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After visiting the Ecuadorian coast, I understand better the gravity of water scarcity. During the dry season, high-cost water is trucked in and delivered to homes and businesses. Although it is an inconvenience to people in the middle or upper class, it often means low-income people can't afford water in their homes.

This helps put the importance of water resource conservation in perspective. Levi Strauss & Co. recently announced that it saved 1 billion liters of water in four years with its Water<Less process alone. "When we first introduced the Water<Less process, a few [suppliers] picked it up," says Michael Kobori, vice president of sustainability for LS&Co. "As their success grew, other suppliers gained interest in the program and the cost saving involved. It started four years ago, and today 24 percent of all Levi’s products are made with the Water<Less process."

LS&Co. plans to amp up the program, aiming to use this process when making 80 percent of its products by 2020. Although these numbers are commendable, it is just the tip of the iceberg when considering all LS&Co. is working on, an approach that started with a realistic look at the scope of the issue at hand.

"Almost 1,000 gallons of water are used throughout the life of a pair of jeans," says Kobori. "This is certainly an impact that we are aware of and that we want to reduce. It is important for the planet and for people all around the world."

This number was calculated during LS&Co.’s recent Product Lifecycle Assessment (LCA), determining that cotton cultivation comprises 680 gallons, consumer use 230 gallons and garment finishing consuming a mere sliver. This means that most water is consumed not in LS&Co. factories, but on 100 million thirsty cotton fields across the globe and in our washing machines -- making LS&Co. water conservation initiatives a bit trickier to implement.

In rising to the challenge of reducing water consumed in cotton production, LS&Co. is working with the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), a nonprofit organization that brings together a variety of stakeholders in the cotton supply chain and takes a holistic approach to sustainable cotton production. This means that LS&Co. is collaborating with competitors to shift the global cotton market.

"Our relationship with the BCI is driven by the fact that in our lifecycle assessment, 68 percent of total water use is consumed in growing cotton," says Kobori. "We really need to focus on cotton production, but we don’t procure the fabric directly. Our relationship is often two or three steps removed."

The impact of BCI is impressive, with its data showing that farmers in China trained in BCI's water-saving techniques used 23 percent less water than nearby farms that didn't use the techniques. LS&Co. is now working with its global suppliers, with a goal of purchasing 75 percent Better Cotton by 2020. For gallons saved, this seems to be a real goldmine.

LS&Co. has also taken bold steps to shape consumer behavior. The company is urging us to change our jean-washing behavior to reduce both water and energy use. LS&Co. CEO Chip Bergh captured headlines last year after saying during an interview, “These jeans are maybe a year old and these have yet to see a washing machine.” For World Water Day, LS&Co. has launched the #WashLessPledge, urging a change in washing behavior and quantifying the impact in water and energy savings.

"The average American washes their jeans after wearing them just twice," says Kobori. "If we all wash them after 10 wearings instead, we can save as much water as the city of San Jose uses in an entire year."

Such initiatives might just have the power to shift American culture to help reduce our water consumptive ways. The LCA revealed that Americans use more energy and water to clean their jeans than people in France, the United Kingdom and China. Less frequent laundering and line-drying helps jeans last longer, which seems to fit with the Levi's brand, which Bergh described last year as "the ultimate in slow fashion" in contrast to fast fashion cycles where clothes are quickly outdated and discarded.

All LS&Co. jeans contain a care tag that states, "wash less, wash cold, line dry, donate or recycle." With this variety of mediums, consumers are getting the message loud and clear.

“It’s time to rethink auto-pilot behaviors like washing your jeans after every wear because in many cases it’s simply not necessary,” says Bergh.

Although the announcement about 1 billion liters of water saved sounds like a big number, there is much more work to do. Unfortunately jeans are a thirsty product and have a big water footprint, but LS&Co.'s efforts to taper it down are impressive.

Image credit: Pexels

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on the IEEFA blog.

By Karl Cates and David Schlissel

The utility and fossil-fuel industries continue to spread a crude canard against the growing popularity of rooftop solar across America.

