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Cities are the 21st-century battleground for mankind’s adoption of sustainability. It is in cities and their surrounding urban areas where 54 percent of the world’s population live, including 270 million Americans.

Cities, rather than farms or factories, are now the largest driver of economic growth. Our top 20 metropolitan areas account for 52 percent of our national GDP. It is inside our cities where we convert most of our consumerism into garbage, emissions and excretions. Most of the pollution we breathe is either sourced inside a city or created to generate electricity for a city. Our daily lives are now tied to the ability of municipal infrastructure to withstand or repair the damaging impacts of storms made more intense by global warming.

The growing weight of human and environmental health impacts is forcing city governments to push aside the legislative luxury of debating whether climate change is real. The health impacts of mass-marketed food porn is forcing mayors and city councils into local actions that attempt to slow an unprecedented increase in obesity and diabetes. Innovation is now the imperative for city mayors, councils, staff and community leaders in search of best practices that will sustain their economies and the health of their citizens. Their combined quest is to enable a community and business environment where adopting green best practices is the default option rather than a “change-order” from the norm.

'Default to green'

Gil Friend is the chief sustainability officer for the city of Palo Alto, California. He exemplifies how city staffs around the world are pushing innovation’s boundaries to discover, and adopt, sustainable solutions. Friend is leading a strategic assessment and stakeholder outreach to surface Palo Alto’s alternative paths for achieving an 80 percent reduction in emissions. It was from Friend that I first heard of the phrase "default to green."

I had the opportunity to talk with Friend at the 2015 Sustainable Brands conference. The following short video is edited to highlight the many innovations achieved by Palo Alto, including:

• 80 percent landfill diversion


• Innovations by the city's municipal utility to achieve carbon-neutral electricity supplies


• The adoption of a new contracting criteria that makes choosing the green supply option the default selection, rather than a change-order, from normal procurement criteria.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZsOmMCoKcOg

Indianapolis

Default to green is not a “California thing.” It is now emerging as a global mega-trend in cities around the world. I saw it on the streets of Indianapolis while visiting this progressive town as the keynote speaker at its annual SustainIndy dinner, an annual event that attracts 500 attendees.

Indianapolis, like most cities, is in constant search of economic development that will generate quality jobs and taxes that can sustain the city’s economy and community services. Under Republican Mayor Greg Ballard’s leadership, the city has invested in sidewalks and hundreds of miles of bike paths that has successfully sparked residential development. The walkability and bike-ability of the city has made it a tourist destination.

Around town, I found conveniently located bike-sharing stands and plenty of riders pedaling to charming urban centers hosting an eclectic mix of restaurants, shops and theaters. Corporate America has discovered that Indianapolis’s investment in walkability and bike-ability has made it highly attractive to millennials. Cummins is building a new office building, and Eli Lilly is both a major employer and one of the 10 coolest places to work in Indianapolis. (If a town has a list of “cool” places to work then that is a sure sign it is attractive to the millennial generation.)

Cities pioneering 100 pecent renewable electricity

Aspen, Colorado, Burlington, Vermont, and Greensburg, Kansas, are now running their cities on 100 percent renewable energy. Austin, Texas, has set a target of sourcing the majority of its electricity from renewable energy in 10 years. That city just recently signed a 400-megawatt solar power contract for an unprecedented average price of 4 cents per kilowatt-hour.

While state utility commissions continue to move at a snail’s pace from their entanglement in 100 years of utility regulatory law, it is city governments that are proving that electrical service can be reliable, cost effective, zero emissions and the default-to-green choice.

21st-century trends shape sustainable development

Default to green is now emerging as a 21st-century best practice. Global manufacturing economies of scale in solar, batteries and smart building technologies are positioning zero net energy buildings as the least cost, and lowest emissions, solution to urban pollution. Autonomous electric vehicles will revolutionize how people move about a city while also dramatically reducing the emissions footprint of urban transportation.

It is our urban millennials that are breaking free from mass-marketed food porn by adopting “lose weight, have fun, live more” obesity and diabetes solutions for themselves and their parents.

It is in our cities where the pioneering 21st-century path away from consumerism’s emissions, excretions and waste is being paved with default-to-green innovations that will enhance human health and our economy.

Image credit: Bill Roth

The world is almost halfway to the 2 degrees Celsius global temperature rise that experts warn we can’t go beyond -- not if we want to maintain life on this planet as we know it.

The U.K.’s Met Office released data this week that shows the global mean temperature at the earth’s surface is set to reach 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The data is from January to September this year. In other words, 2015 could be the year we make it halfway toward the 2 degrees Celsius warming level.

Two degrees Celsius is the level of temperature rise countries are working to stay beneath, and next month they will converge in Paris for climate talks. However, even if the warming is limited to the 2-degrees benchmark, sea-level rise would still be a problem that will affect land where 280 million people currently live, a recently released report shows.

