Business Not As Usual: Twitter Commentary On Corporate Succession Planning
Posted by John Laumer November 15th, 2009 
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- When corporate executive change gossip spills outside the pages of financial pages of record and onto thousands of cell phones, something big and new is going on. Wouldn’t you know, the first big example has something to do with maintaining a company’s green image. See Vattenfall Wakes Up to VattenFAIL Reputation: Did Twitter Help Topple CEO? for discussion. Business significance: U2/C3
eBay Builds State-of-the-art Green Data Center in Utah
Posted by Kathryn Siranosian November 13th, 2009 5 Comments
Online auction site eBay is building a $334 million state-of-the-art, environmentally responsible data center in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Utah.
eBay says this data center will showcase the best and most innovative thinking in green data center design, technology, construction and operation, and Triple Pundit asked Mazen Rawashdeh, VP Technology Operations, eBay Inc., to fill us in on all the details.
Triple Pundit: Does this new data center represent new capacity, or will it consolidate other eBay data centers?
Mazen Rawashdeh: The new center is being opened as part of a corporate-level, four-year data center consolidation strategy that is moving us from a handful of co-located data center facilities – largely space that we rent from data center providers – to space that we own and can manage to the highest standards in both cost and environmental efficiency. In short, it’s a consolidation strategy. Our business model is unique; we know the rhythms and availability requirements that are specific to eBay’s platform. By designing an environment for our data and compute power – both in terms of physical data center, hardware and software infrastructure that goes into it – we can innovate and manage it in the most efficient way possible. The facility in Utah will host the core technology that runs our business – including the eBay.com marketplace, PayPal and some of our adjacencies, including StubHub.com and Shopping.com.
Tips From UPS: Why and How to Start Greening Your Data Center
Posted by Kathryn Siranosian November 12th, 2009 2 Comments
We’ve all heard the good news: Improving efficiencies at your data center is a sure-fire way to cut energy costs and reduce GHG emissions.
But, let’s face it. The prospect of greening a data center can seem overwhelming. After all, data centers are complicated, unwieldy and high-tech. Even the most intrepid sustainability manager may take a look around, and be left scratching his head, wondering, “Where do we start?”
“That’s a very good question,” says Joe Parrino, Facilities Engineer of UPS’s Windward Data Center near Atlanta. “You start by getting educated and fully understanding the problem.”
That’s how they did it at Windward, one of UPS’s two largest data centers. Originally constructed in 1995, Windward monitors all of the information about the 15 million packages UPS delivers daily worldwide. Recently, Parrino led the facility through a dramatic energy makeover, a series of varied changes that cut energy consumption by 15% and reduced UPS’s CO2 emissions by 5.5 million pounds annually.
Business Not As Usual: Hundreds Of Free Green Patents…And More
Posted by John Laumer November 2nd, 2009 0 Comments
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Delinquent dioxane isomers seen lurking in darkened store aisles: Walmart to the rescue! Or not.
- Eco-commons, a project of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development now has over 100 public domain green patents available online. See Sharing Green Patents: Eco-Patent Commons & Green Xchange. for some details. Business significance: U1/C2
- Speaking of patents: Chinese banks are underwriting a US$1.5 billion dollar wind farm in West Texas, built using…you guessed it…turbines made in China. You won’t believe the cost analysis. See “Chinese” Wind Farm in Texas: Green Jobs FAIL? for details. Business significance: U5/C5
Business Not As Usual: Eyes On The Electric Vehicle Market…& More
Posted by John Laumer October 23rd, 2009 0 Comments
Solving the chicken or egg dilemma for electric vehicles.
- Rocky Mountain Institute just rolled out another one of its typically fascinating crystal balls – one which gives a glimpse into the future of electric vehicles. Is yours one of the many businesses looking for opportunities in a booming electrical vehicle market? Timing will be everything. If your firm wants to catch the wave, or is just thinking about it, have a look at What Will It Take to Get EVs on the Road (Really) Business significance: U3/C5
Business Not As Usual: e-Readers Threaten Paper, Printer Markets, And More
Posted by John Laumer October 9th, 2009 0 Comments
e-Book readers, a threat to paper and printer markets?