The lie goes something like this: Households and business that install photovoltaic panels are doing so at the expense of other electricity ratepayers because they are “subsidized” by those that don’t have solar panels.

The truth is this: Rooftop solar provides substantial benefits for everyone, regardless of who installs it. It helps power the homes and shops that adopt it, to be sure, but it has far-reaching benefits for other customers as well. If Jane Doe in Anywhere, USA, puts a solar panel on her roof, every other electricity ratepayer within the footprint of whatever regional grid Jane Doe is tied into will benefit as well.

Honest purveyors of utility-industry fact know this, of course, and say it quite often. So, more and more, does Wall Street. No less a titan than Sanford Burstein & Co., one of the perennially best-rated firms in Institutional Investor’s annual rankings of investment researchers, has studied the issue deeply over the past couple of years and comes away with an unequivocal take on the issue: Rooftop solar, aka photovoltaic solar, means lower peak-hour energy prices for all.

Bernstein lays out the supporting research in a reported published last month that found that the rapid increase in the amount of solar PV available on the electricity grid in California—a seven-fold expansion in only four years, from 0.7 gigawatts in 2010 to 4.8 GW in 2014— had helped reduce system loads so much that peak prices were put off until later in the day, when demand was lower. Lower demand means lower prices.

That report went on to predict that the effect will be amplified inevitably across the state as growth in solar capacity continues. This will probably reduce the value of incremental additions of solar capacity on the California grid, but that’s not the point. The overarching conclusion is that all power consumers in California benefit from lower afternoon power prices, not just those that have rooftop solar PV panels.

The February report builds on earlier important work by Burstein & Co, notably a report the firm distributed to clients in November 2013. Titled “Tilting at Windmills: How Conventional Generators are Losing the Battle with Renewables,” that research found that the rapid growth of solar and wind resources (rooftop solar included) in four of the nation’s major electricity regions had suppressed the output of conventional coal and natural-gas fired generators. That’s good news because the trend also eroded the price at which the output of those conventional generators could be sold. Solar- and wind- powered electricity, in other words, drove market prices down.

This happened—and continues to happen—because renewable resources, which have zero variable costs, have displaced higher-cost conventional generation, lowering the marginal cost of supplying power competitively in wholesale markets or in states that do not regulate the retail price of electricity.

That particular Bernstein & Co. research also noted that by suppressing the output of conventional power plants, solar and wind generation had reduced demand for coal and natural gas. The firm estimated that some 52 million megawatt-hours of coal-fired generation and 42 million megawatt-hours of gas-fired generation was displaced in 2012 alone by wind and solar resources in the four regions it studied. This translates into a reduction of “coal burn” by approximately 30 million tons and “gas burn” by approximately .07 billion cubic feet/day. Bernstein & Co. also said this trend will continue too.

But back to rooftop solar for a second. In addition to driving energy market prices down, it brings environmental benefits by reducing dependence on fossil fuels, and it acts as a hedge against fossil-fuel price spikes.

It’s in every ratepayers best interest. And that’s the truth.

Image credit: Flickr/Arlington County

Karl Cates is IEEFA’s director of media relations; David Schlissel is IEEFA’s director of resource planning analysis.

Embedding sustainability into any organization is often easier said than done. But when the organization has been founded on principals that are in keeping with sustainability, it's an easier conversation to have.  The co-op model is a business structure that by its nature supports the long-term thinking that is key to sustainability. I was curious to know more about how it works and how it's related to the triple bottom line.

Jessy Servi, sustainability manager for Milwaukee's Outpost Natural Foods, the fourth largest consumer food cooperative in the U.S., answered a few questions about her company, how it works and how the co-op model has helped make sustainability a reality.

TriplePundit: Jessy, tell me a little about who Outpost is?

Jessy Servi: We're a community owned cooperative -- a natural and organic grocery store owned by more than 22,000 members of our community. We've been around since 1970 and now have four store locations, a market cafe, and [a] wholesale and catering division. For example, you can find our house-made foods at area hospitals.

3p: What's Outpost's definition of sustainability?

