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World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim and United Nations Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson announced the two international organizations will work together much more closely to address and help solve some of humanity's most pressing problems, sustainability, health care and education prominent among them.

Pointing out that the two organizations have traditionally collaborated, “the founders of both organizations had more serious intentions and wanted us to be working as a team, not only on headquarters level, but out there in the field where the people of the world need our help,” Eliasson states in a World Bank video.

“With the leadership of Yong Kim and Ban Ki-moon, I know from personal experience of meetings that we are on to something which I would hope lead to a qualitative and quantitative new step in our cooperation.”

Millennium development goals, sustainability and conflict

Eliasson singled out the acceleration of efforts to achieve UN Millennium development goals and taking steps to improve the financing of development as priority areas for the two international organizations' joint efforts.

Demonstrating their ability to work effectively as a team worldwide would provide a big boost to the credibility of both organizations at a time when governments and societies face the challenges associated with a globalized financial and economic system, as well as global and cross-border environmental challenges, such as climate change, he said.

In their video, Kim notes that he is the first former UN employee to serve as president of The World Bank Group. “I think there are so many issues in which the Bretton Woods institutions and the UN simply have to work together.

"Often in the field what we've found is that despite best intentions, it didn't work together effectively... On issues that range from health care to sustainability to the rule of law, there are so many things that are so important to the world, and I think that there are specific things we can work on."

Sustainability is one critical issue that both international organizations work on, Kim continues, adding, “We work together on health care-related issues; we work together on education.

“We feel that those are the very foundations of the future economic growth that's going to provide the jobs, that's going to provide the future, long-term sustainability, and there's no question that a multilateral system that's joined together at the hip, working together, can be much, much more effective.”

Organizational differences and rivalry aside, Kim adds that the two leaders want to send a clear message to country offices of both the UN and World Bank that the two of them are working very closely together, and “we expect that everyone in the country offices will do their utmost to work as a single, multilateral institution."

“We live in an age, in a time, where we're actually going to test whether multilateralism works, whether the international solutions work, and if we do not produce good formulas for today's problems that work out in the field, the mulilateral structure will lose it's credibility. So, there's much at stake,” Eliasson said.

“The multilateral system is absolutely indispensable; it's indispensable for the world. We've got to make the case; we've got to make the case more clearly. I think one of the ways that we can make the case more clearly is by showing that we can work together effectively...if we can do that in every country of the world,” Kim continued. "We work very effectively in certain instances, especially in emergencies, but if we can work together effectively in every country, in every country in the world, I think there will be no doubt, and everyone will understand that the multilateral system is absolutely indispensable for the world.”

*Photo credit First Solar

Last September, Cleantech Group organized a Water Innovation Summit in Berkeley, California, bringing together stakeholders across the water sector including utilities, investors, entrepreneurs, policy and thought leaders. Organized in a workshop-style format, this two-day event generated thought-provoking conversations on issues such as the utility perspective on innovation, smart water networks and sustainable water management in the oil and gas.

When it comes to water, most conversations are usually important and interesting. Still, we chose to focus on four key takeaways from the summit that we feel will have a growing importance in the near future:

1. Make sure water crises are not wasted – “Never waste a good crisis," Rahm Emanuel once said, and it’s true not just for politics but also for water. The summit participants talked how innovation at a water utility is driven mainly by 3 C’s: Cost, Crisis, and Cool. They agreed that “while all three C’s are of significant importance to a utility, Crisis culled the most attention as growing populations force water providers to seek new sources of water.”

Water crises can be not just an enabler of innovation (Israel is a good example with its innovative drip irrigation techniques and desalination technologies), but also a game changer, helping change the opinions of policy makers and the public. For example, the New York Times reported how in 2009, while his city suffered from a the third year of a severe drought, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders changed his position on recycling wastewater after hearing from biotechnology industry executives that water shortages posed a threat to their businesses and might force them to move away from San Diego.

2. Water becomes the Achilles' heel of fracking – The interrelationships between water and energy (aka the water-energy nexus) is becoming more of an interest for energy companies as energy is becoming a thirstier resource. As the International Energy Agency wrote in its 2012 World Energy Outlook, “water is growing in importance as a criterion for assessing the physical, economic and environmental viability of energy projects.”

One of the examples is hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which is a water-intensive extraction method and has accounted for a significant portion of the increased demand for water in recent years. This trend will only intensify as shale gas production is expected to reach about half of the total gas production in the U.S. by 2035.

