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Fuel cells have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to beating out lithium-ion batteries for domination of the emerging electric vehicle market. "A lot" is an understatement. When you ask auto industry followers about the potential for fuel cell electric vehicles, you are likely to be met with rolled eyes and a repetition of the same old joke: "They say fuel cells are the next big thing, and they've been saying that for 30 years."

However, if you take a look at what's been going on in at least one specialty niche of the EV market, you can catch a glimpse of the possibility for fuel cells to win out, at least for some applications. That potential is illustrated by Plug Power and Ace Hardware, which have paired up to bring entire fleets of fuel cell electric vehicles into shipping and handling operations.

Fuel cell EVs for warehouses

Plug Power first came across Triple Pundit's radar in 2012. Though the auto industry's interest in fuel cell EVs was on the wane back then, companies like Plug Power recognized the attraction of fuel cell EVs for warehouse operations and other specialty markets.

In particular, the closed environment of a warehouse demands zero-emission forklifts and other specialty vehicles.

Seaports and other shipping operations are also increasingly looking toward zero-emission logistics, especially those located in urban areas looking to improve overall air quality.

To demonstrate the efficiency of fuel cell technology in commercial use, the Obama administration has recruited private sector partners to deploy fleets of fuel cell forklifts, as well as stationary fuel cells, for backup power.

As for the bottom-line advantages of fuel cells over batteries in shipping and logistics, back in 2012 CEO Andy Marsh summed them up quite nicely (break added for clarity, and here's that link again):

The main issue is productivity. It can take up to 15 to 20 minutes to replace a battery (which occurs every 6 hours or so). Fells cells run longer and can be refilled in just a few minutes.

Furthermore, battery power declines during a shift, and over its life, slowing the vehicles in the process, while fuel cells can remain constant over their life. Finally, we eliminate the battery room, which can take up 6 to 7 percent of a large distribution facility.

Plug Power and Ace Hardware

Fast forward a few years, and Plug Power has grown a solid roster of customers for its GenDrive fuel cell technology.

The Ace Hardware order marks the first all-hydrogen fleet for Ace, consisting of class-2 and class-3 lift and reach trucks. This fleet was deployed at the company's just-finished 450,000 square-foot warehouse in Texas three months ago, along with an on-site hydrogen fueling station.

The preliminary results have already given Ace enough evidence to go forward with another deployment of  GenDrive fuel cell electric vehicles. This one is slated for an even bigger warehouse under construction in Ohio, clocking in at 534,000 square feet.

Once the second fleet is up and running, Ace will lay claim to a total of 130 hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles.

One thing worth noting here is that the confined area of operation and the on-site fueling station together relieve the technology of one major criticism: There is no public infrastructure for refueling hydrogen fuel cell EVs.

That still holds true for open-road vehicles, but you could have made a similar case against battery EVs just a few years ago. If all goes according to plan, the Obama administration's H2 USA initiative will help the fuel cell market catch up sooner rather than later.

Getting the hydrogen for your fuel cell forklift

As of this writing, the hydrogen fuel cell market is highly dependent on hydrogen sourced from fossil natural gas.

That opens a huge can of sustainability worms, but it also puts fuel cell EVs on the same footing as battery EVs that are charged from a grid mix that consists of fossil sources.

That point will soon be moot for the battery EV market, which is rapidly shedding its reliance on fossil fuel-sourced electricity.

The fuel cell market is also beginning to take strides in that direction. Hydrogen sourced from solar-powered water splitting is one example. Biogas is another potential route, including biogas sourced from wastewater treatment plants.

Image courtesy of Plug Power

A group of McDonald’s franchise operators in Puerto Rico is alleging that the fast food giant violated federal law and a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rule that regulates the behavior of franchisors.

According to the Puerto Rican franchisees (the Plaintiffs), McDonald’s first violated the Franchise Rule when it sold its Latin American franchises -- and, consequently, McDonald’s franchise rights in the Puerto Rican market -- to the Latin American company, Arcos Dorados, in 2007.  Subsequent actions by Arcos Dorados in Puerto Rico have caused additional harm to the Plaintiffs, in further violation of federal law.