A 2-degrees warming scenario could cause 15.4 feet of sea-level rise. If warming reaches 4 degrees Celsius, land where 627 million people live would be impacted as sea level rise would “submerge land,” according to the report. So, clearly reducing carbon emissions to meet the 2-degrees benchmark would reduce the sea-level rise considerably.

The projections in the report, published by Climate Central, are for post-2100 sea levels. If warming is limited to 2 degrees, “the locked-in sea level rise projected would not submerge land home to more than half of today’s population in any listed megacity,” the report states. But out of the 10 megacities listed with the highest populations that would be affected by sea-level rise, five would still be affected: Shanghai; Hong Kong; Hanoi, Vietnam; Mumbai, India; and Osaka, Japan.

Note that all the megacites that would be affected by sea-level rise are in Asia. The continent is home to the six most at-risk nations for threatened land, as measured by a total 2100 population projection, and nine of the 10 most at-risk nations, as measured by population percentage in the same places. A whopping 74 percent of the global population on at-risk land live in Asia.

Twelve countries have over 10 million people living on at-risk land under the 4-degrees warming scenario, and eight of them are in Asia (India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, Philippines, Thailand and Myanmar). Limiting the temperature rise to 2 degrees would reduce exposure by over 10 million people in all but two nations listed (Thailand and Myanmar).

China is the country with the “most to lose from business as usual,” the report warns. The biggest emitter of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the world, China has 145 million citizens on land at-risk of sea level rise if global temperature rise is allowed to reach 4 degrees Celsius. If the 2-degrees benchmark is maintained, China would have 64 million people at risk.

The Climate Central report builds on a paper published in October by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) of the U.S. by the same authors. The paper focused on sea-level rise in the U.S., finding that over 20 million people in the U.S. live on at-risk land. The total area includes 1,185 to 1,825 municipalities “where land that is home to more than half of the current population would be affected,” the paper states. Among those municipalities are at least 21 cities that have populations of over 100,000.

With “aggressive” carbon emissions reductions, over half of the municipalities would avoid risk -- “if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet remains stable,” according to the paper. And over half of the “U.S. population-weighted area under threat could be spared.”

The findings of both the Climate Central report and the PNAS paper highlight the importance of the powers that be hammering out a good climate agreement next month in Paris.

Image credit: Flickr/U.S. Geological Survey

Misinformation from the likes of Donald Trump and B-lister celebs has not helped their cause, but the stubborn fact is that vaccines have made a huge difference in public health for generations. Aggressive vaccination campaigns led to the eradication of smallpox over 30 years ago and has relegated the once-feared polio to only three countries worldwide. In recent years, community-based vaccination strategies have found success in countries such as Ethiopia, with the result that far more children have been vaccinated and child mortality rates have seen a rapid fall over the past decade.

Nevertheless, the Gates Foundation estimates that 1 in 5 children worldwide still lack access to the most basic vaccines. The result is that an as many as 1.5 million children annually die from diseases, such as pneumonia, which are otherwise easily preventable. Part of the problem is logistics and storage. Refrigeration often becomes a huge problem when vaccines make their way to more remote regions of the world. One Los Angeles-based social enterprise, however, is trying to improve those statistics through the use of technology.

Founded in 2009, Nexleaf Analytics is the brainchild of two UCLA alums who believe cell phone networks and sensors can be paired in order to generate social good. Amongst  projects that seek improvements in potable water, cookstoves and wildlife conservation, Nexleaf’s engineers have leveraged sensors to enable real-time monitoring of vaccine refrigeration to ensure that they remain viable and safe until the exact moment of inoculation.

Part of the firm’s solution is through hardware. Nexleaf has developed a cold chain monitor that tracks the temperature of cold boxes and refrigerators that store vaccines. The monitor’s sensor uses mobile phones to collect and send temperature data from the moment the vaccines depart a warehouse, and then through the various stages of delivery, until they are ready for use. When a shipment of vaccines approaches a temperature that could threaten its safety, the system sends an SMS and email alert. Nexleaf also stores all temperature and location information in order to help improve forecasting, future deliveries and capacity planning.

Hence the development of ColdTrace, which government agencies, NGOs, hospitals and vaccine providers can adopt to improve the deployment of vaccines. The system includes dashboards and reporting capabilities that allow users to monitor a bevy of data points, including historic grid power capacity and temperatures that can be analyzed in order to streamline the delivery of vaccines and medicines.

So far, Nexleaf’s technology has been installed at sites throughout Mozambique, Kenya, Indonesia, Philippines and Laos. This year the company is ramping up its presence in India and Kenya with Tanzania added to the list. With a recently awarded grant from Google, Nexleaf is positioned to expand its reach in even more places, allowing these commonplace technologies to avert an early death, or a lifetime of suffering, for even more people worldwide.