The summit participants noted that oil and gas companies are now championing various water innovation opportunities as they realize that water can become their Achilles' heel when it comes to fracking – if fracking competes for water with domestic use, its chances to overcome any sort of public debate are pretty low.

3. It’s agriculture, stupid! – While we tend to focus many times on the consumption of water for energy production or domestic use, we shouldn’t forget that agriculture is by far the top water user. According to UN Water, worldwide agriculture accounts for 70 percent of all water consumption, compared to 22 percent for industry and 8 percent for domestic use (although in developed countries the percentage of industry and domestic uses are higher).

It is not surprising, then, that among the summit participants there was a unanimous agreement that agriculture is “the most important sector in water management.” Following the first point here, it is also not surprising to find out that crises such as subsequent droughts in main farming areas are opening the door for innovative solutions, including water reuse, drip irrigation, and the onset of a water rights market.

Yet these solutions require investments which might become an obstacle as farmers, as Aric Olson, President of Jain Irrigation USA, noted, “can only pass on so much of their costs to customers.” Governments will have to support these investments, which given the vast use of water in agriculture can be the best bang for their buck.

4. Overcoming the "Yuck Factor"– Language matters, and therefore we’ll see growing efforts to replace water solutions terms that don’t give the public much appetite to adopt them, with more suitable ones. Take "recycled wastewater" – many people still refer to this concept as "toilet to tap." This association was used by those opposing an initiative to recycle wastewater in San Diego in 1998 to win public support and take the initiative off the table at the city council.

The notion of treated sewage hooks into the intuitive concept of contagion and contamination, explains Carol Nemeroff, a psychologist at the University of Southern Main. To overcome this, a city must “unhook the current water from its history,” she adds. In Singapore, for example, where about 15 percent of its water originates from recycled wastewater, it is called “NEWater.” Sounds a bit more attractive, right?

And if we’re already getting into language matters, isn’t it time to get rid of the linkage between "waste" and "water?" “It is time to shift our focus away from the elimination of something undesirable to the opportunity to recover valuable resources such as water, energy, nutrients and beneficial products,” recommended Black & Veatch in their 2012 water utility report. This sentiment was also echoed in one of the summit’s recommendations – to change recycled water’s legal categorization as a “waste stream,” explaining that this does little (if anything) to boost its social image.

[Image credit: Cleantech Group]

Raz Godelnik is the co-founder of Eco-Libris and an adjunct faculty at the University of Delaware’s Business School, CUNY SPS and Parsons the New School for Design, teaching courses in green business, sustainable design and new product development. You can follow Raz on Twitter.

You’ve likely heard the statistics – Africa’s economic growth is staggering. During a period in which the global economy is bogged down by a recession and the rest of the world flounders at well under a 2 percent annual GDP growth rate, Africa has seemingly defied the economic landscape registering growth rates of 4.5 percent in 2010, 5.0 percent in 2011, around 6 percent in 2012, and projections exceeding 7 percent by 2015 (UNDP).

Morningstar captured the attention of the investment world last week when it ranked Nile Pan Africa Fund, the only US mutual fund focused exclusively on Africa, number one in performance out of 543 funds in it’s Diversified Emerging Markets Category for the year ended December 31, 2012.

Yet most in the global West refuse to be too impressed by the numbers. Most companies and investors in North America and Europe still balk at the notion of doing business with Africa. After all, we’re talking about Africa – the poorest of the poor. But is it wise to dismiss these reports so effortlessly? Don't most great investors only become successful by risking their assets for the potential of gain when and where others are unwilling to do so?

Smart investment depends upon some degree of due diligence, and I think it’s fair to say that most Westerners simply do not know Africa, much less its investment climate. Most of us have never spent time in Africa and traditional media – our largest window into that world - has been tinted to emit an overwhelming gloom over the “dark continent.” In his book, Africa, Altered States, Ordinary Miracles, Richard Dowden explains how "persistent images of starving children and men with guns have accumulated into our narrative of the continent (because) journalists are sent to get 'the story'…'keep it simple' is the message. Editors want breaking news but have little interest in explanations. The media's problem is that, by covering only disasters and wars, it gives us only a slice of the reality of Africa.”

And so, while most in the West turn a blind eye to reports of stellar economic progress, others are busy cashing in. Leading the investment surge is China, whose direct investment in Africa has leaped from less than $100 million in 2003, to around $15 billion in 2012.