Plaintiffs allege the various harms and violations have occurred.  Specifically, they claim that McDonald’s “cut off all ties with Puerto Rico operators” after the sale to AD, after which the new owners (Arcos Dorados) began downgrading services to the franchise owners, absent disclosure to the FTC and in violation of FTC Act 5 Section 5 (unfair competition) and the Franchise Rule.  Plaintiffs further allege that AD is neglecting to conduct sufficient sales analyses before opening new McDonald’s locations, leading to areas with a glut of McDonald’s restaurants and the resultant supply-and-demand problems for Plaintiffs’ businesses.

More than McDonald’s, though, the real villain in this story is Arcos Dorados (AD), a McDonald’s franchising behemoth.

Spanish for “Golden Arches” (really), AD is the largest McDonald’s franchisee in the world, with more than 2,000 McDonald’s restaurants and exclusive rights to own, operate and franchise McDonald’s restaurants in Latin America and the Caribbean.  The company has more than 90,000 employees, was recently named the fourth best company in Latin America and had sales of over $4 billion in 2013.

AD went public in 2011, after posting $3 billion in revenues and $106 million in profits the year before.  As a result of the 2011 IPO, AD’s CEO, Woods Staton, become a billionaire.  Importantly, as McDonald’s has encountered recent domestic difficulties, AD’s profits have continued to rise.  Last quarter, AD reported sales up 10.6 percent for the quarter and 11.2 percent for 2013.  The company’s success in Latin America is due in part to its actively marketing to lower income residents and its aggressive growth strategy.

In other words, the preexisting McDonald’s franchisees in Puerto Rico believe they were sold a bill of goods.  The Plaintiffs expected that all Puerto Rican McDonald’s would maintain a certain standard of quality, thereby ensuring that their business would reap the benefits of the McDonald’s brand (whatever it is); and they expected that future McDonald’s restaurants would not open in close proximity to their original franchises, thereby syphoning off potential customers.  According to their complaint, Plaintiffs’ (reasonable) expectations were not met in either case.  If true, these allegations suggest questionable behavior on the part of Arcos Dorados, and of the type of competition that could typically be classified as “unfair.”

Importantly, this is not the first that AD or McDonald’s has heard from the Puerto Rican franchisees.  In January 2007, several Puerto Rican franchisees brought a suit in Puerto Rican court against McDonald’s and certain subsidiaries which AD purchased, seeking, among other things, to prohibit AD from opening new restaurants within a three-mile radius of a franchisee’s restaurant.  In September 2008, AD countersued, attempting to terminate the franchise agreements with these franchisees, and a trial commenced on Sept. 10, 2012. According to its most recent annual report, AD “does not anticipate that the trial hearings will conclude in the first semester of 2014.”

At the very least, the Puerto Rican franchisees have been singing a similar tune for years.  Yet, it is hard to square these seemingly poor business decisions in Puerto Rico (why bother saturating the market and, in effect, competing with yourself?) with the otherwise successful conduct of AD elsewhere in Latin America.  If the FTC buys what the Plaintiffs are trying to sell, then the Commission may order AD to change its behavior in Puerto Rico and/or pay potentially heavy fines.  Both the FTC proceeding and the 2007 suit could impact the way McDonald’s -- and other multinational franchises -- compete in the Latin American market, and the outcomes deserve attention.

Image credit: Flickr/jeepersmedia

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on the Erb Perspective blog, a publication of the Frederick A. and Barbara M. Erb Institute at the University of Michigan.

By Erica Morrell

Local food initiatives have taken off across the country in recent years. Registered farmers markets, for example, expanded nationally from around 3,000 in 2000 to over 8,000 in 2012, and urban farming has exploded across neighborhoods, at schools and in healthcare facilities -- with more than 1,200 community gardens across Detroit alone.

The rise in activities around local food presents a host of novel opportunities and challenges for municipal governments. Urban farming, for instance, may help address inadequate food access by expanding fresh produce options in the inner city, but at the same time it often occurs in violation of standing zoning ordinances and places new pressure on water and sanitation services.

