3p Contributor: Scott Cooney
Recent Articles
Metrus Energy: Efficiency With No Up Front Costs?
As the economy as a whole remains mired in a sleepy lull, there are sectors that are red hot. According to GreenBiz.com’s State of Green Business Report, several green industries are creating jobs, growing, and shrugging off worldwide economic slowdowns. Among these are green building and energy efficiency.
Metrus Energy, a San Francisco startup, has positioned itself as a leader in energy efficiency projects for corporate and industrial clients, a sector that has not quite hopped on the bandwagon of energy efficiency, despite what would seem like an economic and environmental win-win scenario. The problem, according to Metrus, is the high up-front costs associated with energy efficiency projects. In terms of energy efficiency retrofits, homes and municipal buildings have had the benefits of a relatively low up-front cost, immediate return on investment, and immediate increase in property value. Businesses, however, must look at quarterly earnings and decide whether a one-time charge for energy efficiency will please shareholders….or get the CEO canned.
Metrus’ approach, which has culminated in its first-ever Energy Services Agreement project on a large-scale energy efficiency retrofit with BAE Systems and Siemens, takes away the up-front cost barrier. The result? A savings of 1+ million kilowatt hours (kWh) annually for BAE Systems, and no up-front cost for the client. Zero. Take a moment to think of the potential here. When we talk about world-changing ideas, this would have to be right up there among them.
Finding Ideal Clients Through Networking – Tips For Small Green Businesses
As a marketing tool, networking is a great outlet for making “ideal” connections for small businesses. What’s an ideal connection? Perhaps an analogy will help elucidate the term. You’ve probably heard the following saying:
Give a man a fish and you’ve fed him for a day.
Teach a man how to fish and you’ve fed him for a lifetime.
For that man, his ideal connection would be a fishing instructor. Similarly, you could consider a fruit tree. Would you prefer to have a mango, or a mango tree? For your business, as the analogy goes, there will be clients (fish, or fruit…), and there will be those who love you and your business and will feed you with clients for years (these are the fishing instructors or fruit trees…).
Connecting with these people is obviously going to benefit your bottom line tremendously. But where do you even start? How do you identify these ideal connections for your business? How do you then connect with them? And perhaps most importantly, how do you foster and nurture these relationships over time?
Easy Green Choice: Better World Books “Eco-Shipping” Makes Company Price Competitive With Amazon
Recently, I posted a series of articles on green business books. I’m an author. I know the field reasonably well, though I’m no expert in the publishing industry. Blogging is a terrific outlet for book sales, as I’ve found that by giving away a sample of my writing on Triple Pundit, and letting people decide if they want to read more, they can purchase my book online. For the last two years, I’ve been merrily blogging away (both for 3p and other green business blogs–yes there are others!), leaving a link at the bottom of each post to my book’s page on BetterWorldBooks.com. Better World Books is the clear green choice, and as a green author, I want to support them.
By not linking to my book’s Amazon page, however, I had two internal struggles. One struggle is a reputation thing. Middle America knows Amazon. More on that shortly. But the second is that my book costs more on BWB. Or at least, I had always assumed it did. Turns out, BWB’s “eco-shipping,” which is free and eco-friendly, makes BWB price-competitive with Amazon! So why don’t people know that?
Angel Wind Energy Shows How Smart Entrepreneurs Can Shift Into the Green Economy
Entrepreneur Ben Harroun and his family got their start in general construction 30 years ago. Their aim and business niche, for almost 30 years, was to provide low-cost, quality housing. And while the low-cost option might seem to have saved them from the economic recession of 2008/2009, Harroun and his family saw the writing on the wall. “As the housing market began to slow in 2008, we begin [sic] to look for new ways to incorporate our talents in a changing industry,” Harroun said, in a recent interview with Green America. “We heard about a 200-megawatt wind farm on the horizon in our area, and the answer seemed to be right in front of us; use the wind!”
Harroun and his family started Angel Wind Energy, and are among a growing number of people switching into the green economy from more conventional professions. Even during a recession, the green economy is doing as well as could be hoped. The State of Green Business Report recently published by GreenBiz.com showed improvement in many sectors of the green economy, with the majority of sectors at least holding their own during the downturn.
But Harroun is extraordinary, right? Many would-be entrepreneurs who want to start a green business don’t do so because they’re afraid they don’t have this magic formula for what it takes to be a green businessperson. So what is Harroun’s secret for his resilience, adaptability, and success?
For a “Crash Course” Sustainable MBA, Here’s Your Homework
The results are in! The 3P reader poll we conducted 2 weeks ago received a lot of attention and traffic, and generated an interesting list of green business books that our readers consider important. They span the gamut from manufacturing to strategy to sustainable food to clean energy. And, importantly, they represent a nice cross section of the green economy that would behoove any aspiring or current green business person to become familiar with.
I will begin with the disclaimer that this poll is not scientific. It is simply a readers’ poll, and inherently has biases. However, Triple Pundit readers are some of the most well-read, in-tune, and knowledgeable voters on subjects of sustainable business that we may find in the blogosphere, and therefore, this poll carries some not insubstantial weight.