Image credit: Nexleaf Analytics

By Darshan Goswami

There is a green energy revolution underway in India that can increase prosperity for millions of poor families by harnessing the abundant and clean energy of the sun. With the right policies in place, India can easily become a world leader in solar energy. This solar endeavor could also help address acute power shortages, and make a real difference in slowing the pace of climate change.

Since being elected in May 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has outlined his vision for increasing India’s renewable energy capacity five-fold from 30 gigawatts to 175 gigawatts, including a boost in solar power generation from 20 GW to 100 GW. The plan is to achieve these targets by 2022. But to do so, India needs a national energy policy, regulatory programs and innovative financing mechanisms that encourage the development of distributed energy, particularly applications that combine solar generation with energy storage.

India has already taken positive steps by announcing very aggressive goals to meet 40 percent of its energy needs through renewables by 2030. I firmly believe that, with favorable policies and strategic economic investments, India could meet all of its energy needs through renewables by 2050.

Solar power potential in India

India is endowed with abundant free solar energy. Using the country’s deserts and farm land and taking advantage of 300 to 330 sunny days a year, India could easily generate 5,000 trillion kilowatt-hours of solar energy. In other words, India could easily install around 1,000 GW of solar generation — equivalent to four times the current peak power demand (about 250 GW) — using just 0.50 percent of its land. In addition, India can produce over 200 GW from wind power.

As economist and activist Jeremy Rifkin said, while speaking in New Delhi in January 2012: “India is the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy sources and, if properly utilized, India can realize its place in the world as a great power — but political will is required for the eventual shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy.”

India is both densely populated and has high solar insolation, providing ideal conditions for the exponential growth of solar power as a future energy source. With GDP growing at about 8 percent, solar photovoltaic power is the only renewable energy resource that can bridge the ‘gap’ between supply and demand. Solar energy can transform India and help to bring about decentralized distribution of energy, thereby empowering people at the grassroots level and eliminating the need for costly expansion of transmission and distribution systems.

How can india achieve its economic, environmental and energy goals?

Like other developing economies, much of India’s energy currently comes from coal. But, as with other countries, use of fossil fuels has led to crippling pollution, dramatic public health problems and global debate on climate change. However, these countries (especially India), can turn to the sun for a much cleaner source of energy. After decades of promise, the technology now exists to replace our dangerous addiction to fossil and nuclear power plants with cheap, clean solar energy.

For India, a combination of solar power and energy storage is the answer to true energy independence. For their part, the Indian government has taken several measurable steps toward improving infrastructure and power reliability but, more needs to be done — and fast. Along with expediting the adoption of solar and other renewable energy resources, to secure its energy future India urgently needs to implement innovative policies and financing mechanisms (such as capital and interest subsidies, viability gap funding, concessional finance, etc.) to promote increased use of abundant, sustainable, solar energy.

In addition, microgrids have the potential to change the way communities generate and use energy, can reduce costs, increase reliability and improve environmental performance. Microgrids can be used to take substantial electrical load off the existing power grid and so reduce the need for building new or expanding existing transmission and distribution systems.

By implementing the following nine strategies, India can begin to become a solar super power

1. Develop a national renewable energy (RE) policy: Enact and deploy a comprehensive new energy roadmap or innovative RE policies (e.g., PPAs, Net Metering, FIT, etc.) without delay. In addition, set National Renewable Energy Standards/Policy such as 20 percent by 2020, 40 percent by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050 — to create demand, new industries and innovation, and a new wave of green jobs.

2. Invite international developers to meet the revised JSNM targets of 100 GW of solar and 75 MW of wind by 2022 and beyond.

3. Electrifying transportation: Expedite a move to electrify transportation by encouraging expanded use of electric vehicles (EV) and plug-in hybrids, and deployment of solar-powered EV charging stations around the country. Develop and implement time-of-day pricing to encourage charging of vehicles at night and other times when peak demand is low. In addition, launch the public transportation system of the future with zero-emission battery-powered Electric Buses in all major cities to reduce air pollution and reverse climate change.

4. Energy efficiency: Make Energy Efficiency a high priority by expediting the development and implementation of cost-effective energy efficiency standards. To reduce the long term demand for energy, engage states, industrial companies, utilities and other stakeholders to accelerate energy efficiency investments such as large scale nationwide use of LED lamps.

5. Utility-Scale projects: Phase out conventional energy subsidies, and develop a long term plan to replace fossil and nuclear plants with utility-scale renewable generation.

6. Innovative financing solution: Provide innovative financing (including Tax-Free Solar Bonds or Green Infrastructure Bonds, accelerated depreciation mechanism, and access to credit at globally competitive rates, etc.) to instill more confidence from potential investors and decrease the cost of financing for renewable energy projects . Create and fund a national smart infrastructure bank for renewable energy.

