automobile industry, with every major manufacturer planning to introduce electric vehicles. The leading consumer product companies and retailers are starting to rigorously assess the environmental impact of their products using sophisticated metrics, sending signals along the supply chain that tomorrow's products will need to hew to higher levels of environmental responsibility.
An Issue of Scale

But on balance, despite a growing chorus of corporate commitments and actions, I'm less optimistic that these activities, in aggregate, are addressing planetary problems at sufficient scale and speed. President Obama's stimulus plan will help create demand for some green technologies, but they won't necessarily move companies to transform their operations in ways that dramatically improve efficiencies and reduce pollution and waste.

Source : Businessweek.com

China: The new wind superpower

The numbers are in, and as expected 2008 set a record year for the worldwide wind industry as new wind farms generating a total of 27,000 megawatts of greenhouse gas-free electricity came online, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.

The quick-click headline was that the United States overtook the world’s green superpower, Germany, by installing 8,358 megawatts in 2008 - a 50% jump from the previous year and enough wind energy to power two million American homes. But the big story this year will be China’s rapid emergence as the next global wind power.

China last year doubled its wind energy capacity - for the fourth straight year - adding 6,300 megawatts of new electricity generation for a total capacity of 12,210 megawatts. A third of the world’s new wind capacity last year was installed in Asia, with China accounting for 73% of that power. China reached its 2010 target of generating 5,000 megawatts of wind-powered electricity in 2007 and is expected to hit its 2030 goal of 30,000 megawatts years early.

“In 2009, new installed capacity is expected to nearly double again, which will be one third or more of the world’s total new installed capacity for the year,” Li Junfeng, Secretary General of the Chinese Renewable Energy Industry Association, said in a statement.

Of course, 30,000 megawatts of wind is but a flicker in a country with more than 300,000 megawatts of coal-fired energy online but it’s huge by world standards and has spawned both a burgeoning domestic wind industry and growing investment by overseas companies. Denmark’s Vestas, the world’s largest turbine maker, will open its fifth factory in China this year and it received orders for another 200 megawatts’ worth of turbines at the end of 2008. General Electric (GE), one of only two U.S. turbine makers, also operates a factory in China and in January the company announced a joint venture with China’s A-Power Energy Generation to make turbine gearboxes. In a separate deal with A-Power, GE will supply the company with 900 turbine gearboxes starting next year.

As the financial crisis slows growth in the U.S. and Europe, India is another potential wind power. It ended 2008 with 9,645 megawatts of wind energy and added more capacity that year - 1,800 megawatts - than former world leaders Germany and Spain. Indian turbine maker Suzlon also has been moving onto European turf, relocating its international headquarters to Denmark and acquiring German turbine manufacturer REPower.

Installed global wind capacity now stands at 120.8 gigawatts with the 2008 turbine market worth $47.5 billion, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.

Source : CNNMoney.com

Google unveils software to explore world's oceans

By Paul Rogers, Mercury News

Starting today, if you want to explore the world's oceans — from the bottom of Monterey Bay to Australia's Great Barrier Reef — you won't need a scuba tank or submarine, only a home computer and Internet connection.

Expanding its popular Google Earth software, Mountain View-based Google on Monday unveiled an aquatic component, Google Ocean, that the company said "aims to turn everyone into Jacques Cousteau.''

The new feature, rolled out at a news conference in San Francisco attended by oceanographers and former Vice President Al Gore, combines satellite imagery, underwater photographs, video and scientific data to allow users to see 3-D images of the ocean floor, along with features like the location of shipwrecks and coral reefs.

Marine scientists predicted that the free software will become an important new tool in expanding the public's understanding of the oceans and the environmental challenges facing them. They also said it would be widely embraced by scientists, who are expected to embed massive amounts of data onto the maps.

"Not just sober scientists but the whole world can use this as a way to know the whole world,'' said oceanographer Sylvia Earle, National Geographic explorer-in-residence. "It took a long time for me to be able to see a turtle underwater, now any little kid can do it,'' Earle said.

Google assembled the new software after meeting last year with many of the world's top marine scientists.

The final product — an automatic download with latest version of Google Earth 5.0 — also includes 20 massive data sets including photos and video of marine animals, the boundaries of the world's marine protected areas, daily sea surface temperature changes and arctic sea ice.

The primary information to create the images came from the U.S. Navy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.

Like Google Earth, which was launched in June 2005, officials expect Google Ocean to offer increasingly detailed information over time as people add new photos and data. The resulting information will not only allow people to see the world, but how it's changing.

During the news conference, Gore talked about his visit to Glacier National Park in the 1990s. While Google Earth images zoomed in on Grinnell Glacier, Gore noted how much it has melted in the past two decades. The new software also features historic information that shows the glacier's size shrinking since 1991.

"It's practically not even a glacier anymore," Gore said. "When I was there not long ago I walked where that pool of water has formed. This is an extremely powerful new tool.

"One of my fondest hopes is that people around the world will use Google Earth to see for themselves the reality of what is happening because of the climate crisis."

Monday's event, a veritable lovefest of ocean leaders, also featured singer Jimmy Buffett, who has worked to protect manatees and other species in Florida. "I play by the water a lot — I don't know who on the planet wouldn't want to go to a tropical climate, particularly this time of year,'' Buffett said as Google Earth images on the screen behind him zoomed around the ocean floor and mountains on the Hawaiian Islands while his song "Margaritaville'' played. "When people go on exhibitions they come back as conservationists.''

Google Earth basically works by creating maps that combine satellite photograph, aerial photography and GIS data to build 3-D images so that computer users can "fly" anywhere like in a video game, from above the Earth down to view mountains, coastlines, cities, even streets and houses. In earlier versions of the software, users could see oceans with some data, but only in two dimensions.

The project is only a first step however. Oceans cover 70 percent of the world's surface, and detailed, high-resolution photographs don't exist for much of the bottom.

Taking high-resolution photographs of every square foot, along with detailed sonar images, will require great investments in time and money.

"It would take billions of dollars. You'd need fleets of unmanned underwater vehicles operating in formation, and some countries wouldn't even let you explore their territorial waters," said Marcia McNutt, president of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute based in Moss Landing. "It would take at least 25 years."

But previous generations have explored the land and the moon and perhaps the coming generation will focus on the oceans, several scientists said today.

"Sometimes it is tempting for us to think we have explored every thing we have to explore," said Terry Garcia, executive vice president of the National Geographic Society. "A tourist can fly to nearly everywhere on the planet, and satellites have mapped nearly every square inch, but there are still places not explored, mysteries still to be answered."