Certainly, there has been much uneasiness globally around the impacts of China’s increasing involvement in Africa. In an Economist article entitled, Africans are asking whether China is making their lunch or eating it, Oliver August pointed out the harm resulting from China’s overall lower quality standards, lack of social and environmental responsibility in business practices and poor labor relations.

Yet, while the debate rages, the fact remains - China is by far Africa’s largest trading partner. On paper, and in the minds of many Africans, this means that China is doing far more than the Western world to both benefit from and contribute to Africa’s robust economic growth.

"We look forward to Chinese enterprises' investments,” says Bernadette Artivor, Executive Director of the Namibia Investment Center. “Investment helps us to fund the construction of transportation and medical infrastructure.” Meyo Akoulouze Maryse, an officer with the Cameroun Investment Promotion Agency, took it one step further. "I am fairly certain that trading with China is better than with Western countries, since China is now rising so quickly. China knows how to develop an economy rapidly. Our relations are good.” Deborah Brautigam‘s book The Dragon’s Gift offers a more complete understanding of the reality behind China’s relationship with Africa.

Concern about China’s approach is no doubt justified, however, one would be hard pressed to argue against Africa’s need for responsible investment dollars. In an age when investors are increasingly aiming to create a positive impact with their money, it is interesting that so many choose to criticize China rather than investing in Africa’s development themselves.

So, what does the world’s second largest economy see that investors in the west are missing?

For starters, Africa is home to much of the world’s best agricultural land, an already enormous and booming labor force, the world’s fastest growing middle-class, rapidly developing infrastructure and governments which are taking enormous strides to liberalize their markets. 

Dig deeper into market opportunities and you will find an IT sector poised to explode. Since 1998, the number of cell phones on the continent has grown from fewer than four million to more than 500 million. A great example of one bold mobile telecommunications company who is reaping rewards in this booming market is Bharti Airtel. After investing over $1 billion in its mobile operations in Africa, the Indian company boasted a profit of US $13 billion in Africa for 2010/11 fiscal year.

According to ITNews Africa, mobile transactions are also revolutionizing future of banking in Africa. Safaricom Kenya’s M-Pesa has taken hold of the East African mobile money industry with it’s “text-me-money” technology which allows users to store money, pay utility bills and complete commercial transactions on their mobiles. Most consumers in the U.S. aren’t even doing that yet. Time Magazine quoted the opinion of California-based mobile-banking innovator Carol Realini, Executive Chairman of Obopay, “Africa is the Silicon Valley of banking. The future of banking is being defined here… It's going to change the world.“

As for the notions of pervasive obstacles and booby traps that terrify the masses from investing in Africa, ask Carsten Brinkschulte, former CEO of Synchronica, a UK-based mobile messaging service provider, whether Africa is worth the risk. “The negative publicity that plagues Africa as a business destination is outdated. While corruption, poor infrastructure and institutional bureaucracy can certainly make for a challenging business environment, Synchronica has found the continent to be incredibly entrepreneurial and backed up with a wealth of highly skilled, resourceful and incredibly talented people.”

Even a few of our most recognizable corporate giants have mingled with the budding economic behemoth in ways that reflect serious commercial interest combined with commitment to positive impact in local communities. Microsoft has long held a commercial, albeit nourishing presence in Africa and Walmart turned heads recently by acquiring Massmart, a leading retailer in Sub-Saharan Africa which happens to rank among the world’s top ESG performers. Visa made a big statement that underscores its perceived alignment between providing financial services to East Africa and improving its balance sheet. Last year, it opened a regional headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya while also establishing an intensive partnership with the government of Rwanda. A handful of our corporate leaders are reaping the rewards for their willingness to pioneer commercial approaches to help develop Africa, yet the idea is still far from entering the mainstream.

Larry Seruma, Chief Investment Officer at the aforementioned Nile Capital Management calls Africa “the world's most underappreciated, undervalued growth story."

Who will take the next great risk to enter an even greater story?

ThredUP is not just a successful online marketplace of “practically new kids' clothing,” but also a company on a mission – “becoming an iconic brand in American homes around making smart choices as a consumer,” explains James Reinhart, its co-founder and CEO. On its way there, ThredUP has made few transitions, most notably last March when it shifted from a peer-to-peer marketplace into an online consignment store.