JS: We exist so that our owners have a healthy, diverse and sustainable community. We were founded on the foundation of Earth care and people care. Today, our vision and definition for sustainability is much the same; Outpost will conduct business in a way that meets not only the needs of the present generation but also of future generations. We embrace the challenge to move our operations and actions toward sustainable models and to understand and manage the impact we make on this Earth and in our community, both environmentally and socially.

Outpost believes in the triple bottom line, and our business is structured accordingly. Each year, we publish a sustainability report that tracks our ecological and social footprints. This process allows us to determine material metrics, set goals for future improvement and allows us to share our story with the community.

As a culture, and as an organization, we believe in a continuous growth path; our vision is to thrive financially, socially and environmentally -- setting a positive example for our community and for other cooperatives.

 3p: What are some of the main things you do as an organization to be more sustainable?

JS: Outpost is strongly committed to renewable energy. Since 1999 we have invested in renewables, and we currently offset 100 percent of our store energy use through our partner REpower Now, a program that supports independent renewable energy generators in our state.

We also compost all of our food waste. In fiscal year 2014 we composted over 141 tons of food waste, which avoided 124 metric tons a month of [carbon dioxide equivalent] emissions. This compost gets sent to a local compost facility where it is sold back to the community as soil. In fact, we used that soil to plant 15 raised bed gardens at our newest Mequon store location, where we planted food that supplied our onsite café and central kitchen. You can’t get any more local that that!

Honestly, Outpost has a holistic view of sustainability and as a member of the Sustainable Food Trade Association, we measure impacts in the following 11 key reporting areas: organics, distribution and sourcing, energy use, climate change and air emissions, water use and quality, solid waste reduction, packaging and marketing materials, labor, animal care, sustainability education (internal and external), as well as governance and community engagement.

Additionally we are committed as a whole organization to sustainable solutions as a core strategic theme to reach our 2022 goals. Read our sustainability report for more information here: www.outpost.coop/about/sustainability (Our FY14 report should be out beginning of April)

3p: How does the co-op model work for Outpost?

JS: Co-ops are founded on the belief that we can achieve greater results by working together than we can by working alone. We are a consumer co-op: a business that is voluntarily owned and controlled by the people who use it. 

We’ve come a long way from being the small radical co-op that was started in 1970. However, some things remain the same: like our commitment to being a locally-owned grocer with strong commitment wholesome natural foods, our commitment to diverse neighborhoods and our commitment to sustaining this Earth we all call home! Being a co-op grounds us in the local community and helps us live our vision and values as an organization.

3p: Do you feel that being a co-op makes it easier to be a sustainable company? How?

JS: Yes, because 'concern for community' is one of the seven international principles that govern cooperatives around the world, and it's only natural that the community includes environment and sustainability. It's about what we do today that will impact and improve our community tomorrow. We still live out the values of our founding members, and sustainability was one of our core values.  Back in 1970 our original owners planted seeds for a democratically-run, value-driven business that provided the natural and organic products they were looking for. Today our co-op is supported by over 22,000 owners who are united by the same core beliefs and come to Outpost because they want wholesome food from a sustainable business that walks its talk.

3p: Community outreach and education is a big part of what Outpost does. Can you tell me a little more about what you do in that regard and why?

JS: At Outpost, we envision an ideal world where our community has access to organically- and locally-produced goods, is educated about choices that impact the environment and supports a locally-based economy. For more than 44 years, we have worked to help build our community through sponsorships, food donations and grassroots partnerships. We do this with a variety of programs, partnerships, events and classes as a way to support the community and help work toward our vision.

One example is our Community Partners program where each year four locally-based nonprofit organizations apply to [be] given the opportunity to build greater community awareness of the group and also raise funds for their efforts. (See Community & Education sections of our sustainability report)

3p: Mainstream grocers are finally starting to get on board with sustainability. How are you staying ahead of the curve?