- With e-Book designs improving and choices expanding, commodity pricing may arrive within a few years, threatening existing markets for books, magazines, printers, ink cartridges, and fine paper. Even printers and publishers need to pay attention. Get a status snapshot on this technology with Barnes & Noble Says Yes, Microsoft Says No to New e-Readers Business significance: U1/C5 (See rating explanation below)
Iceland’s Financial Woes – Economy, Sustainability, and Safe Growth
Posted by Sarah Harper September 11th, 2009 1 Comment
Iceland’s financial history – and its current (disastrous) state of affairs – is proof that faster and bigger isn’t always better – faster economic growth, bigger banks, or quicker wealth accumulation. According to a Vanity Fair report, Iceland is massively bankrupt, its currency valueless, its debt 850 percent of its G.D.P., and its people desperate for food and funds. Iceland went bankrupt due largely to its uncontrolled growth earlier in the decade. While the story itself is both sad and intriguing, could it also have implications for the dynamics of sustainable business growth?
Iceland’s economic problems began, ironically, when its three biggest banks’ sought substantial and unparalleled growth. Although the country is about the size of Kentucky, and these banks had assets of just a few billion dollars (about 100 percent of Iceland’s G.D.P.), the banks succeeded (at first). Over the next three and a half years, the banks’ assets grew to over $140 billion in the most rapid expansion of a banking system in history. Meanwhile, stock values increased nine-fold and real estate values and the average Icelandic family’s wealth threefold. The economic growth all stemmed, in one way or another, from the investment-banking industry. The country adopted global financial ambitions, which seemed to prosper – until fall of 2008.
Kimberly-Clark and Greenpeace: A Corporate Campaign Success Story
Posted by Deborah Fleischer August 6th, 2009 3 Comments
By Deborah Fleischer, Green Impact
After years of being worn down by Greenpeace’s arsenal of corporate campaign tools, Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex, Scott and Cottonelle brands, announced yesterday stronger fiber sourcing standards that will increase conservation of forests globally and will make the company a leader for sustainably produced tissue products.
Greenpeace, which worked with Kimberly-Clark on its revised standards, announced that it will end its “Kleercut” campaign, which focused on the company and its brands.
World’s Most Sustainable Coffee?
Posted by Scott Cooney May 12th, 2009 7 Comments
Pop quiz: What are the 2 most commonly traded commodities on the planet? If you guessed bananas and wheat, you’re wayyy off. But who would guess bananas and wheat? Maybe if you just finished eating Shredded Wheat with chopped bananas you might have it on the brain, but odds are if you just did finish breakfast, you enjoyed it with a cup of the world’s #2 most traded.
Coffee, after petroleum (#1), is the second most traded commodity in the world. Of course, the name itself is very misleading. A commodity, according to my Econ textbook, is “something for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across markets. It is the same no matter who produces it…” Examples given are petroleum, iron ore, copper, as well as agricultural products such as corn, soy, wheat, ethanol, and yes, coffee.
Any coffee aficianado will tell you that coffee is anything but a commodity. Can anyone truly say there’s no difference between Folger’s and a local artisan roaster’s rich blends?
And of course, there’s the sustainability aspect. Coffee has been one of the darlings of the sustainability movement. It’s fairly easy and inexpensive to switch from a conventional coffee to a truly sustainable one, and gives our conscience something to feel good about with every delicious sip. For coffee to be sustainable, it can achieve a variety of certifications. Organic, Fair Trade, and Shade-Grown, coffees are available in most any city in the world. Some coffees go even further.
So what is the most sustainable coffee on the planet?
Monterey Bay Shores: The “Greenest Ever” Eco-Resort Set to Break Ground on California Coast – Holistic Approach Pushes Boundaries of Sustainability
Posted by Tom Schueneman February 2nd, 2009 5 Comments
“Sustainability” can be a slippery term in the best of circumstances. Add “eco-resort” to that and you have a recipe for greenwash. Organic soap, low-flow shower heads, and encouraging guests to hang up their towels for one more use before washing is all well and good, but does not a truly sustainable eco-resort make. There are exceptions, of course, and one of the best examples I’ve seen is Monterey Bay Shores, a planned eco-resort located in Sand City, along the scenic Monterey Peninsula on California’s north-central coast. The seafaring, agricultural region made famous by John Steinbeck.