7. Develop large-scale “Solar Manufacturing Hubs” in India to facilitate mass production of PV, CSP and CPV equipment.

8. Decentralized energy: Avoid future fossil fuel investments in India and, instead, emphasize nationwide deployment of community scale solar projects (installing 100 million solar roofs, solar co-operatives, and solar cities, etc.) and microgrids with storage. India’s present 40GW solar target should be extended to include photovoltaic panels on the rooftop of every home in India, generating enough power to reduce the country’s massive dependence on fossil fuels.

9. Develop Energy Storage including thermal, grid battery storage (e.g., Tesla Powerwall home battery backup), compressed air/gas, vehicles-to-grid/home, pumped hydro, fuel cells or hydrogen (H2 - produced from renewable energy only), flywheels, superconducting magnets and super capacitors. Develop a “hydrogen economy” plan. If done successfully, hydrogen and electricity will eventually become society’s primary energy carriers for the twenty-first century.

Conclusion

India is standing on the threshold of a green energy revolution that can light up a new era of energy, economic and environmental security. To achieve this goal India needs to fundamentally transform the manner in which it produces, distributes and consumes energy. By doing so, India can reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, create millions of new jobs, and enhance its global competitiveness while decreasing carbon emissions and slowing climate change.

Given its abundant solar insolation, India has already outlined clear plans for future energy production from the sun. Barriers to implementing this renewable energy plan seem to be primarily social and political, rather than technological or economic. The technology is well established and available. If properly developed and used, India’s abundantly available renewable resources could meet all of its energy demand by 2030. Meanwhile, existing generation could be converted to renewable energy by 2050, and used for maintaining a reliable power supply in the interim.

Solar energy offers India the theoretical potential to provide all its long-term power needs. Toward that goal, India has revised its target to reach 100 GW of solar capacity by 2022 and recently announced that 40 percent of its total energy mix would come from alternative sources by 2030. These targets are realistic, desirable and fully achievable.

All that is needed now to make this concept a reality is political commitment and appropriate investments and funding for building many more solar power systems, solar farms, hybrid solar-natural gas plants, solar thermal storage and advanced battery-based grid energy storage systems. Excess energy generated from solar could be stored in various forms and then used during times of peak demand. Investment in these technologies would provide an economic stimulus of at least $1 trillion, and perhaps much more if all indirect effects are included. Given its abundant sunshine, India could even use solar power to produce “solar fuels” (e.g., using electrolysis to extract hydrogen or liquid hydrogen from water), which could be exported at an unimaginable scale to meet the voracious demand for clean energy from the big north Asian economies.

Solar energy provides a golden opportunity for India to move toward a 100 percent clean energy future while reducing poverty, ensuring energy security and combating climate change. Solar energy has the potential to propel India forward as a “Solar Super Power.” However, for India to meet its future energy needs, it can no longer afford to delay deployment of solar energy.

Image credit: Flickr/hjl

Darshan Goswami has more than 40 years of experience in the energy field. He worked as a Project Manager for Renewable Energy, Microgrid and Smart Grid projects at the United States Department of Energy (DOE) in Pittsburgh. Mr. Goswami is a registered professional electrical engineer with a passion and commitment to promote, develop and deploy renewable energy resources and the hydrogen economy. In dedication to his life serving humanity and poor people, the author supports: India Foundation for Children Education and Care, Inc. 

By TJ Faircloth

We are at the same tipping point now with Big Oil and its dirty partners that made Big Tobacco a pariah decades ago. Just as federal investigations unearthed the outrageous extent to which the tobacco industry lied, deceived and cheated its way around commonsense public health protections, so, too, will the New York attorney general's investigation into ExxonMobil allow us to see the dirty truth behind big polluters and their PR.

1. Tip of the iceberg

If it’s anything like what happened with Big Tobacco, this investigation might well spur other attorneys general to investigate the actions of not just ExxonMobil, but also a suite of fossil fuel corporations that may also have obscured information about the role fossil fuel extraction and combustion have played in driving climate change. Not to mention the ways these corporations have used that information to slow, water down and block climate policies.

2. Parallels to Big Tobacco

We're at the same tipping point that we faced with Big Tobacco in the 1990s. At that time, investigations by attorneys general resulted in a massive legal settlement, known as the Master Settlement Agreement, and forced the release of millions of internal documents. And in 2006, a federal judge ruled that tobacco corporations had knowingly deceived the public. These and other legal actions shaped the current public climate, in which Big Tobacco is barred from participating in public health policymaking. We can now see a future in which fossil fuel corporations will be regarded in the same light.