This transition seems to be successful in terms of volume - 7,000 new customers join ThredUP every month with a 46 percent retention rate as Reinhart told AllThingsD.com in October. Yet not all parents were happy of this shift – “This is such a bad move for the company. They have completely forgotten what made them unique and different for their loyal customers. ThredUP was more than just used clothes...it was a community that this new venture totally ignores. I'm sad that they have taken this path,” was one of the comments following the transition last March.

These sorts of business model adjustments and will likely become increasingly common as a growing number of companies in the sharing economy start looking, just like ThredUP, to shift from being a great story to being a good business. This is why the story of ThredUP’s evolution is an important one – should other companies look at it as an example to follow or to avoid?

ThredUP originally started as a peer-to-peer clothing platform that focused on men’s and women’s shirts. The idea, explains Reinhart, was to capitalize on underutilized assets in everybody’s closets - all the stuff we have there and don’t really wear. Reinhart and his team understood that clothing exchange was a good idea but not a good business because they didn’t manage to generate enough traffic.

So then ThredUP decided to move on to kids’ clothing. Kids, as the company reports, use more than 1,360 articles of clothing by age 17. Not only that this is a costly expense, but parents must also constantly look for ways to get rid of old clothes and make room for the new ones. Hence, ThredUP believed that kids’ clothing are a bigger consumer problem and will provide the company with a better opportunity to scale up and generate improved business results.

ThredUP wanted to bring affordability and convenience to the kids’ clothing market, creating an online swapping platform where parents could trade boxes of used clothes directly with each other. This marketplace became quite successful with 300,000 customers who exchanged about 2 million items in total. Yet, impressive as it may sounds, it wasn’t enough.

The problem as ThredUP learned was that to succeed in such a business, where the business model is based on receiving a small fee for every transaction, you need an enormous scale, such as what you find on eBay for example. But no matter how well ThredUP served the hundreds of thousands of parents that used its platform, it wasn’t eBay and even with 500+ new customers per day joining the site, it was nowhere near to becoming large enough to sustain itself financially.

ThredUP had a very clear choice to make – either it continues to act as a great community service with little chance to succeed as a business, or it needed to make a change in its business model, putting business before community. It chose the latter, announcing on March 7, 2012 that “we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down our swapping service, and focus exclusively on our concierge experience and new consignment shop.”

The re-vamped website, the company explained, takes all the legwork out of traditional peer-to-peer swapping, and “makes sharing and accessing used kids clothing easier than ever.” The process works like this – parents send ThredUP a post-ready bag at no charge  filled with their kids’ clothing. The bag is then evaluated by the company and the parents get paid for items that meet ThredUP’s rigorous acceptance criteria – about 20-30 percent of each item’s resale value. These items will then be offered for sale on ThredUP’s online consignment store. Items that ThredUP won’t accept for reselling are entered into its 100% Re-Use Program.

And the results? According to TechCrunch’s report last October, ThredUP has rapidly grown its user base since it started with the new model and is now trending toward 400,000 customers. Reinhart also said in his interview that ThredUP receives 6,000-10,000 pieces of clothing a day.

These figures are pretty impressive, although of course it’s still far from eBay, where millions of items are listed, bought, or sold daily. Reinhart himself said that ThredUP is looking to vertically expand to “anything you can put in our prepaid bag,” which might suggest that the company doesn’t believe it can generate good business solely from kids’ clothing.

So far, investors seem to have faith in this path - last October, a new investor (Highland Capital Partners) led ThredUP’s $14.5 million Series C round, announcing that “ThredUP is disrupting the $30 billion resale industry by moving something families have been doing offline for generations, online,” and bringing the company’s total raise to date, to $23 million.

While it’s too early to predict whether ThredUP will evolve into a good business, the company has already showed that it’s impossible to be both Freecycle and eBay. Companies need to make a clear choice if their mission is focused on the business component or the community component of their operation and act accordingly. The sooner they figure it out, the better their chances are to succeed.

[Image credit: thredUP]

Raz Godelnik is the co-founder of Eco-Libris and an adjunct faculty at the University of Delaware’s Business School, CUNY SPS and Parsons the New School for Design, teaching courses in green business, sustainable design and new product development. You can follow Raz on Twitter.

A lawsuit brought by Massachusetts auto dealers against Tesla Motors seeking to prevent the company from selling its electric vehicles in company-owned retail stores has been dismissed.

