The California Air Resources Board (CARB) announced last week that California’s cap-and-trade program will be linked to Québec’s cap-and-trade scheme.

Read On »

California has one of best climate change adaptation plans.

Read On »

As you may have seen, California Governor Jerry Brown announced a $120 million settlement last week, with utility company NRG that will be used to fund a large scale infrastructure effort for electric vehicles. This statewide charging network will include at least 200 fast-charging stations and another 10,000 plug-in units at 1,000 locations across the state. This not only puts California at the forefront of the electric vehicle revolution, it also will encourage these cars to range widely across the state, beyond the limitations of their batteries.

Read On »

If you thought the debate over the impact of plastic bags is one debate we’re already done with, you got it wrong. It’s far from being over thanks to Save The Plastic Bag Coalition, an organization that “is questioning and challenging the misinformation, myths, exaggerations, and hype spread by anti-plastic bag activists”. The coalition filed a suit earlier this month against the city of San Francisco, which expanded in February its 2007 ban on bags to include the use of single-use plastic bags at all businesses, including restaurants.

Read On »

Grist reported on Valentine’s Day that one of the biggest farm communities in California – Monterey County – banned the notorious fumigant methyl iodide. Along with Santa Cruz, Monterey County has taken this step of doing away with this harmful chemical from farmlands. Methyl iodide is the the replacement for ozone-depleting methyl bromide. Methyl bromide [...]

Read On »

California is probably one of the most environmentally progressive states in the U.S. It is also the country’s most populous state and according to LA Times, the state now derives 5 percent of its total electricity needs from wind energy. This powers about 400,000 households and now generates a total of 4,000 MW through renewable wind [...]

Read On »

Since the dawn of corporate social responsibility, Patagonia has been it’s pioneer and poster child. The company was founded on the principle that the business’s bottom line was more than just monetary. As early as 1974, founder Yvon Chouinard published an essay in the Patagonia catalog urging climbers to be more conscious of their motives and to [...]

Read On »

Local food is bad for your health, bad for the environment and bad for the economy, not to mention its potential risk for the well-being of billions of poor people worldwide. As strange as you find this description of local food, these are probably the conclusions you would reach from reading Steve Sexton’s Freakonomics article, The [...]

Read On »

Last week the solar industry finally generated good news. Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings agreed to buy First Solar’s Topaz solar farm, a 550-megawatt photovoltaic solar farm currently being built in Southern California (construction began last month and is set to finish by early 2015). The financial details of the purchase of the plant were [...]

Read On »

Local, sustainable food has become a regular part of our everyday culture as demonstrated through the growing popularity of school gardens, Community Supported Agriculture, local farmers’ markets, underground dining clubs, and organics in general. This enduring trend in sustainable food reignites a question posed on Triple Pundit two years ago: “Is Sustainable Farming Going Mainstream?” Unfortunately not at all as the sustainable food hype trumps the numbers.

Read On »

This post is part of the capital markets open letter project by MBA students at Presidio Graduate School. Open Letter To Governor Jerry Brown By: Kimberly Morris, Philip O’Connor, Megan Redford, Gomathi Sadhasivan Dear Governor Jerry Brown: Thank you for your continued support of water conservation in California. As concerned citizens, and MBA students at [...]

Read On »

Every year, four billion pounds, or 800 million square yards, of carpet ends up in landfills. The amount of carpet ending up in landfills is predicted to likely double every five years. Enter the company, Empire Today (also known as Empire Carpet) which launched a recycling program during the first quarter of this year, which [...]

Read On »

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) finalized the rules for the golden state’s cap-and-trade program last week. The cap-and-trade program is part of California’s climate change law (AB 32) which mandates greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020. The program covers 360 businesses representing 600 facilities, and will be implemented in [...]

Read On »

As generous as human beings are, an investment instrument will almost certainly bring more dollars than philanthropy. Can we direct this flow of capital for good? This year’s marquee sponsor for SOCAP is turning philanthropy on its head by providing impact investment options to the everyday investor. Instead of giving, users of Mircoplace can invest, [...]

Read On »

Imagine living in a low-income neighborhood, not owning a car, and the closest grocery market that sells fresh fruits and vegetables is 5 miles away.  Meanwhile fast food chains and corner stores like McDonalds, and 7-11 are walking distance.  What would your diet look like then? About 2.3 million American households live in these food [...]