In an attempt to promote its benefits and mitigate its drawbacks, cities across the country have created new arenas of governance concerned solely with local food. These arenas frequently include legislation around issues such as the production and sale of local produce and cottage foods, the creation of grants and other aid to facilitate local food efforts, and the establishment of food policy councils (over 200 such councils now exist across the U.S.), among many other features.

While different cities’ local food policies and programs might seem similar on the surface, they often embody quite different guiding values. Take Detroit and Cleveland, for example. Based on citizen demands, Detroit’s government has committed particularly to promoting justice through activities around local food.

The city’s Food Security Policy affirms this in its call to “identify and eliminate barriers to African-American participation and ownership in all aspects of the food system,” “increase the number of culturally appropriate food outlets,” and “ensure that the food needs of young families and the elderly are met,” as does its Food Policy Council vow to conduct business “in ways that embodies a commitment to anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-elitist processes and outcomes.”

Meanwhile Cleveland’s officials have pledged to advance development (especially economic and sustainable) through their local food policies and programs. The city’s Urban Agriculture Overlay District zoning provision was adopted as a means to “promote urban agriculture while simultaneously creating economic development opportunities” as was its Ordinance No 210-11 endorsed to foster “economic opportunities that create living-wage jobs, a unique Cleveland, and economic sustainability within the city” by facilitating local mobile food entrepreneurs. In 2012, Cleveland celebrated the Year of Local Foods to “advance sustainability … while boosting the local economy.”

Undoubtedly the values driving local food governance have direct implications for private business. The city of Cleveland’s commitment to the goal of economic development via local food, for example, has propelled legislation that guarantees a bid preference for companies which source products grown locally.

But perhaps more significantly, the principles undergirding municipal approaches to local food governance often reveal as well as reinforce the overall climate of a city’s local food system, creating broader potential opportunities and constraints for entrepreneurs in the food system.

Consider Whole Foods Market's experiences in Detroit and Cleveland, for instance. The company explicitly values and pursues “customer satisfaction, team member happiness and excellence, return on capital investment, improvement in the state of the environment and local and larger community support” but neither explicitly justice nor development.

Nonetheless,when seeking to open a Detroit store, Whole Foods Market met with pushback not from any single policy but simply from the established justice values characterizing the local food system there. Consequently, Walter Rob, the company’s co-CEO, reached out to local food justice leaders to figure out how the store might play into “race and gentrification and power in Midtown.” The company then engaged in unprecedented measures to address these issues head-on, including holding community meetings and creating an advisory group of non-profit, government, and community organizations which were “faithful” to “a vision of justice” when engaging the corporation ahead of the store’s Detroit opening.

Contrastingly, in Cleveland where development is a stronger driving value, residents did not resist a Whole Foods Market opening in their community but rather called for the store to come to their neighborhood. It was not policy but
a grassroots social media campaign with over 3,000 members that called for the store to come and “create a huge economic-development opportunity” for the area. According to its regional president, as the company considered opening a new location on Cleveland’s West side it thus, unlike in Detroit, had to focus particularly on “encouraging economic growth”—not justice—in creating a store best designed to meet community demands.

Paying attention to the values driving local food governance thus sheds light on the explicit legislation as well as the overall socio-political climate that may impact if and how local food initiatives—including private business—variously develop between cities.

All images by Erica Morrell

Erica Morrell is a PhD candidate in public policy and sociology at the University of Michigan. In research and teaching, she works at the intersection of policy studies, science and technology studies, social movements and the environment with an eye toward political contention and democratic engagement vis-a-vis food systems. Currently she is completing her dissertation on the comparative politics of local food.

In fashion designer Eileen Fisher’s world, 1,000 people are capable of making a difference. And when she says people, she means her employees — a team committed to social consciousness that has served as a sounding board for many of the leading brand’s sustainability initiatives in recent years.

Armed with a commitment to gather consensus from employees and inspire leadership practices, Eileen Fisher has curated a culture that allows employees to be leaders of change both internally and within the brand's work in society at large.