The project is the brainchild of developer Ed Ghandour and has been for him a sixteen-year journey. As with most journeys spanning such lengths of time, it has has presented significant challenges and setbacks, all of which, in the end, have helped bring to fruition what Ed hopes will be a new way of thinking about sustainable development for everyone involved, from government and business to environmentalists, local communities, and, indeed, the world.
Today marks the formal announcement of the project, currently set to break ground in March. If all goes according to plan, Monterey Bay Shores will be completed in late 2010 or early 2011 and consist of 105 hotel rooms, 63 hotel/condo units, and 85 residential units. But there’s a lot more to this story than the prospect of more hotel space on the Monterey peninsula. I recently met with Ed to discuss his journey, what he’s learned in the process, and how those lessons learned have shaped Ed’s vision, not only for Monterey Bay Shores, but for defining the very concept of sustainability.
“We are driving forward the nascent green development trade with a team of hand-picked sustainability experts that are pooling their knowledge to ensure every aspect of this project is environmentally profitable”, says Ghandour.
Save Energy, Money, and Support Green Collar Jobs with One Phone Call
Posted by Jen Boynton October 15th, 2008 0 Comments
It’s easy for those of us consumed with the ins and outs of the new green economy to get a little obsessed with the latest technological solution. The fact of the matter is that for families that are struggling to pay their $40 per month electric bill, the investment in efficiency upgrades is simply out of reach. It’s so easy to save money when you consume less energy, yet the cost of capital improvements can be insurmountable. That’s where Rising Sun Energy Center in Berkeley, California comes in.
Rising Sun Energy Center is going low tech: they conduct free energy audits and provides free CFL lightbulbs, faucet aerators, and low flow showerheads to Bay Area home owners. In the summer of 2008, 70% of the homes served were low-to-moderate income homes. Rising Sun provided 2,133 households with energy saving hardware and information, installed 21,944 energy and water saving measures in Bay Area households, and provided an annual savings of approximately 349 Mwh and 6,632 therms. In financial terms, this is no small potatoes: we’re talking about over $1,363,000 in energy dollars over the lifetime of the measures installed, just for the summer 2008 installs. Mary Ellen Burns, a student working on her MBA in Sustainable Management, who worked for Rising Sun over the summer through a PG&E internship, states,
I came to Rising Sun extremely interested in technical solutions to climate change like thin film solar. What I realized is that there is an incredible amount of difference we can make in people’s lives by changing their electricity bill from $120 to $60. We don’t have to go to Africa, there is so much we can do here at home to make people’s lives a little easier.
Wanted: $21 Billion to Save Brazilian Rainforest
Posted by Shannon Arvizu August 5th, 2008 6 Comments
Can a new plan to halt deforestation of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest actually work? Last week, Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced a new international fund to raise money for sustainable forest projects. It is hoped that nations will donate a target amount of $21 billion over the next 13 years. Norway has been the first to commit with $100 million so far.
“We are conscious of what the Amazon represents for the world… It’s better for the country’s image to do things right, so we can walk in international forums with our heads high,” Lula said.
But the logic behind such a plan seems faulty. Global warming and the need for carbon sinks (in the form of rainforest vegetation) are cited as the main reasons for an international financial commitment to sustainable forestry projects. Brazil is only accepting money, however, if nations release any direction or accountability to how the funds will be spent.
G8 Commissioned Study Reveals That Tough Climate Targets Can Be Achieved
Posted by contentclix June 28th, 2008 1 Comment
Low carbon societies can become a reality because technically and economically it is possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, say scientists from nine countries who researched the issue on behalf of the G8. They say that reducing global carbon emissions by half by 2050 is feasible if clever models are applied and outlined details of three extensive models in a peer reviewed article in Climate Policy.
How Do You Run An Entire Country Without Oil?
Posted by Shannon Arvizu June 23rd, 2008 1 Comment
Shai Agassi, founder of Project Better Place, is largely regarded as one of today’s hottest eco-entrepreneurs. In less than two years, Agassi has secured agreements with Israel, Denmark, and Renault/Nissan to bring fully-electric vehicles to the market in mass quantities. At this month’s¬†“Plug-In Electric Vehicles 2008: What Role for Washington?,” Agassi explains the four elements that have converged to make this awesome project viable. Enjoy!
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