The suit, brought by the Massachusetts State Automobile Dealers Association (MSADA) in Norfolk County Superior Court, alleged that Tesla was violating state franchise laws by opening a company-owned store in Natick, Mass., last September. Judge Kenneth Fishman dismissed the case based on the auto dealers’ lack of standing and failure to state a claim.

“We are delighted by the outright dismissal of this case and the validation that we are operating our business in compliance with the laws and expectations of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” said Elon Musk, Tesla co-founder and CEO.

The suit is the latest in a series of legal challenges brought against Tesla for pursuing an unusual company-owned store model "to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicle technology." Car dealers in New York, Massachusetts, Illinois and Oregon have sued the company for opening company-owned stores that compete with dealerships, which they say is illegal.

“They claim they’re operating under the guise of a non-sales showroom, and we call that out as an outright scam,” Robert O’Koniewski, executive vice president of MSADA, told AutoNews. "If you read the statute, it’s pretty clear: a factory cannot own a store, and a dealer can sue for injunctive relief if they feel the public is being harmed.”

But Tesla claims that its stores, usually located in malls, are designed to educate consumers about the benefits of driving electric vehicles. George Blankenship, a veteran Apple marketer hired by Tesla in July 2010 to build the company's retail strategy and network, said Tesla has studiously complied with state statutes regarding car dealerships.

"We do what we’re capable of doing, and we do whatever they let us do," Blankenship told AutoNews. "It’s unique for each location. If we can’t be a dealer in a mall, we won’t do reservations on-site. We tell people where to go on our website to make a reservation."

Car dealers have successfully prevented Ford and General Motors from opening factory-owned stores in the past, so Tesla will have to tread carefully as it pursues its company-owned model. Still, Musk said Tesla is "confident that other states will also come to this same conclusion" as Massachusetts.

Tesla has over 20 showrooms in North America and over 30 worldwide. The company is also building a network of fast charging stations, called Superchargers, to allow Model S drivers to recharge their vehicles for free on long distance trips. Musk told the New York Times last November that Tesla expects its Supercharger network to cover the entire United States by the end of 2013.

Tesla and its Model S have had a successful year by many metrics. Tesla’s stock price has jumped over 44 percent since this time last year, and the Model S, which the company introduced in the United States in June 2012, was named 2013 car of the year by Motor Trend, Automobile Magazine and Yahoo! Autos.

“Our aspiration with the Model S was to show that an electric car truly can be better than any gasoline car, which is a critical step towards the widespread adoption of sustainable transport,” Musk said upon receiving the Motor Trend recognition. Musk says Tesla’s ambition is to build a great car, not just a great electric car.

Nevertheless, the Model S retails for over $50,000, rendering it prohibitively expensive for most motorists. Tesla has sold just over 250 Model S sedans thus far, which is an almost microscopic drop in the bucket compared with the 404,886 Toyota Camrys sold in 2012, for example.

Musk insists, however, that Tesla is making its technology more affordable, and the company plans to release a $30,000 model in coming years. The “absolute goal of Tesla from the beginning has been to provide a car that you can afford,” said Musk. “There is no effort spared to try to get there as soon as humanly possible.”

[Image credit: pacecharging, Flickr] [Image credit: David Shankbone, Flickr]

Access to electricity is a keystone of modern society and socioeconomic development, but there are different ways of getting there, and they have vastly different impacts and ripple effects at the nexus of society, economy and environment. As opposed to the centralized and mass-produced, Industrial Era electricity grids that have come to characterize our energy infrastructure, policies that foster development of distributed, clean and renewable energy systems afford developing and developed countries substantial advantages and benefits that address these challenges.

Significant strides in providing access to clean, renewable electricity are being made across Central America, but financing large-scale, grid-connected renewable energy projects continues to pose significant challenges to Central America's governments and private sector. Moreover, taking this energy development path doesn't address the problem of providing last-mile connectivity, a particularly salient point given the size of these countries rural populations.

In a June 2012 Worldwatch Institute blog post, Allie Goldstein highlights the cross-cutting benefits fostering small-scale, distributed renewable energy systems can have across the region and beyond.

Sustainable energy for all

Building utility-scale solar, wind and geothermal projects and large grid infrastructure has been deemed the most efficient and fastest route to provide access to electricity, but this approach also creates social, economic and environmental problems that have come to be well recognized. Rapid urbanization and migration from rural areas is putting tremendous strains on the capacity of government, the private sector and ecosystems across Central America. Contributing significantly to urbanization are centralized, mass-produced power generation systems, which effectively act as a magnet for migration to cities and urban areas.

Solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable energy systems are sprouting up across Central America, while construction of the region-wide SIEPAC electricity grid is nearly complete, developments that fall right in line with UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon's Sustainable Energy for All initiative, the Worldwatch Institute noted in June 2012 blog post. As of the end of November, the Central America electricity grid was 99.5% complete.

Progess notwithstanding, an estimated 7.7 million Central Americans have limited access to electricity, relying on traditional biomass for energy, Goldstein points out.

“Though this model has facilitated a dramatic increase in electrification in Central America, 'last-kilometer' electrification makes little economic sense in areas where people's ability to pay for energy remains low. In extreme cases, if users can’t afford a replacement, electrification initiatives effectively have the lifespan of a single light bulb.

“Projects that pair income generation with power generation illustrate how off-grid rural electrification initiatives might be financially self-sustained.”

Nicaragua's PERZA program

Worldwatch holds up Nicaragua's Off-grid Rural Electrification Program (PERZA), funded in the main by the World Bank, as an example. As Goldstein notes, PERZA adds a twist that addressed one prominent obstacle to fostering adoption of local, distributed renewable energy systems: how to make the electricity produced affordable for community members with little in the way of disposable income.

Installation of mini hydropower systems and solar battery charging stations are subsidized through PERZA. The crucial twist comes with a microfinance scheme that offers small business loans and training to rural residents so that they can start businesses and generate the additional income they need to spend on access to electricity.

PERZA concluded at year-end 2011, but its success is clearly evident: 6,863 rural Nicaraguan households gained access to electricity via solar photovoltaic (PV) home energy systems. In addition, seven solar PV charging stations and four mini-hydro power systems were built.

PERZA also was successful in stimulating sustainable local entrepreneurial and business activity. More than 3,000 rural residents participated in PERZA program workshops and meetings. Forty-three business plans were developed, and 10 microfinance institutions now offer loans for rural electrification, according to Worldwatch's report.

As Goldstein highlights, “According to the 2012 Climate Scope report, Nicaragua now has the highest level of green microfinance penetration in Latin America and the Caribbean, with 10 institutions offering green microfinance loans to thousands of low-income borrowers.

“Only time will tell whether the advent of microfinance helps sustain rural energy systems in Nicaragua for decades, but PERZA is an early example of a national-level attempt at integrating electrification with bottom-up small business development.”\

*Photo: Credit Panama Office of Rural Electrification

The author of this post is the winner of Masdar's Water-Energy Nexus Blogging contest and will be guest posting on TriplePundit during the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi.

By Dallas Blaney

Few places in the world are as accustomed to change as Abu Dhabi. In just forty years, this once isolated village on the Persian Gulf has become a modern bustling city and a burgeoning global tourist destination. Today, concert promoters here book big time acts like Madonna and Eminem, the Formula 1 Grand Prix roars through its streets, and an evening stroll down the Corniche reveals a breathtaking view of twisting skyscrapers set against a crisp blue desert sky. In Abu Dhabi, it seems that the passion for change has simply become a defining feature of life and local identity.

Unfortunately, all of this change comes at a high price. Abu Dhabi currently has the dubious distinction of having one of the highest per capita rates of energy consumption in the world. Recent projections suggest that the Emirate faces a further doubling of energy demands over the next decade. To meet these demands, it has relied almost exclusively on traditional sources of power generation, especially natural gas. However, it seems that mounting evidence of the environmental and economic costs of these traditional systems have convinced the political class to consider making the shift to alternative energy sources.

So once again it seems that Abu Dhabi is braced for yet another transformation, only this time the change involves something much more base, something more fundamental than an urban development scheme or a highway construction project. Put simply, this change involves the reconfiguration and diversification of its energy portfolio. And if recent activity is a reliable bellwether, all signs thus far suggest that Abu Dhabi will likely rise to the occasion.

Perhaps the most promising sign is the Emirate's development of a $600 million concentrated solar power station in the remote village of Madinat Zayed. This 741 acre facility, named Shams 1, features a unique combination of solar and natural gas power generation systems, which, when completed, will produce enough energy to power 20,000 homes. This first of a kind system uses solar radiation to produce steam, which is then superheated by natural gas furnaces to yield turbine engine outputs of up to 100 megawatts.