3. What this means for COP21 and beyond

This investigation dovetails with the growth of a global movement to address the conflict of interest inherent in allowing polluters like ExxonMobil to have a seat at the negotiating table. To date, ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel corporations have heavily influenced climate policymaking -- at the U.N. and in national governments -- via their lobbyists and front groups like the American Petroleum Institute. This development peels back any veneer of impartiality and reveals their true intentions. After decades of taking lessons in deception from Big Tobacco’s playbook, it’s Big Oil’s turn to reckon with its abuses. This is Big Oil’s Big Tobacco moment. Image credit: Flickr/Mike Mozart TJ Faircloth is deputy director of campaigns and research for Corporate Accountability International. He has a background and focus on international policy and strategic corporate research.

While Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people have greater ambition than their white colleagues and enjoy their work more, 30% of employees in the UK have witnessed or experienced racial harassment in the workplace in the last year alone, an increase from previous years, according to a new report from Business in the Community (BITC).

The Race at Work report, undertaken with research partner YouGov, heard from 24,457 people in employment across the UK, making it the largest survey of race at work ever undertaken in the UK.

Sandra Kerr OBE, race equality director at BITC said: “It is clear that ethnic minorities’ experiences of work are still not equal to their white peers. Despite having greater enjoyment and ambition for work, the experience of the workplace processes and cultures for BAME employees is certainly not ideal.

“This is compounded by the extremely worrying finding that incidents of racial harassment and bullying appear to be on the rise. The scale of this challenge is immense and needs immediate action. As a result, we are making specific recommendations to both government and employers to ensure that the voices of 24,457 people are heard.”

The report calls for the government to commit to ensuring that the UK Corporate Governance Code’s definition of diversity for listed companies includes ‘and race’ as well as use its procurement spending power to ensure that businesses that tender for public contracts can demonstrate a commitment to race diversity.

The BITC also urges the government to draw up a policy framework on race to promote good practice and close the persistent unemployment gap and consider commissioning a review into race equality in the workplace with focus on promotions at senior management levels, similar to Lord Davies of Abersoch’s review of women on boards.

Rebecca Hilsenrath, ceo of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, commented: “We welcome this report as it provides further evidence of the roadblocks to opportunity that ethnic minorities still face in our workplaces.

“Is Britain Fairer?, our wide-ranging report of progress towards equality in Britain published last week, shows that people from almost every ethnic minority group suffered higher rates of unemployment and received lower pay than their white colleagues. Over the five year period to 2013, African/Caribbean/Black people had the largest drop in hourly pay (a fall of £1.20), bringing their pay down to £10.20 compared to £10.60 for White workers.

“This is why we have set challenges for government and others to improve fairness at work by encouraging fair employment practices, closing pay gaps, improving race diversity at senior levels and tackling racial harassment.

“There is no room for complacency. We must all take concerted action to create a country where merit and ability, not race or skin colour, determine your opportunities.” 

 

Picture credit: © Konstantin Chagin | Dreamstime.com 

ExxonMobil's nasty habit of climate change denial has been the subject of many a news article for many a year without gaining any traction. The issue recently bubbled up again as reporters focus on emails that detail what the company's top executives actually knew about climate change -- and when they knew it. In any other year you could assume that ExxonMobil will easily shrug off the controversy, just as it has always done.

However, this year is different. This time, ExxonMobil's emails are giving its critics hard evidence that the company lied to its own investors as well as the public, sparking an investigation by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. And there are at least two more factors that should give company executives the jitters.

1. President Obama's "rhymes with bucket" list

One big difference this year is President Barack Obama's newly aggressive pursuit of an environmental legacy as he approaches his final year in office. In contrast to the very accommodating "all of the above" energy strategy he pursued for his first seven years in office, the president has come out swinging in favor of renewable energy leading up to critical climate talks in Paris beginning on Nov. 30.

One huge warning sign for ExxonMobil occurred just last Friday, when the president definitively put a stop to the proposed Keystone XL crude oil pipeline. In doing so he turned down a request from the pipeline owner, TransCanada, to suspend the permit process for at least 12 months. That would have let the clock run past his last day in office, effectively letting him off the hook for the decision.

For Obama-watchers, the willingness to take credit for killing the pipeline came as no surprise, especially after last month's Interior Department announcement that partially banned Arctic oil drilling. Despite facing intense opposition in Congress from the usual suspects, Obama campaigned for his second term with a bucket list of clean energy initiatives in hand, including a major lease initiative for tapping the rich wind energy resources off the Atlantic coast.

You can trace the warning signs even further back. While accepting donations from oil-related individuals, Obama leveraged clean energy during his first campaign, and he singled out ExxonMobil as a symbol for the wrong way to do energy. The magazine Entrepreneur took note of the president's fraught relationship with ExxonMobil in March 2009, citing this speech:

"I want to be clear," Obama said shortly after taking office. "We have made our choice: America will not be held hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes and a warming planet. We will not be put off from action because action is hard. Now is the time to make the tough choices."

