The New York Times has had excellent coverage of renewables lately and touches on the emerging topic of how they will integrate with existing infrastructure.
Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
Business Week reports on the findings of the latest iteration of the Aspen Student Attitudes survey. The magazine frames it as "The Do-Good Disconnect." The article is here and an excerpt is below.
Although many MBA students say they want jobs that allow them to make meaningful societal contributions, most don't believe that corporate social responsibility makes a significant impact on a company's bottom line.The full Aspen study is available here.
This op-ed in the WSJ breaks down the implications of current climate change commitments.
Excerpt:
By the year 2050, the Census Bureau projects that our population will be around 420 million. This means per capita emissions will have to fall to about 2.5 tons in order to meet the goal of 80% reduction.
It is likely that U.S. per capita emissions were never that low – even back in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood. The only nations in the world today that emit at this low level are all poor developing nations, such as Belize, Mauritius, Jordan, Haiti and Somalia.
The Economist has a nice piece on business and human rights.
Excerpt:
Yet in many ways the battle over the Olympics paints a false picture of the current relationship between business and human-rights activists. What is striking today is how often activists, big firms and governments are now in agreement about the importance of human rights, and are working together to advance them.
Timed appropriately with Earth Day, the Washington Post has launched a new website section on green issues including climate change. Perhaps this is the beginning of competition between major newspapers for the crown of best environmental coverage.
The former head of Greenpeace writes about how environmentalism can fail the scientific rigor test. It serves as a reminder of the importance of understanding these issues' complexity. From the WSJ:
At first, many of the causes we championed, such as opposition to nuclear testing and protection of whales, stemmed from our scientific knowledge of nuclear physics and marine biology. But after six years as one of five directors of Greenpeace International, I observed that none of my fellow directors had any formal science education. They were either political activists or environmental entrepreneurs. Ultimately, a trend toward abandoning scientific objectivity in favor of political agendas forced me to leave Greenpeace in 1986.
This week's Sunday Magazine takes a broad look at various personal environmentalism - from food to footprints to car insurance pricing. Well worth at least a cursory review.
The Green Issue
If you haven't seen it already, check out Fortune Magazine's "The Business of Green" special report. Lots of great articles. Here's a link to the front page of the coverage:
Green Biz - Environmental business news, features, galleries, commentary and more - CNNMoney
An article posted on Fortune.com today that's tailor-made for the RNI-ers. The sub-head:
Earth friendly jobs aren't just about organic farming and installing solar panels. Meet the carbon traders, eco-bankers and corporate climate strategists shaping the new green economy.Full article: Fortune: Great green careers - Apr. 16, 2008
A great article from the Sunday's NYT...
NYT: When Tech Innovation Has a Social Mission
The subtleties of the profitability piece remain a challenge, as evidenced in this WSJ article.
Except:
United Nations officials who regulate the trade have started questioning scores of proposed projects, from hydroelectric plants in China to wind farms in India. The issue: whether they provide real environmental gains, or are just padding the pockets of middlemen like EcoSecurities.EcoSecurities' woes are a prime example of how tough it is proving to be to launch a coordinated world-wide attack on global warming. The carbon-credit industry's growing pains come just as Congress is considering similar pollution-cutting rules targeting U.S. industries.
The New York Times provides a short piece on the topic worth looking over.
Except:
“There is a lot of discussion taking place right now about a whole new organization form around social enterprise,” said James Fruchterman, president of Benetech, a social enterprise incubator based in Palo Alto. “Many of these efforts can make money; they will just never make enough to provide venture capital rates of return.”
The Atlantic Monthly comments on a way for the US to siginifcantly reduce its energy use: capturing wasted energy.
Except:
The U.S. economy wastes 55 percent of the energy it consumes, and while American companies have ruthlessly wrung out other forms of inefficiency, that figure hasn’t changed much in recent decades. The amount lost by electric utilities alone could power all of Japan.
A 2005 report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that U.S. industry could profitably recycle enough waste energy—including steam, furnace gases, heat, and pressure—to reduce the country’s fossil-fuel use (and greenhouse-gas emissions) by nearly a fifth. A 2007 study by the McKinsey Global Institute sounded largely the same note; it concluded that domestic industry could use 19 percent less energy than it does today—and make more money as a result.
An interesting article about the greening of Wal-Mart.
Excerpt:
In January, Mr Scott told an annual meeting of Wal-Mart managers that the company would work with the Chinese government and other groups “to make sure suppliers comply with Chinese environmental laws and regulations” and would set up a “mechanism” to monitor performance. Mr Scott has said he hopes to see significant results in China in three to five years. While he said Wal-Mart would hope to be part of an industry-wide effort, the retailer would move on its own if necessary.
This is one of the most comprehensive articles that I've read on the subject and thought it worth sharing...
Sustainable Industries | SIJ News: Do green MBAs get green jobs?