Not only will this project help immensely to satisfy compounding domestic energy demands but it may also yield a commercially viable energy technology system. When compared to a comparable traditional power generation system, this technology yields 175,000 fewer tons of carbon dioxide, which is roughly equivalent to the savings achieved by planting 1.5 million trees or removing 30,000 cars from the road. Once the system is up and running, this achievement will likely position Abu Dhabi among the foremost world leaders in renewable technology development and deployment.

Ultimately, Abu Dhabi's greatest attribute has been and always will be its extraordinary ability and willingness to adapt to new conditions. Given the recent inaction in Washington and elsewhere, let us all hope that Abu Dhabi continues to pursue the development of renewable energy technology. Such technology is not just good news for the people of Abu Dhabi, but it is good news for people everywhere who desire to live in a more verdant and healthy environment.

Ed Note: Travel expenses for the Author and TriplePundit were provided by Masdar.

By Bonnie Hulkower

I used to be ignorant about the origin of my morning cup of Joe.  The specialty coffee craze has been going on for years, but I honestly wasn’t paying attention to labels like fair trade or organic or even if the coffee I drank tasted good. I just wanted it to wake me up. (After enough sugar and cream I find most things taste delicious). But my eyes got truly opened after a recent trip to Guatemala, where Rainforest Alliance set out to demonstrate that coffee quality and sustainable farming do go hand-in-hand. Their Cupping for Quality program, now in its 10th year, only bolstered this notion.

The cuppings are like wine tastings, except with spoons and slurpings. There is a winter cupping in December in Long Beach, California and a spring cupping in March in New York City. The top ten scorers for both cuppings will receive awards at the annual SCAA Exposition held in Boston in April.

I attended the one in Long Beach where cuppers sampled a total of 51 coffees from nine origins, including the first sample from Malawi.  I had never been to a cupping, so I was not sure what to expect.

The hostess asked if I wanted to participate.  After some hesitation, I grabbed a spoon and jumped in. That was where I made my first mistake; coffee at a cupping is always allowed to cool slightly as subtleties in taste can best be discerned when the coffee is not piping hot.  After this, I watched as the experts sniffed, slurped and spat.  They coached me on how to inhale deeply and take a big whiff, how to break the crust of the coffee with a back of the spoon, and how to distinguish the body, acidity, and aroma of the various coffees.

This is the coffee industry’s basic method of  evaluating the beans for quality.  A panel of 15 expert cuppers, representing North American coffee importers, roasters, and retailers, evaluated the profile of each coffee, evaluating each for aroma, acidity, uniformity and balance. Samples were roasted and prepared by Ted Vautrinot and Shawn Anderson of Kean Coffee and Andrew Phillips of Rose Park Roasters. Shawn Hamilton of Java City was the Lead Cupper.

After each country cupping, the cuppers communed around a large table to discuss their score sheets and all the intimate details of the flavors.  Although I was told there “are no wrong answers,” the group as a whole seemed to agree on the descriptions. The sample from Malawi was deemed “underdeveloped,” and one cupper defined it as “there was no there, there.” A coffee from Tanzania was hailed for its “pleasant fruitiness and uniformity.” One from the forests of Papa New Guinea was described as “overripe and fermented.” A sample from Kenya was very popular, even though the descriptions of “brothy” and “vegetal” made it sound more like soup to me.

This year, farms in Kenya, Peru, and Colombia earned top scores.  The highest rank, with 87.1 points, went to the Ndumberi Factory, a cooperative of small farmers in Kenya. Ndumberi is unique in that it has its own wet mill with a cupping lab. The lab allows cooperative members to analyze taste, and focus on quality control. Rainforest Alliance announced the top ten scoring coffees this week.

Maya Albanese, a sustainable agriculture associate with the Rainforest Alliance, said that it was “the most successful cupping yet” for the organization, noting that she’s “seen the quality of the cups and the enthusiasm of top national coffee cuppers increase dramatically.” The top ten scoring coffees were announced this week in a press release from the Alliance.
Rainforest Alliance’s certification seems to take on a holistic approach by encompassing many of the standards from other eco-label and green certification programs-- environmental, wildlife, and fair labor rubrics. Rainforest Alliance also certifies coffee farms in Central America based on standards set by the Sustainable Agriculture Network. They’re concerned with factors like safe working conditions, giving back to the communities, worker education, lowering agrochemical use, waste management, wildlife protection and ecosystem and water conservation. But whether you are an adherent of Rainforest Alliance, or Fair Trade, or prefer the Direct Trade model, it was made clear to me by my cupper instructors that they believed that treating the environment well often results in higher quality coffee beans.  They also seemed to prefer shade grown coffee.