In addition to Schneiderman's announcement, environmental groups have already put in formal requests for a Justice Department investigation of ExxonMobil's climate change lies. Given his past and recent history, it's quite likely that the president will not be content to sit back and let the New York Attorney General do all the work.

2. Collapse of the "energy poverty" argument

ExxonMobil critics often compare the company's anti-science activities to the war of obfuscation that the U.S. tobacco industry has waged in order to forestall regulation. It's an apt comparison, given that some of the same lobbying groups -- especially the Heartland Institute -- have been deeply embedded in both the tobacco and fossil fuel industries.

However, the recent scandal enveloping Volkswagen has provided the public with a clear example of the extent to which a company's actual practices can completely undercut all of its PR team's hard work. While Volkswagen attempts to burnish its green image with its "Think Blue" campaign, there is ample evidence that the company lied to hundreds of thousands of car buyers about its supposedly "clean" diesel engine emissions.

In that context, consider the "energy poverty" argument that ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson has adopted in recent years. Casting his company as a white knight bringing light to emerging economies, he recently put forth this line for ExxonMobil shareholders to grab:

"What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?"

ExxonMobil's 2012 Corporate Citizen Report expands on the salvation-from-energy-poverty theme, emphasizing the unique power of fossil fuels to literally save lives:

"In the coming decades, society will continue to face complex challenges related to a growing world population, economic growth, climate change, food security and public health … We must recognize that none of the challenges we face can be addressed without reliable and affordable access to energy. Energy powers our offices and schools. It runs life-saving medical equipment and operating rooms. It manufactures vaccines and transports medical personnel."

That line of reasoning may have helped the company slip by its critics in the past, but it is quickly collapsing as scientists begin to establish firm evidence linking climate change to drought, extreme weather events and other sources of increased human misery, many of which have the worst impacts among the vulnerable populations that ExxonMobil purports to save.

As of this writing, ExxonMobil has yet to respond to a subpoena issued by Schneiderman, asking for financial records, as well as emails and other documents, so stay tuned.

Image credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza via whitehouse.gov

A massive new wind energy transmission project from the Houston-based company Clean Line Energy passed an important procedural milestone last week. And the timing perfectly demonstrates why projects like the Keystone XL oil pipeline are facing increased opposition from the public.

On Friday, President Barack Obama exercised his authority to deny permission for construction of the oil pipeline project, just two days after his administration gave a thumbs-up to the required environmental review for the wind energy project.

The fossil fuel lobby has routinely accused the president of picking energy "winners and losers," and at first glance the two projects seem to support their case. After all, both involve transporting energy from one place to another; both require the taking of right-of-way from property owners; and both will create relatively few direct and permanent jobs once completed. However, a comparison between the two reveals some critical distinctions.

Wind energy transmission and jobs, jobs, jobs

Clean Line Energy still has some steps to complete before shovels go into the ground, but the company's 720-mile Plains & Eastern wind energy transmission project passed an important hurdle last week when the Energy Department released its final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project.

At four times the wattage of the Hoover Dam, Clean Line is billing Plains & Eastern as the "largest clean energy infrastructure project in the U.S.," and in that regard it is expected to create thousands of temporary construction jobs, just like Keystone XL would have. However, the comparison ends there. Clean Line anticipates that construction of the new transmission line will also support hundreds of manufacturing jobs in the vicinity of its route through Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas. That's a clear contrast with Keystone XL, for which TransCanada procured steel pipe manufactured overseas after promising that the bulk of it would be made in the U.S.

When Clean Line announced the Energy Department's seal of approval, its president, Michael Skelly, noted that the benefits of a private-sector investment of $1 billion in the transmission line would be amplified by enabling the wind-rich Oklahoma Panhandle region to take full advantage of its renewable energy resources. According to Clean Line, "several billions of dollars" will be invested in new facilities in the Panhandle.

Clean Line also emphasizes that the wind energy transmission project will directly benefit consumers in the mid-South and Southeastern U.S. -- including millions of customers served by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) -- with access to an ample supply of clean, competitively priced electricity. These states have less than optimal wind energy resources, and the new line will provide them with 3,500 megawatts of electricity sourced from wind.

Arkansas will also get 500 megawatts of wind energy from Oklahoma through the construction of a $100 million converter station, about enough to power 160,000 homes each year.

In Tennessee, local officials are already looking forward to the economic boost provided by new supplies of clean energy, as described by the president of the state's Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Catherine Glover:

"Tennessee is well-positioned to be a clean energy leader, and this important infrastructure project will help attract new business investment and spur job creation in the state."