JS: As a cooperative we are able to get direct feedback from our owners about their needs and expectations. This allows us to be able to meet their needs in an efficient and effective way. Since sustainability has been a part of Outpost’s core since the beginning, the community trusts us to be transparent, as we always have been. Telling our story, listening to our owners, providing what they want and always being open to change is how we continue to be a staple in our community.

Jessy Servi is the Sustainability Manager for Outpost Natural Foods, the fourth largest consumer food cooperative in the US.  Leveraging a diverse background in design, education, business, project management, and permaculture, Jessy brings ecological and social awareness to the business arena, promoting a triple bottom line strategy.  Jessy is responsible for tracking and monitoring sustainability in the key areas of: organics, distribution & sourcing, energy, climate change, water, waste, packaging, labor, animal care, consumer education, and governance & community engagement. Jessy is passionate about designing creative and high-performing cultures to be thoughtful stewards, making sound business decisions with respect for future generations.  She manages green teams at all Outpost locations and is responsible for both internal and external communication of sustainability at Outpost. She earned her MBA from Alverno College with a focus on sustainable business management and works developing sustainable urban agriculture leaders in Milwaukee.  She is also an advisor for the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council and a 2014 fellow in the New Leaders Council.

Your poop could actually turn into gold. And no, we are not talking about the Massachusetts fecal bank that pays $40 a scatological session and then turns the end result into pharmaceuticals. We are talking about a new twist on the Midas Touch. At an American Chemical Society press conference yesterday, scientists talked about a potential gold mine that is going from toilets to sewage pipes to wastewater treatment plants.

According to Kathleen Smith, a scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey, metals in trace amounts are everywhere, including in our sewage systems. Nanoparticles that manufacturers tuck into clothing to prevent bad odors, as well as add to hair and body care products and cleaning supplies, all contain some metals. And those metals include gold, silver and platinum. (The same goes for lead, arsenic and other toxins, but that does not mean you should feel guilty about not shopping exclusively at Whole Foods.) So, can they be recovered after being flushed down the toilet or sink drain?

Considering the fact that 7 million tons of biosolids come out of American wastewater treatment plants annually, you could find just about any element in all that sludge. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), about half of that solid waste is sent to landfill or is incinerated. The other half ends up treated and recycled, and much of it used as fertilizer on agricultural land. Yet despite all the nutrients in that muck, that massive amount is only used on 1 percent of the nation’s farmland. That statistic alone should be a hint that there is more potential to that solid waste than we can imagine.

To that end, Dr. Smith and her team of researchers are taking a two-pronged approach to gauge what exactly is in all that waste. First, the team is looking at how to remove some regulated metals from such waste that limit the biosolids’ use for purposes including fertilizing agricultural land. Next, the team will experiment with chemicals, including leachates, which mining companies use to extract metals out of solids such as rock. Smith noted that in a controlled laboratory setting, such chemicals could be used to extract precious metals safely with minimal environmental damage.

The result could be a figurative and literal gold mine. Another research group has estimated that the waste excreted from a community of 1 million people could hold as much as US$13 million worth of precious metals. So, could a potential US$4 billion precious-metals market negate the need to mine virgin land, an environmentally destructive process, for these increasingly difficult-to-find elements?

That amount is hardly going to bother the mining and extractive industries, but it could raise the eyebrows of municipal leaders who struggle with waste on a daily basis. The biggest hurdle, of course, is cost, and whether it would be cost effective to process all that sludge no matter how valuable those metals could be. Plus, as we have often seen with new technologies, what works in the lab may not pan out in the real world. But Smith’s team found one interesting trend: No matter where in the country they tested for samples, they found the concentrations of elements such as gold at similar levels. With extracting metals becoming more expensive and difficult, digging for gold could take on a new meaning in the near future.

Image credit: Heather Lowers, USGS Denver Microbeam Laboratory

Based in Fresno, California, Leon Kaye is a business writer and strategic communications specialist. He has also been featured in The Guardian, Clean Technica, Sustainable Brands, Earth911, Inhabitat, Architect Magazine and Wired.com. When he has time, he shares his thoughts on his own site, GreenGoPost.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Historic droughts, record snowfalls, and the incidence of “superstorms” and other highly anomalous weather seem to be making a stronger impression, and having a greater impact, on those invested in publicly-listed companies. Shareholders are also taking notice of issues related to socioeconomic and political equity, access and opportunity -- such as public disclosure of corporate funding for political action committees (PACs), campaigns and lobbyists.