One of the cuppers, Jay Isais, Senior Director of Coffee at Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, told me “that while none of the certification programs is perfect, Rainforest Alliance is one that provides for social, environmental, and ecological considerations.” Isais’s job as a coffee buyer (and Q Grader) is to select certified coffees that also meet his company’s high standards for taste. After the cupping, Isais stated that he is “now convinced that the Rainforest Alliance model is compatible with high quality coffee.”

After years of clueless consumption, my visit to the coffee farms in Guatemala and attendance at the Rainforest Alliance cupping have been quite the revelation. The choices we all make concerning coffee may seem bewildering, considering the variety of special labels and certifications available. And there’s always more to learn about varieties of beans and whether they’ve been grown sustainably. Though on the basic level, Rainforest Alliance’s certification and cupping programs reinforced that the choices I make for the cup of coffee I buy on my way to work can make a difference ecologically, all the while tasting great, too.

The top ten scoring coffees:

Ndumberi Factory	Kenya	87.41
Tunki	Peru	86.91
El Silencio - Luis Fernando Arias Alzate	Colombia	86.88
Tegu Factory	Kenya	86.09
Quechua	Peru	86.00
Santo Tomas 2; Eibar Jose Rojas Pajoy	Colombia	85.44
Gichatha-ini Factory	Kenya	85.18
Ibonia Estate	Kenya	84.46
Coop Sol & Café	Peru	84.25
Yadini Estate	Kenya	84.23

 

image credits: Bonnie Hulkower

Well, sort of. At the time this was written they were merely turned around.

In a bizarre snafu that has managed to offend many customers who have maxed out their credit cards by shopping in their overpriced stores, the retailer Anthropologie pulled a line of tacky $400 candlesticks that many media outlets and bloggers described as racist.

After a rash of blistering coverage from BuzzFeed to Huffington Post, the company decided to quell the outrage by taking the candlesticks off of its site. Well, not really. Even though the products are no longer available on Anthropologie.com, the pictures are still on the website--the catch is that the offending candlesticks are turned around so that no one can see the black “mammy” figurine that at one time was a Washington D.C. souvenir.

The results have been a public relations nightmare for Anthropologie--an awful gift that relentlessly keeps on giving. First, the company sent out a pallid announcement that threw the “independent artisan” who designed these candlesticks under the bus. Anthropologie’s communications department claimed that only two were “extremely inappropriate” and removed them from their website. The only problem is that while they are no longer for sale while Anthropologie’s HR department dials for an emergency cultural sensitivity course, someone monitoring the website only turned the candlesticks around.

Naturally there has been a rather noisy outcry on the company’s Facebook page, which the company chooses to ignore in favor of promoting items such as its Geo Burnout Velvet Dress and Puckered Placket Pullover. Customers have not been impressed; in fact, the more money they have spent at the store the more offended they appear to be. And as with the case with Safeway last May, sparks like this light a fire that spotlights other issues: Anthropologie’s customers are hashing out customer service complaints, and the fact their models are overwhelmingly white.

The whole racist candlesticks episode, to paraphrase Anthropologie, is quite “unfortunate.” The company has supported social enterprise efforts in the past, such as working with artisans in Rwanda who made hand-knitted scarves. Yes, real artisans--not an “artisan” who decided a figurine kebab of a black mammy, a JFK bell (Caroline Kennedy is ticked, I'm sure) and an “Asian” knickknack that looks as if it was lifted from Disneyland’s It’s a Small World ride. The two-foot high candlesticks were already a case study of a hot glue gun craft project gone awry; now some poor thrift shop buying decisions and dubious quality control has gotten a company in hot water. This may end up as a case where the cover up, or turn around, is worse than the original crime.

Leon Kaye, based in Fresno, California, is a sustainability consultant and the editor of GreenGoPost.com. He also contributes to Guardian Sustainable Business; his work has also appeared on Sustainable Brands, Inhabitat and Earth911. You can follow Leon and ask him questions on Twitter or Instagram (greengopost).

Image credit: Anthropologie