Hiring policies hold significant weight as the brand continues to pursue activities that incorporate stronger sustainability practices and charitable partnership programming. In 2012 upon receiving an Apparel Sustainability All-Star Award, Shona Quinn, Eileen Fisher’s sustainability leader, mentioned that the company has an effective sustainability program as a result of employees with strong social values who are predisposed to consider the environment.

The range of employee contributions to the company’s sustainability strategy is voluminous. Prime example: An employee request to eliminate the use of plastic resulted in an 80 percent reduction of plastic hangers used in stores.

The casual-wear brand has led the charge toward transparency and sustainability in the fashion industry for years.  The company has used natural fibers and eco-friendly fabrics for over a decade, and the materials are a hit with its 33- to 50-year-old female target consumers. Bucking sweatshop labor practices and other common fashion industry snafus, Fisher's legacy is rooted in her commitment to ethical and responsible business practices that treat employees as owners and the planet as a shareholder.

At one point Fisher contemplated taking the company public, but she ultimately decided to keep things simple and focus on getting the product right while offering an employee stock program that breeds inclusivity.

"My employees run the business, and they deserve to own it. We've done profit sharing for years, and it makes people feel really connected," she shared with Inc. in 2010. "It's not us and them. It's us."

Fisher’s commitment to sustainability spans a portfolio of enviable initiatives. For example, the Green Eileen brand launched in 2009 allows customers to return their outgrown and gently-worn Eileen Fisher clothing to the store for credit and an opportunity to support programs that empower women and girls. Green Eileen recycling stores in New York and Seattle have collectively re-sold more than 160,000 garments to date, raising up to $2.2 million and diverting textiles from landfills.

 

In 2009, Eileen Fisher became the first American member of the Blue Sign Technologies network, which is working closely with the company to establish a sustainable textile production system to using less dye, chemicals and water to produce their China silks. By 2015, the Eileen Fisher brand plans to produce 50 percent of its products using Blue Sign's eco-solution system. The company ultimately plans to make 100 percent of its clothing sustainable by 2020.

Upon celebrating 30 years in business, and over $360 million in revenue in 2013, Fisher has no plans to slow down but instead has her sights set on sketching out goals, with the help of her employees, for the next 30 years.

“These days I'm focused on the concept of good growth. I constantly ask myself and my employees, "How do we grow in ways that are sustainable, and ways we can be proud of?" -- Fisher writes on Inc.

 

Image credit:  Eileen Fisher Facebook

Sherrell Dorsey is social impact branding and communications strategist, social entrepreneur and advocate for environmental, social and economic equity in underserved communities. Visit Sherrell at www.sherrelldosey.com and follow her on Twitter and Instagram @sherrell_dorsey.

The British supermarket chain Asda is the first retailer to publish a sustainable seafood report.

The report, titled Wild Fisheries Annual Review, lists all of the fisheries used by the supermarket chain between Jan. 1 and Dec. 1, 2013. The report contains management and sustainability information for all of the fisheries that supply the supermarket chain with wild fish. Seafood from aquaculture (fish farming) is not listed, but Asda hopes to include this information in next year’s report. (As the name implies, it will be published every year.)

The report names each fishery, and information is provided on the location and catch methods, plus sustainability assessments that include environmental impacts.

The report is part of Asda’s commitment to ensure its wild seafood is responsibly sourced. That said, the company knows that some fisheries it obtains seafood from need work and is working to address the issues. One example is Asda’s pledge that all ambient canned and pouched tuna will be line-caught or caught using fish aggregation device (FAD)-free methods by the end of 2014.

Asda worked with Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), a U.S. nonprofit, to publish the report. SFP keeps a database of all the wild seafood bought by Asda, which includes information on the stocks where the fish are caught. The database also includes the name, species, gear type (how the fish is caught) and nationality of fishing boats. There is a weblink for each entry that connects it to a detailed profile on a public database called FishSource which provides more information. Any fishery improvement projects in place are included.