Every book that was nominated has value, and some will be more applicable to your particular field of green business than others. As they say, it is truly an honor to just be nominated. Here, I attempt to summarize my take on the top ten vote getters.
Creating a Successful Elevator Pitch for Sustainable Businesses
Entrepreneurs need an elevator pitch like a plant needs water. Even the hardiest will eventually wither without one. Sound preposterous? It’s not. The elevator pitch summarizes your business in an exciting, intriguing way that gets clients, the media, investors, and your employees excited about your company and ready to find out more. And quite simply, it’s your chance to make a good first impression. And we all know how many chances you get to do that.
The name ‘elevator pitch’ derives from the legend of an entrepreneur unable to get an appointment with a venture capitalist, so instead he waits outside the VC’s office until he has the chance to jump on an elevator with the man. Now a ‘captive audience’, the VC listens patiently to the entrepreneur as he pitches his great idea….for 3 floors. At the bottom, when the doors open, the VC raises an eyebrow and says, “I’ll have my secretary schedule you for next week.”
Elevator pitches are not just used for potential investors. They are crucial for networking gatherings, trade shows, cocktail parties, and any other event where a potential client, employee, volunteer, partner, investor, or journalist may be willing to give you 30 seconds of their undivided attention. Grab enough of these peoples’ attentions, and your business may benefit greatly….all because you’ve honed a 30 second ‘elevator pitch’.
Sustainable businesses have a tremendous advantage in creating elevator pitches, which, if they could harness, would help them not only gain more customers, but potentially attract a lot more financial investment in small, green businesses, including investors, VC’s, equity partners, and angels.
Nominations Are In…Vote for Your Sustainable Business “Must Read” List!
In an earlier post, we at 3P asked you to nominate a book you feel is a “must read” for those interested in sustainability. There’s so much to know: sustainable food, renewable energy, social entrepreneurship, alternative transportation, green chemistry, biofuels, low carbon lifestyles, socially responsible investing…… how can we possibly keep up with all the amazing books that come out on these subjects and so many more?
Fear not. 3P will make it easy for you. Our selection process weeded out a lot of books. We deliberately eliminated any books written by 3P writers (sorry to Bill Roth, Heather Gadonniex, and heck, myself) so that we could eliminate potential biases. We eliminated any self-published books that were nominated. We eliminated any books that may be good business books but lack any sustainability material (sorry Good to Great and The Tipping Point and many others…), as well as many a good sustainability book that lacked practical business applications (sorry The Lorax, Silent Spring, and Ishmael), as well as many books that I could not find links to on BetterWorldBooks.com, the green version of Amazon, which likely means they are self-published, or simply not books. We did retain a few that offered insights into business through a sustainability lens, even if they were not directly about green business.
So we have done our part, but the rest is up to you! Let’s vote! Voting will go from now through February 19 at 5 PM Pacific Time! In no particular order, here are the books that were nominated through comments, twitter, emails, and direct communication!
Thanks folks! Voting is now closed! We’ll be tallying all the results and will let you know your choices for the best green business books in a blog post next week. Thanks again!
Scott Cooney is the co-founder of Green Business Village, a sustainability consulting firm working exclusively with green micro-enterprises and author of Build a Green Small Business: Profitable Ways to Become an Ecopreneur (McGraw-Hill) (deliberately left off the voting list). Follow Scott on Twitter at twitter.com/scottcooney
Employee Engagement Around Sustainability–Survey Results from Brighter Planet
Brighter Planet, a company dedicated to the mitigation of climate change through personal action, is perhaps best known for its tools that help people quantify their personal carbon footprints. It also has a credit card that, with each purchase, contributes to renewable energy.
However, it is their research that excites me more than anything else. A lot of people are talking about employee engagement around sustainability initiatives right now. Brighter Planet just released a study on its findings from an internet survey it conducted, to which 1055 people responded. Big businesses can use it. Small businesses can use it. Employees are happier and more productive when they do. So let’s get to it, people, start engaging your employees around sustainability!
2010 SuperBowl Ads: Audi Green Police Is As Green as it Gets?
Let’s face it, the Superbowl is watched by more Americans than any other single TV event. Personally, my guess is that at least half of the people who watch it only watch it for the famous Superbowl ads. They’re usually humorous (and this year, somewhat controversial, with the addition of the ad for an anti-abortion campaign starring Tim Tebow and the simultaneous censoring of an ad for a gay dating website).
This year, the familiar faces–beer companies, car makers, sellers of snack foods…the usual suspects–signed on for large sums of money to advertise their products. During the third quarter of the game, something occurred to me about this year’s commercials. None of them, up to that point, had even mentioned sustainability. I tried to search online but couldn’t really find anything relevant, but I seem to remember that in last year’s Superbowl ads, companies trumpeting their sustainability records, achievements, or product features, especially car ads featuring “best in class fuel efficiency.”