Speaking of the TVA: In 2010, Clean Line commissioned a report to tote up the economic benefits of the project to southeastern states, with a particular focus on TVA's aggressive pursuit of sustainable new sources of electricity. Take a look at some of the points listed in the report, keeping in mind that the Keystone XL pipeline was not designed to serve U.S. energy consumers:

Lower air pollutant emissions: The Clean Line Project is forecast to decrease 2016 U.S. emissions of 8,543 tons of NO x , 37,641 tons of SO2, 14,261,363 tons of CO2, and 90 pounds of mercury. The CO2 reduction is equal to eliminating approximately 2 million cars.

Creates renewable competition: The project increases competition in renewable supply in the Southeastern U.S. and will lower costs to consumers of using renewable power.

Greater transmission reliability: The project increases transmission capacity and grid reliability. This is especially important in light of potential for coal power plant retirements and the lack of inter-regional transmission projects.

Lower water consumption: The project lowers use of thermal power plants, and hence, TVA coal power plant water use by 1,273,700 acre-feet per year in 2016.

Lower spot wholesale market power prices: TVA wholesale power prices will decrease $4 per megawatt in 2016. This is due to the 7,000 MW of zero variable cost power injection.

Increased jobs: The project results in new jobs for construction and operation of the wind power plants and transmission lines.

Other economic benefits: The project also provides indirect economic benefit (i.e., multiplier effects), tax revenues, royalties, manufacturing development, and other economic development opportunities.

Meeting domestic production and stable annual power prices: The project provides greater ability to meet renewable standards which results in domestic production of electricity with a stable annual price, i.e., no annual fuel price uncertainty.

The Keystone XL pipeline

Against this backdrop, now take another look at the Keystone XL pipeline. The project would have brought crude oil from oil sands fields in Canada, down through the midsection of the U.S. to Gulf Coast refineries. It was touted as a badly needed job-creating engine for the U.S. in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial collapse, but a State Department analysis concluded that aside from temporary construction jobs, the benefit to the U.S. would add up to 35 permanent positions.

For those 35 jobs, property owners and communities throughout the length of the pipeline would be saddled with the risk of a pipeline leak, break or other mishap. The Pegasus pipeline disaster of 2013 and the 2010 Enbridge pipeline disaster clearly illustrate the impacts involved.

That also becomes clear when you look at the reaction of two key federal agencies to the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for Keystone XL, which was prepared by a TransCanada consultant on behalf of the State Department. The Environmental Protection Agency gave the EIS a polite but strongly worded failing grade, and the Interior Department red-flagged it for potential impacts on national parks.

Ironically, while the Oklahoma economy stands to benefit enormously from the new wind energy transmission project, one of its top elected officials is U.S. Senator and well known renewable energy antagonist James Inhofe.

Given Sen. Inhofe's frequent objections to President Obama's energy policies, it's little wonder that he was excluded from the celebratory press release that Clean Line issued last week (here's that link again), or that he declined to mark the occasion with his own statement of support. However, he did have something to say about the Keystone XL permit denial, so we'll leave you an excerpt:

"It comes as no surprise that after years of unnecessary delay and political gamesmanship, the president rejected the Keystone XL pipeline. His action denies tens of thousands of Americans of new, well-paying jobs and demonstrates his ambivalence towards American energy independence."

Image (screenshot): via Clean Line Energy.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is still overlooked when it comes to an overall discussion of the global clean energy and clean technology sectors.

While the physics behind the concept of CCS makes logical sense, many governments and companies are unwilling to invest in such projects, as the costs are believed by many within the energy sector to be far too expensive for what is often viewed as an unproven technology.

A handful of projects exist across the globe, but others have languished or have even been canceled because of their 10-figure price tags. Therefore, Shell’s US$1 billion Quest CCS project in Alberta’s oil sands will serve as a barometer of whether CCS will catch on across the globe or be brushed aside for other clean technology solutions.

First announced over three years ago, Quest recently started its commercial operations. Located about 18 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the project will capture about a third of the emissions from Shell’s Scotford upgrader, a facility that churns bitumen from excavated oil sands into synthetic crude.  Trapped emissions in turn are then forced through a 40-mile pipeline, and then are injected 1.2 miles underground into what Shell says are impermeable rock formations. The Quest project underwent a pilot run earlier this year, during which 200,000 tons of carbon dioxide were sequestered without any incident.

Shell touts several benefits of the project. On the economic front, the company says almost 2,000 people were involved with Quest’s concept, design and construction, with an average of 400 skilled workers employed for approximately 30 months. Then there are the environmental benefits. During its operation, the plant should be able to capture and then sequester about 1 million tons of CO2 annually — which according to Shell is the equivalent of removing 250,000 cars from the road. While Shell is the majority owner (Chevron and Marathon Oil each have a 20 percent stake in Quest), the project was heavily subsidized. In fact, almost two-thirds of the project was funded publicly, mostly from Alberta’s provincial government, with the federal government of Canada also making a contribution.