An assessment is given of whether the fishery is well managed and a score is given based on five elements -- each scored from one to 10. A low score is negative and a high score is positive. The following three categories are used to assess performance:

• Category A: A stock where all scores are over eight is in 'great' shape


• Category B: A stock where all scores are over six is in 'good' shape


• Category C: A stock that has any score below six needs to significantly improve

The findings

About 24 of the 64 fisheries used by Asda are certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. Four fisheries are under review and 10 are under general improvement. Thirteen fisheries scored an ‘A,’ 19 scored a ‘B’ and 18 scored a ‘C.’ Five were not scored.

Both Greenpeace and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the British celebrity chef, have campaigned for supermarkets to become more transparent on seafood sourcing, and both praised Asda for releasing their report.

“Greenpeace applauds Asda for this bold display of honesty and transparency about the seafood they sell,” said Sarah North, head of the Oceans Campaign at Greenpeace U.K. North added that Asda’s British customers are now “armed with the information they need to choose more sustainable fish, and can follow Asda's journey as it continues to work hard to improve its seafood sourcing.”

“I applaud this step by Asda to be transparent about all the wild seafood that has their name on it. It shows a mixed picture: over a third of the fisheries are certified sustainable, but several of them - like those for dredged scallops and rays - remain a real cause for concern,environmentally,” Fearnley-Whittingstall added.

For more information on the sustainable seafood movement, check out this ongoing series on Triple Pundit. 

Image credit: Asda

When I think of concrete buildings, I think of dense, heavy concrete with a high environmental impact: Cement manufacturing accounts for 5 percent of global CO2 emissions from human activity, a staggering total for one building material. But utilizing more environmentally-friendly alternatives, such as autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) blocks, does offer many benefits.

Chemical reactions with gases make autoclaved aerated concrete a lighter, more insulated and fire-resistant alternative to concrete. AAC blocks and panels can also be molded and cut into dimensional units. Generally, they're more popular in post-war Europe than in the U.S. -- and they have been widely used in the U.K. and Germany.

Lightweight

AAC blocks are 80 percent air and 50 percent lighter than clay blocks of the same size, meaning they require less energy than concrete to transport. Compared to concrete AAC is also easier  to cut and shape, boosting design flexibility and reducing waste with more accurate cutting.

Durable

AAC blocks are insect- and rot-resistant, and they are not destroyed by floods, according to the Portland Cement Association. These attributes are especially appealing in humid climates, and the use of AAC blocks can help reduce or eliminate the use of drywall or wood, preventing mold issues. The blocks are also sound resistant, and because they are non-combustible, they do not give off toxic fumes in a fire.

Energy efficiency

The R-value is similar to a typical stick frame house, but the blocks have a greater thermal mass -- making the home more resistant to changing temperatures. This seems like a slight improvement over many code-built homes on the market, but AAC blocks alone don't make a house ultra energy efficient.

Drawbacks to AAC

Because AAC contains concrete, it does have some of the same environmental drawbacks of concrete -- but to a lesser extent because less cement is used to make the product. AAC is more expensive than concrete blocks, thus some builders mix use of both tradition cement and AAC.

Fly ash in concrete raises concern

As much as 30 percent of the concrete can be replaced by fly ash, a hazardous coal combustion byproduct from coal power plants. This practice is praised by many industry groups and criticized by some environmentalists, who call it the new asbestos. It does raise safe handling and health concerns from production to end-of-life disposal.

There is currently a proposed rule by the EPA to would regulate coal ash use. This could have an impact on the cement industry, as fly ash is contained in many products. “It’s very complicated,” says Scot Horst, senior vice president in charge of the green-building rating system Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). “If fly ash is a hazardous waste and it becomes part of a concrete wall, is the wall a hazardous material?”

Overall, AAC does have some appealing qualities when compared to typical cement. Locally-produced AAC blocks are available in many areas, but the benefits are most pronounced in certain climates, where certain attributes are especially appealing. In colder climates, the AAC blocks alone won't perform as well.

Ultimately, like with many others, how green and useful this alternative building product is depends on the use and goals of a particular project.