I had just finished a diatribe at the Superbowl party I was attending about whether the world had completely turned off to sustainability, when the first ‘green’ ad emerged. A customer at a checkout counter is asked, “Paper or plastic?” and when he chooses plastic, he is arrested and taken away by the “Green Police.”
I found myself quickly regretting my karmic intrusion into the Superbowl programming, as the ad quickly turned into yet another perhaps well-intentioned ad that casts environmentalists, frankly, as wack-jobs. I have to admit, I really started paying attention to see which companies had decided to advertise their product this way…
What Do C-Level Employees Take Home from a Conference like the State of Green Business Forum?
At last week’s State of Green Business Forum put on by Greener World Media, I reported live on some of the interesting developments in the world of green business presented at the conference. As a small business specialist, this kind of conference is, admittedly, somewhat foreign to me. The conferences I usually attend, such as Green America’s Green Business Conference, the Green Festival, and the like, are mostly tailored to and for small businesses, notwithstanding the occasional ‘big business in small business clothing’ such as Clif Bar and Organic Valley.
The conference included heavy hitters like Microsoft, SAP, Autodesk, UPS, and Best Buy. C-level execs sat and listened to discussion panels and powerpoint presentations from a wide variety of speakers, such as Van Jones and Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2009, Kevin Surace of Serious Materials. It was eight hours of listening to some amazing information.
As a former employee of Saatchi & Saatchi S, a sustainability consulting firm whose core competency was employee engagement around sustainability, I have a baseline level of understanding about what people take home from trainings, conferences, and other employer-sponsored events. If the mission of last week’s conference was to engage, empower, educate, and excite employees to go back to their companies and spread the gospel of sustainability, there were two key elements that, my experience says, could have been more effective for sending those disciples back into the world truly engaged and ready to fire up their troops.
Geoengineering as a Potential Part of the Climate Change Solution
Geoengineering has been tossed around as a potential solution for climate change.
Jamais (Ja-may) Cascio, Senior Fellow of The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, presented an informative session on Geoengineering at the 2010 State of Green Business Forum in San Francisco. Geoengineering can be described as the use of large-scale manipulation of our environment in order to counteract the climate altering effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry. Think large scale solar shields that reflect much of the sun’s energy and shade the earth below them. Think fertilization of the ocean so that it will produce huge algal blooms that will eventually die, sink to the bottom of the ocean, and act like a giant carbon sink. Think lining clouds with elements that are more reflective so that more of the sun’s energy is reflected back into space.
Terrifying? Perhaps. In small amounts, geoengineering is underway everywhere. Have you bought a carbon offset lately? Odds are, someone somewhere is using that money to reforest a cattle-degraded hillside in the tropics. It’s manipulating the environment in order to lock away carbon. As it is scaled up, however, geoengineering takes on much larger ramifications.
The potential in geoengineering is there for last-ditch efforts to save the planet when and if climate catastrophes come. But the potential for so much more…is also there. Is it that hard to imagine Halliburton getting a no-bid government contract from America’s 54th President, Dick Cheney, Jr., for trillions of dollars under the pretenses of ’saving the ski industry’ in the U.S.? Who will govern such projects? Who will decide when they are done, and how?
Van Jones’ Take on the State of Green Business
In last week’s column, I wrote about this upcoming State of Green Business Forum. As I indicated, I was perhaps most excited to hear from Van Jones, who was the victim of a Fox News-sponsored witch hunt that forced him to resign from the Obama Administration as its green job czar.
Personally, I feel Jones is one of the most charismatic leaders of the green economy, and, (forgive the nerd analogy) like Obi-Wan Kenobi, has much more potential for creating sea change now that he is free than he had while working within the constraints of the Beltway in DC. Today’s State of Green Business Forum is providing one of his first major public appearances and a forum for his reemergence into the green economy.
Best Buy Moving Forward on Alternative Transportation and Other “Clean” Electronics
Rick Rommel, Senior VP of Emerging Business at Best Buy, was a guest speaker at the State of Green Business Conference. Best Buy recently started selling alternative transportation solutions such as electric bikes and electric motorcycles made by Brammo.
The question is why. As a company that started by selling stereos, Best Buy is shifting into the green marketplace in response to, among other things, consumer demand. As Rommel pointed out, it is estimated that there are 120,000,000 electric bikes in China, representing 10 percent of the populace of the world’s most populated country. Rommel answered questions at GreenBiz.com’s 2010 State of Green Business Conference about Best Buy’s strategic focus and future goals for this entry into clean electronics.
Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Kevin Surace of Serious Materials, at the State of Green Business Conference
Serious Materials, a green building materials company focusing on energy efficiency retrofits, raised $65 million through venture investments during the down economy–an anomaly in the current economic state. The building industry in general has been in the tank for the better part of two years. However, as Joel Makower pointed out in his ‘state of the green economy‘ introduction to the State of Green Business Conference, green building has been the only bright spot in the entire building sector in the past year, and Surace’s company is a giant in the making.
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