The latest report from Proxy Preview reveals growing activism on the part of shareholders when it comes to social and environmental issues. A record-breaking 433 social and environmental shareholder resolutions have been filed so far this proxy season, with political spending and climate change driving the majority of them, Proxy Preview highlights.

Proxy proposals highlight environmental, political and socioeconomic concerns

The 2015 Proxy Preview report reveals that corporate spending and activity related to political and environmental matters “continue to vie for top billing with 26 and 27 percent” of the total 433 shareholder resolutions filed so far this proxy season, which lasts until the end of June. Increasingly, according to Proxy Preview:

“These are linked by investors who seek corporate action to bypass some of the vitriol that stymies government solutions.”

Overall, environmental and social governance (ESG) was the subject of the single highest percentage of shareholder resolutions filed this proxy season, at 39 percent. Shareholder resolutions related to corporations' political activities accounts for just over 25 percent of the total, down 4 percentage points from last year's mid-February tally, Proxy Preview notes.

Just environmental and social governance

Drilling down further into the research, results show that the number of shareholder resolutions involving human and labor rights is up 15 percent. Shareholders' concerns regarding “the damaging effects of growing income inequality in the United States” led to “a surge of requests for reports on pay disparity,” Proxy Preview reports.

Workplace diversity is another topic of interest among shareholders. “[W]orkplace diversity proposals (which mostly concern rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and those seeking more diversity among corporate board members) account for 9 percent of the total number of shareholder resolutions filed so far this year."

Proxy Preview also highlights “a surge of proposals – some two dozen – largely filed by or coordinated by the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), a conservative Capitol Hill think tank.” The number of such shareholder proposals filed this year makes up 5 percent of the total, as compared to 4 percent at this time time last year.

This year's shareholder proposals filed or coordinated by NCPPR ask companies “to protect political free speech rights, but all those that have been challenged at the SEC have been omitted,” Proxy Preview elaborates.

Zooming in on climate change, Proxy Preview highlights one new shareholder proposal “that raises questions about transporting oil and gas by train and several taking up different angles on deforestation that connect ecological and human rights impacts.” The former is increasingly making news given the rising number of train derailments, explosions, loss of life and ecological damage being caused by accidents involving trains transporting oil from hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," operations -- primarily in Mountain West U.S. states.

According to this year's proposed shareholder resolutions, investors are also interested in the impact of neonicotinoids (a commonly used chemical found in pesticides) on bees and other organisms.

On the political end of the spectrum, Proxy Preview notes an increase in the number of shareholder proposals regarding political lobbying, which “has clearly surpassed those on election spending.” Regarding human rights, “religious investors are newly asking for an end to fees levied on migrant tobacco workers – although the voting outlook is uncertain – while three proposals on a set of fair employment principles for Israel-Palestine will go to votes for the first time.”

The Proxy Preview 2015 report was produced via collaboration between As You Sow, a nonprofit organization that promotes corporate responsibility through shareholder advocacy and innovative legal strategies; the Sustainable Investments Institute (Si2), which conducts impartial research on social and environmental share-holder proposals; and Proxy Impact, a shareholder advocacy and proxy voting service for foundations, endowments and socially responsible investors.

Image credits: 1), 2) Proxy Preview; 3) Sustainable Investments Institute

SAP had another remarkable year in 2014, as stated in its most recent annual integrated report. Thanks to a booming cloud computing business, the company’s revenues were over €17.5 billion (US$19.3 billion) last year, a respectable 4 percent increase over the previous year’s numbers in what is a hyper-competitive market. But SAP continues to excel in its social and sustainability performance as well. Leveraging its software engineering capacities across the globe, SAP has worked on many social enterprise projects in places as diverse as Brazil and South Africa. The company boasts the business community’s largest commitment to hiring workers on the autism spectrum, as well as setting diversity goals for this decade.