Image credit: Flickr/funadium

Women won't be paid as much as men for another 75 years according to a report released by Oxfam International, which urges G20 leaders to tackle gender inequality when they meet in Australia later this year.

The G20 and gender equality – How the G20 can advance women's rights in employment, social protection and fiscal policies report shows how the G20's growth ambitions cannot be realised without policies addressing systemic discrimination and economic exclusion of women across G20 countries.

The report, co-published with the Heinrich Boll Foundation, is being released as the Business 20 (B20) – one of the satellite conferences in the lead-up to the G20 Leaders Summit in Brisbane in November - meets in Sydney this week.

Oxfam International executive director Winnie Byanyima said that across G20 countries and beyond, women were paid less than men, did most of the unpaid labour, were over-represented in part-time work and were discriminated against in the household, markets and institutions.

“This gap between women and men reflects a fundamental and entrenched form of inequality afflicting G20 countries, despite the gains that have undoubtedly been made in some areas,” Byanyima said.

Depending on the country context, an extra 20%-60% would be added to the GDP of individual G20 countries if the hidden contribution of unpaid work – such as caring for children or carrying out housework – was recognised and valued.

Byanyima commented: “Meanwhile, if women's paid employment rates were the same as men's, the USA's GDP would increase by 9%, the Eurozone's by 13% and Japan's by 16%.”

Animal rights pressure group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is asking retailers and consumers to say ‘no’ to products containing wool, citing the abuse of sheep during shearing, live export and mulesing (flaying of live lambs) as three reasons to avoid wool.

A recent exposé by the US arm of the organisation on the wool industry in the US and Australia – the source of 90% of merino wool in the world – shows severe mistreatment and abuse of sheep in farms and shearing sheds.

 "Sheep are gentle prey animals who are petrified of even being held down, yet these sheep were punched in the face, kicked and stamped on and had their heads slammed into the floor by unsupervised, impatient shearers, causing them great distress, injury and even death,” says PETA UK Associate Director Mimi Bekhechi. "PETA is calling on shoppers around the world to reject cruelty to animals – and that means never buying wool."

PETA has sent copies of the exposé video to UK retailers that sell wool. In the US, it has asked state and local law-enforcement agencies to investigate and file criminal charges against the workers, as appropriate, for what are believed to be violations of cruelty-to-animals laws.
 

The growth in wind and solar energy over the past several years has been impressive, but the pace of change has been achingly slow for companies that want more renewable energy than the market can provide. With that in mind, 12 leading U.S. companies have partnered with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the World Resources Institute to make one thing perfectly clear: There is a huge, unmet renewable energy demand by businesses, and a change in energy markets will be required in order to meet that need.

The linchpin of the collaboration is a set of strategic guidelines called the Renewable Energy Buyers’ Principles. Most of the 12 companies that have signed on are familiar names at Triple Pundit for their proactive approach to renewable energy or other sustainability issues, including Bloomberg, Facebook, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Mars, Novelis, Procter and Gamble, REI, Sprint and Walmart.

8.4 million megawatt-hours of renewable energy demand

According to WWF, the 12 companies signing on to the Renewable Energy Buyers' Principles have calculated that their renewable energy demand adds up to 8.4 million megawatt-hours per year through 2020.

That's just those 12 major companies, so 8.4 million is just for starters. These companies represent a noticeable level of interest in renewable energy among major business sectors in the U.S., including IT, media, retail (Ikea also comes to mind, though it is not headquartered in the U.S.) and manufacturing.

When you consider other sectors of the U.S. economy that are proactively adopting renewable energy, including professional sports, government agencies, and nonprofit stakeholders like religious organizations and academic institutions, you can see that the unmet renewable energy demand in the U.S. is astronomical.

As for why utilities have been acting so slowly, some have been acting much more quickly than others, but overall the problem is that the traditional, centralized model of power supply does not easily embrace the local, distributed sourcing that is a key attraction of renewable energy.

The Renewable Energy Buyers' Principles

The Buyers' Principles are focused on shifting the market as applied narrowly to the traditional centralized power plant model. They are not meant to address political and legislative obstacles that have burdened renewable energy development in the U.S.