In return for receiving those subsides, Shell insists it is going to share information on Quest’s design and operations publicly so that CCS can gain traction across the globe. Of the world’s largest energy companies, Shell has been most aggressive when it comes to CCS, with similar projects underway in Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom. But overall, CSS confronts strong headwinds worldwide, especially in North America.

Last week the Obama administration shut down the Keystone XL pipeline project, which is a huge setback for energy companies that have invested in the oil sands. Plunging global petroleum prices have made the oil sands a less financially attractive option, and claims that Keystone is a “jobs creator” ring hollow when U.S. unemployment has dropped to 5 percent. Furthermore, the technology is just too expensive — many energy companies and utilities are not willing to spend money on a project that is still in the beta testing stage. Some environmental advocacy groups, including Greenpeace, argue that monies for CCS projects should be diverted to accelerating the deployment of renewable energy worldwide.

Nevertheless, despite the narrowing price parity between renewable and conventional sources of energy, gasoline and diesel will still be the fuel of choice for automobiles and trucks for at least the next few decades. And the adoption of CCS has the potential to improve the oil extraction rates of existing oil fields. For example, in partnership with the renewable energy company Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s national oil company, ADNOC, is building a CCS plant to improve recovery rates in oil fields outside the UAE capital.

If the Quest project can prove to to be an asset and not a liability for Shell, watch for its competitors to take notice and launch similar projects across the globe.

Image credit: Flickr/Howl Arts Collective

By Eban Goodstein

The big question about business sustainability has always been: Can it scale?

In her highly readable and well argued new book, "Green Giants," Freya Williams answers with a definitive yes. The book is subtitled: "How Smart Companies Turn Sustainability Into Billion-Dollar Businesses." Williams looks at nine billion-dollar brands that have been built on a sustainability mission, and identifies the factors that got them to this scale.

The list includes five companies: Chipotle, Unilever, Whole Foods, Natura and Tesla. In addition there are four product lines or business units: Ikea’s sustainable home products, GE Ecomagination, Nike FlyKnit and Toyota Prius.

Williams provides an elegant framework for analyzing the success of these brands. At the core of course is the sustainability mission, or what Williams calls purpose. She provides an excellent overview of the rise and dominance of Milton Friedman’s shareholder value maximization credo, and details specifically how firms guided instead by purpose are now succeeding at scale in the marketplace. Other chapters focus in interesting ways on more familiar terrain: iconoclastic leadership, disruptive business models, and a “built-in, not bolted on” approach to mission.

Williams is CEO, North America, at the marketing and strategy firm Futerra. She brings her own research background to the particularly valuable chapter on mainstream appeal. Billion-dollar brands can only be built on a “middle green” customer base — the 66 percent of Americans for whom sustainable attributes are nice-to-have, but not must-have. To reach the mainstream, green products need to be personalized, normalized, modernized, priced competitively and sometimes, as Tesla has shown, testosterone-injected.

Bookending the idea of purpose is a final chapter on “behaving your way to billions." Companies that aspire to succeed on the basis of mission cannot afford to violate the implicit behavioral contract they establish with customers, employers and other stakeholders. Williams highlights Uber as a company that seemed to launch itself around a social purpose, but lost its way in terms of maintaining its behavioral contract with consumers, workers and communities.

Along with Andrew Winston’s "Big Pivot," Williams is the best book on business sustainability of the last two years. While Winston explores the frontier, Williams shows how sustainability as core business strategy has quickly gone to scale over the last few years. Williams notes that "Green Giants" could not have been written as recently as two years ago, and also offers predictions on the next billion-dollar brands, including Airbnb, Warby Parker and Honest Co. I would add Clif Bar to her list.

The book is particularly useful for introductory courses in business sustainability in that it covers all the key dimensions of a purpose-driven business strategy: mission, leadership, integration, innovation, customer appeal and culture. It also offers through a wealth of examples successful tactics for pursuing each of the strategies.

"Green Giants" does not answer the meta question of whether the Toyota Prius or the Tesla represent fast enough progress on the road to truly sustainable transportation. Nor does the book grapple with the immense challenge of fully engaging gigantic organizations with a top-down social purpose — a key issue, for example, faced by Unilever CEO Paul Polman. But the successful change in direction from the destructive, narrow pursuit of shareholder value that Williams sketches out is inspiring. And her examples show that mission-driven business, and the solutions they innovate, can scale rapidly. On this critical dimension, big has become beautiful. Or as they might say in Paris… “Jolie Green Giant.”

Eban Goodstein is an economist and is Director of the MBA in Sustainability and the Center for Environmental Policy at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.