The latest integrated report both tracks SAP’s longstanding initiatives as well as new programs the company says will make it both an attractive workplace and a strong company in the coming years.

On the environmental front, SAP continues to become more efficient. The company’s total energy consumption had a slight uptick, but that should not be surprising considering its workforce grew by 12 percent last year. However, greenhouse gas emissions declined, as did the amount of energy consumed per employee. SAP not only uses clean energy for all of its data centers’ needs, but it also uses renewables for 100 percent of its total electricity consumption — though that last data point is possible because of the company’s purchase of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs).

SAP’s social performance continues to impress as well. In its home country of Germany, as well as its largest market, the U.S. — and in many nations across the world — SAP has won many awards for being a “Great Place to Work.” Part of that reputation is from its ambitious inclusion policies. While the tech industry in Silicon Valley and beyond continues to suffer from a reputation that its leadership and workforce is less diverse than imagined, SAP has a program to increase the number of women within its management ranks to 25 percent by 2017. LGBT employees are also part of this culture of inclusion, and the company regularly holds forums that bring together managers and employees, in person and via the cloud, to discuss how the company can continue to groom new leaders and retain talent.

The company’s social performance extends outward from its campuses and into communities across the world. Last year SAP expanded its Social Sabbatical program, which sends high-performing employees across the world to work with NGOs and entrepreneurs on social enterprise projects. In Brazil, the company has partnered with Emprego Ligado, a social enterprise that operates an online job site tailored to the country’s working class. And in New York City, SAP is working with a six-year public high school, BTECH, which offers a specialized business and technology curriculum for students looking to enter the IT field.

Anyone who wants to implement an aggressive corporate social responsibility program at his or her company should look to SAP as a model. The company uses its best assets -- technology and people -- to be a force for good. With 1,100 nonprofits benefiting from its technology donations and 188,000 employee volunteering hours in 47 countries, SAP proves that a multinational company can still be community oriented at the most micro of levels.

Image credit: MichaelBr90

The Department of Energy is zooming in on U.S. military veterans and Native Americans as the Obama administration continues its effort to spur green job creation and deployment of solar energy.

On March 17, DOE announced it would offer a free public webinar about hiring veterans for solar energy jobs as part of the president's SunShot Initiative. On March 25, the DOE Office of Indian Energy and the Western Area Power Administration will sponsor a live webinar on tribal energy development operation and management best practices.

DOE followed up on these with a March 18 announcement that it had selected 11 Native American tribal communities to deploy energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. In total, DOE will invest nearly $6 million “to accelerate the implementation of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies on tribal lands.” It's expected that the DOE's $6 million will be supplemented by another $7.5 million in cost share by the 11 Native American tribes.

Vets into solar

Numbering nearly 17,000, U.S. military veterans represent almost 10 percent of the nearly 174,000 Americans employed in the U.S. solar energy industry. And the Obama administration is working to see that figure increase. Five leading U.S. solar energy companies – SolarCity, Vivint Solar, Sunrun, SunEdison and SunPower – pledged to interview exiting military vets that graduate from a DOE solar job training pilot program.

A first class of U.S. Marines recently graduated from the pilot phase of the SunShot Initiative's solar industry jobs training program for U.S. military vets at Camp Pendleton, California. As the Energy Department explains, the groundbreaking program prepares “service members for careers in the solar industry as solar photovoltaic system installers, sales representatives, system inspectors and other solar-related opportunities.”

DOE expects 200 military vets will graduate and be well-equipped to make the transition to civilian life by landing jobs in the solar energy industry over the course of the program's pilot phase. In addition to Camp Pendleton, pilot-phase training programs at Fort Carson, Nevada, and Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, are scheduled to begin this spring.