However, those obstacles are not set in stone, and once they start falling there will still be a need for a clear path toward a market that accommodates both renewable energy and advanced energy storage opportunities.

With that in mind, the Buyers' Principles (here's that link again) lays out six areas in need of change:

1. Greater choice in procurement options. This principle is clearly aimed at enabling businesses to reach outside of their local utility for energy suppliers.


2. More access to cost competitive options. This part of the strategy embraces the potential for renewable energy to compete on price with other fuels on a long-term basis, whether supplied by utilities or other parties.


3. Longer- and variable-term contracts. Aside from its potential for costing the same or less than conventional energy, locally-sourced renewable energy provides a critical, long-term buffer against the price spikes that bedevil conventional energy markets.


4. Access to new projects that reduce emissions beyond business as usual. As companies build a sustainable identity, they want to be able to claim sole ownership of the renewable energy projects they support. This involves local sourcing wherever possible, and eliminating the "double-counting" renewable credits.


5. Streamlined third-party financing. Of particular interest to smaller companies is this item, which would make it easier for companies to access power purchase agreements and other third-party arrangements.


6. Increased purchasing options with utilities. Recognizing that some utilities have the flexibility,  opportunity and will to embrace distributed energy generation, this item admits the potential for companies to get more and cheaper renewable energy within the existing utility and regulatory framework.

Collaboration = Accelleration

The aim of the Buyers' Principles is to rally major energy consumers around a strategy that will pick up the pace of renewable energy generation in the U.S.

It's a good example of the collaborative, shared-platform model for sustainability progress that has been emerging as a global force. A large portion of the focus is on streamlining renewable energy procurement, which obviously benefits the big players, but it will also enable smaller consumers to jump into the market without having to reinvent the wheel.

Amy Hargroves of Sprint sums it up this way:

Very few companies have the knowledge and resources to purchase renewable energy given today’s very limited and complex options. Our hope is that by identifying the commonalities among large buyers, the principles will catalyze market changes that will help make renewables more affordable and accessible for all companies.

For a parallel example you can look at the U.S. Army, which has emerged as a standout example of trail-blazing new strategies to meet its renewable energy demand.

The Department of Defense initially began installing large-scale solar power plants on an individual, ad hoc basis at its facilities. The pace picked up considerably after 2012, when the Army established the Energy Initiatives Task Force to cover all of its opportunities for building utility-scale solar power plants, and combined it with the streamlined procurement process of the Army Corps of Engineers.

The over-arching goal, aside from greenhouse gas management, is to reduce DoD's dependence on grid-supplied energy.

Image courtesy of the World Wildlife Fund

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Sometimes it looks like Uber has become the world’s favorite punching bag, from taxi drivers across Europe complaining that Uber is “not playing by the rules” to American customers annoyed with the company’s surge pricing tactics.

One of the latest punches came from Andrew Leonard, a staff writer at Salon, who compared Uber to John D. Rockefeller.

Why? Leonard didn’t like the fact that Uber significantly reduced the prices of UberX rides in New York and other cities, making them cheaper now than taxi rides. He suggested that Uber’s deep pockets (it just raised $1.2 billion) could enable the company to lose money on every ride, claiming this is an “anti-competitive market behavior.”

And the connection to Rockefeller? “The founder of Standard Oil built his monopoly by exploiting size to leverage discounted access to railroad transport. Such economies supported price cuts his competitors couldn’t match,” Leonard writes. He’s afraid that we’re about to witness a somewhat similar scenario in the taxi industry, where Uber will use its funds to drive taxis out of business, and then will increase prices, making its investors rich at the expense of the public.

Leonard, as well as others sharing similar concerns, questions the legitimacy or fairness of Uber’s business tactics, especially given the fact that it operates in many places within a "grey area" of the law. Yet, behind these arguments lie even more fundamental questions: Is Uber still considered part of the sharing economy? Is it exploitative? And if you answer ‘yes’ to both questions, what does it say about the sharing economy?

Let’s try to look at these questions one by one.