Read On »

This post has been edited since it was first published Benefit Corporation, a new way form of corporate entity that purports to use business to address environmental and social problems, has passed the California State Assembly, and is heading to Governor Brown’s desk for his signature. California joins states like Maryland, Vermont, New Jersey, Virgina, and Hawaii [...]

Read On »

How far will industry groups go to protect their interests? A recent exposé by California Watch shows that some will take their PR campaigns to the schools. California school officials edited an environmental curriculum after being pressured by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) to endorse plastic shopping bags, according to California Watch. It all began [...]

Read On »

It’s a good year to be a California-based rooftop solar installation company, as such installations are experiencing a boom in the golden state. It’s particularly good to be Sungevity. Sungevity announced the creation this week of a $50 million renewable energy tax equity fund created by Citigroup Inc. The Oakland-based company has raised over $120 [...]

Read On »

The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is promoting its report this week titled, “American Boondoggle: Fixing the 2012 Farm Bill.” The report is based on 12 papers dealing with how to overhaul farm policy. Obviously, it’s clear from the title that the authors of the papers are against farm programs as they currently exist. In fact, [...]

Read On »

Last Thursday California joined a unique book club, which already includes 16 other states. This book club doesn’t celebrate the release of new books, but actually promotes the disappearance of one. This is still a celebration because we’re talking about a book that is redundant and wasteful, and yet about 6 million Californians receive a [...]

Read On »

By: Matthew Madden The Obama administration’s well-publicized goal of 1M electric vehicles on U.S. roads by the year 2015 is heavily dependent upon the adoption rate of such vehicles in California – an assertion supported by a variety of studies from various stakeholders. The California Energy Commission estimates 1.5M electric vehicles could be on state [...]

Read On »

With over 35 million people and two centers that are unrivaled in their industries (Hollywood and Silicon Valley), California is a goliath economic engine. Unwieldy and politically challenged (mainly due to the state’s love of direct democracy allowing the public to vote on state laws), the state never ceases to amaze in terms of the [...]

Read On »

California CEOs and business leaders sent a letter to Governor Jerry Brown urging him to not revise California’s cap-and-trade system. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is developing the details of the system, which has come under fire from environmental justice groups. The groups went as far as filing a lawsuit to stop CARB from [...]

Read On »

Seventeen percent of enterprise printing is wasteful.  This adds up to $90 wasted per employee in unnecessary printing – according to the folks at PrintEco. In this interview, Arpan Shah talks about how he is helping companies start addressing this waste within minutes.  His software plug-in for Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer automatically removes one [...]

Read On »

The following open letter is a part of the Presidio Graduate School’s Capital Markets course. For one of the course assignments, students write a letter to an oversight body, government entity or other appropriate institution. The topic: changing the sector of capital markets that relates to their chosen topic so it reinforces principles of sustainability. [...]

Read On »

The following is part of a series by our friends at CSRHub (a 3p sponsor) – offering free sustainability and corporate social responsibility ratings on over 5,000 of the world’s largest publicly traded companies. 3p readers get 40% off CSRHub’s professional subscriptions with promo code “TP40“. By Carol Pierson Holding Too bad for California. State [...]

Read On »

By Thomas S. Rooney, Jr., president and CEO of Energy Recovery Inc If you are like most readers of this website, there is a great chance that you did not mark World Water Day on your 2011 calendars. In 1993, the United Nations established March 22nd as World Water Day and has since encouraged us [...]

Read On »

Last Thursday Walmart announced that it eliminated over 80% of its waste that otherwise would have ended up in landfills across California. The initiative’s success has sparked Walmart to roll out the program across the United States.

Read On »

By Susanne Gebauer When you think of human trafficking, you may imagine smugglers in far away places involved in some kind of slave trade. You may not think of the U.S. and every day occupations such as farm or factory work.  However, according to Congressional Research Services, “[a]s many as 17,500 people are believed to [...]

Read On »

A poll last fall by the Gotham Research Group, commissioned by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), found that 75 percent of Americans in various regions, demographics and political parties approve of utility-scale solar plants on public lands. So why are solar thermal developers in California having so much trouble getting projects approved? “It’s green-on-green [...]

Read On »