The Energy Department is reinforcing its veterans' solar energy training program with free webinars and other public outreach initiatives. On March 18, DOE co-sponsored “Call to Action! Hire Skilled Veterans Today!.” In addition to discussing “the federal government's efforts to promote the hiring of U.S. vets in the solar workforce, participants learned about vets entering the private sector, best practices in company recruiting and retention of vets, how the post-9/11 GI Bill can aid in the hiring process, and other available federal resources,” the Energy Department explains.

Renewable energy and Native Americans

On March 25, DOE will present a live webinar entitled, “Tribal Energy Development Operation and Management Best Practices.” The latest public outreach effort in its Tribal Renewable Energy Webinar Series, “attendees will learn the challenges and benefits of developing a tribal strategic energy plan, proven methods for fostering and growing management capabilities, and ways to ensure tribal staff and council members have access to key information in order to serve as resources for tribal leaders.”

One day after announcing the webinar, the Energy Department said it would invest $6 million in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects across a selected group of 11 Native American tribes, including Alaska Native villages. Cost-sharing on the part of the tribes is expected to bring the total value of the projects to $13.5 million.

“The Energy Department is committed to helping Native American tribes develop clean, affordable and reliable energy options,” Kathleen Hogan, deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency at the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, was quoted in a press release.

Some $41.8 million has been invested in clean energy projects on Native American tribal lands via the the DOE's Tribal Energy Program, in partnership with the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, since 2002. “By harnessing America’s clean energy on tribal lands, tribes across the country can cut energy bills, spur economic development and advance energy solutions in their local communities.”

A complete list and summary of the Native American tribes and projects is included in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's press release.

*Image credits: 1), 2) U.S. DOE; 3) Bureau of Indian Affairs

By Edward G. Brown

“What? You’re not meditating?” demanded a recent article in the Los Angeles Times. It went on to explore today’s “mindfulness meditation” mania, so popular that it has already sparked the backlash that we fickle beings accord anything that captivates us for longer than a news cycle.

(I’ll say this for our hyper-connected world: These days the backlash comes so fast that there’s less danger of your having overinvested in the original craze it’s lashing back at.)

As a devoted practitioner of meditation, I understand how it brilliantly serves the purposes of relaxation and renewal, and it has the advantage of being practicable anytime and anywhere. It relieves stress. It helps prepare us mentally for a dreaded encounter or a high-stakes meeting. It tunes out the incessant distractions. Tethered to always-on devices, addicted to social media and ensconced in ever less-private workspaces, we find ourselves battling to keep our minds on our chosen topic. Meditation helps us stay in the moment.

But (you knew there was a “but” coming) there’s another equally powerful practice that should more often go hand-in-hand with meditation. I’m talking about seeking solitude.

Solitude could use some better PR. These days most people seem to dread being alone. Maybe they worry they will appear friendless. Maybe they conflate alone with loneliness. Or maybe they are simply habituated to the distraction of others.

So, they flee from solitude when they would do well to seek it out. Sometimes there is simply no substitute for being alone with one’s thoughts -- for secluding oneself for the sole purpose of arriving at an important decision undisturbed by the endless stream of arbitrary, uninvited data that assails us in our hyper-connected lives.

The last thing you want to do in those situations is exactly what many do. Frustrated by the dilemma or embarrassed by their indecision, they just pick a course. Go with their gut. Throw a Hail Mary pass as far down the field as they can and then turn back to the distraction of the moment.

Lord knows I sympathize. As a business founder, teacher, consultant, author, and father, I’m continually looked to for decisions big and small. The temptation is to deliver one on demand – not to dither but come out confidently with a firm, “THIS is what we’ll do.”

That is fine for a lot of day to day decisions. But more significant decisions simply can’t be made without withdrawing from the fray. Is it time to quit your job? Should you blow the whistle on some malfeasance? Is it time to fire this person? Is this relationship a healthy one? Surgery or not?

When you face decisions like that, “being in the moment” doesn’t help you delve into these questions. Instead you want to deliberately and systematically set aside the present moment to think through future matters (the potential outcomes of your possible decision) and past matters (your experience in similar situations and how they turned out). Can I bear losing my work friends if I blow the whistle? Have I given this person, who supports a young family, all the chances I can to succeed here? What if the surgery leaves me worse off? Am I the flawed one in this relationship?