To answer the first question, we might need to look at what the 'sharing economy' actually means.  Rachel Botsman, co-author of “What’s Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption is Changing the Way We Live,” divides the ‘sharing space’ into four parts: collaborative economy, collaborative consumption, sharing economy and peer economy. In her analysis, she includes UberX as an example of the fourth part -- peer economy, which she defines as: “Person-to-person marketplaces that facilitate the sharing and direct trade of assets built on peer trust.”

In a report published last year, “The Sharing Economy: Accessibility Based Business Models for Peer-to-Peer Markets” the authors write: “Due to the lack of scientific publications on 'the sharing economy' we confine its definition to companies that deploy accessibility based business models for peer-to-peer markets and its user communities. This type of business model … can, in theory, act as a broker between consumers, for any consumer owned product or service.”

Finally, Cameron Tonkinwise, the director of design studies at the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, approaches the definition in his paper “Sharing you can believe in” from a sustainability point of view: “If a system affords people a way of not having to own things in under-utilized ways in individual households, I am going to call it sharing … If a ‘sharing economy’ service creates a new practice that does not replace another practice that depends on owned goods, then it does not meet this aspect of my definition,” he writes.

So, as you can see, the answer to the first question is: Sometimes. UberX can definitely be considered an example of a peer-to-peer market (unlike Uber Black or Uber SUV, it’s not operated by commercially licensed taxi and black car drivers), and if it’s been used as an alternative to buying a second car, for example, it can even be considered sustainable. In all other cases, Uber is neither a sharing nor a sustainable service.

The answer to the second question about the exploitative nature of Uber is not simple either. One way to look at Uber, Glenn Fleishman suggested last month on BoingBoing, is as “an upstart technology company [that] optimizes an inefficient market in a way that all participants benefit: passengers are safer and can more reliably get a ride with a low likelihood of fare cheating; drivers are safer and don't have people skip on fares.” At the same time, Fleishman warns it can all change if Uber reaches a dominant position in the industry, as the company could become then “both a virtual monopoly and a monopsony.”

Others are more blunt. Economist Michael Munger of Duke University compared Uber’s model to buying cartons of cigarettes cheaply in Virginia and selling them from the back of your truck in New York, where the price of cigarettes in stores is far more expensive. Consumers will love it, Munger says, but this creates an unfair competition for those trying to follow the rules.

Yet, both Fleishman and Munger agree that Uber and other car-sharing services challenge an industry that is inefficient, relatively expensive and has very little incentive to improve due to regulation providing it with an artificial monopoly power. In other words,  it might be that not just Uber, but also the incumbents in the taxi industry that fiercely fight it could be perceived as exploitative to some degree.

However, I wouldn’t like to run away from the question. In my opinion, the fact that Uber finds ways to get around the law as Munger puts it, or reduces prices, utilizing a loss leader pricing strategy, could be characterized in different ways (illegal, unfair competition, a threat to property rights, a bully, etc.) -- but not as exploitative. At least for now.

What will happen in the future? Will Uber one day transform into a ruthless monopoly taking advantage of its drivers and charging unreasonable prices for rides? Maybe, but I doubt that this will be the case. Not that I count too much on Uber’s morality or the regulators as much as I count on the power of the market. If Uber fails to fulfill its promise to provide a better service, it can go down as fast as it went up.

So, finally, what does it all say about the sharing economy? One way to look at it is that the story of Uber reminds us that we’re going through a process of mainstreaming the sharing economy. This, as Clay Shirky suggests, includes five stages that the sharing economy will have to go through: technical possibility, social adoption, regulatory reaction, civil disobedience and negotiated settlement.

Another way to look at it is that we’re seeing a movement in transition. Rachel Botsman describes it as something that is still a child, and when asked how she sees it when it’s grown up, she jokingly replied “pimply.”  Well, it might be that Uber is just a sign of the sharing economy’s a pimply adolescence, for better or worse.

Image credit: Adam Fagen, Flickr Creative Commons

Raz Godelnik is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Design and Management at Parsons The New School of Design. You can follow Raz on Twitter.