You need to confront yourself. Just the two of you, alone, where you can focal lock – that is, train your mind on the big decision. Once secluded, you can perform what I call “Meditative Relaxercising” practices to keep your mind relaxed. I don’t think of solitude as a vacuum but as a sumptuous place where I can bring together my training in meditation, yoga, and mental hygiene. I’ve written about having survived a desperate period of claustrophobic confinement by drawing on hatha yoga – a holistic form of yoga that encompasses discipline, posture, purification, gestures, breathing, and meditation – and Ujjayi breathing, a type of Pranayama breathing that brings bliss. I embrace my Quiet Time as a poet embraces a muse.

And isn’t that what these momentous decisions need? A little bliss and a generous muse? You don’t want your solitude to be just a silent, sterile place where you coolly select one option or the other. You want it to enrich your options. When you marry meditation to solitude, you free your mind to consider solutions that you hadn’t entertained before.

Look, I’m not saying every important decision requires a half day off or a solitary hike or a retreat to Walden Pond. Maybe you are confronted by consequential decisions all day long, and you’d soon run out of PTO before you ever took a vacation. In such cases, you still don’t want to Hail Mary your decision, nor count on a meditative mind to provide the answer. But what you can do is use the Psychological Martial Arts that I wrote about in my book to still the outside world and create the illusion of seclusion, so that you can focus on the questions at hand.

By all means, cultivate your meditative practices. But don’t short yourself or those around you when you have momentous decisions to make. Embrace solitude with meditation and let them lead you.

Image credit: Flickr/Moyan Brenn

Edward G. Brown is the author of The Time Bandit Solution: Recovering Stolen Time You Never Knew You Had and co-founder of the #1 firm in culture change management consulting and training for the financial services industry, Cohen Brown Management Group. For more information, please visit, www.timebanditsolution.com and www.cohenbrown.com and connect with Mr. Brown on Twitter, @EdwardGBrown.

News that a group of Devon Beavers have been returned to the wild on the River Otter has been welcomed by Friends of the Earth.

The beavers were released back into the River Otter after being found to be disease-free and of European origin. The re-release follows successful campaigning by local people, the Devon Wildlife Trust – which is managing the reintroduction programme - and Friends of the Earth.

Friends of the Earth started legal proceedings in October last year against Government plans to permanently remove the beavers from the wild.

Friends of the Earth campaigner Alasdair Cameron said: "The return of these beavers is fantastically exciting, and is a great
success for all those who fought for them to remain in the wild. Let us hope it is just the start.

“We should bring beavers back to other parts of the UK where they used to live and look at boosting or returning other species too - from the pinemarten to the lynx.

“We need to radically change our relationship with nature. Bringing back our native species will help existing wildlife, repair our ecosystems and bring some life and joy to our landscape”.

 

Picture credit:  © Lutinjoyeux | Dreamstime.com - BEAVER Photo

Responsible Investment charity ShareAction has applauded oil giant BP’s confirmation that it will not renew its membership of a controversial US-based lobbying group which promotes climate change skepticism.

ShareAction asked a question about BP’s membership of the American Legislative Exchange Council at the company’s Annual General Meeting in 2014, and subsequently wrote to BP asking them to leave the group.

BP confirmed its decision not to remain a member during a webinar with its investors last week.

BP’s decision to withdraw from the group puts pressure on Shell, which remains a member of ALEC. Occidental Petroleum announced its departure from ALEC a few months ago, a year after ConocoPhillips did the same.

ShareAction Chief Executive Catherine Howarth said: “BP has said it is committed to moving towards a low carbon future but its membership of ALEC has undercut this public position. It’s good to see the company has decided to stop this Jekyll and Hyde behaviour.

"BP is also a member of European lobby groups which have stood in the way of more rigorous climate change legislation including BusinessEurope, CEFIC, FuelsEurope and OGP. We hope that BP will now review whether the activity of these lobby groups aligns with its commitments on climate change." 

 

Picture credit: BP