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Remember BP, the wind power company? It is easy to focus on a certain event in the Gulf of Mexico almost three years ago, but the global energy titan has a thriving wind energy business, too. Add the incentives for clean energy projects here in the U.S., and BP and other large firms are investing in wind turbines across the country. Partnering with Sempra US Gas, BP has flipped the switch on two new wind farms in Pennsylvania and Kansas--just two weeks after the companies powered up a wind farm in Hawaii. Meanwhile the energy giant is dabbling in other alternative energies, including biofuels.

The latest BP joint ventures with Sempra will generate over 500 megawatts (MW) of electricity across six U.S. states.

Last week BP and Sempra announced that the Flat Ridge 2 Wind Farm in rural south central Kansas became fully operational. BP describes the project as the “largest, single build wind farm in the history of the US wind industry” and touts the 500 construction jobs the project created at its peak of construction. The power Flat Ridge 2 will generate is under a long term project to provide electricity to Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana. Over 140,000 American homes will benefit from the 294 GE turbines that will create 470 MW of power. The total investment, in which BP is a 50/50 partner with Sempra, was over $800 million. So T. Boone Pickens’ plan to turn the middle of the U.S. into a big wind power plant is slowly becoming the reality after all--just not with his involvement.

1400 miles to the northeast, another BP-Sempra wind project launched on Tuesday outside of Scranton. The $250 million Mehoopany Wind Farm promises to generate 141 MW of electricity. Utilities in Virginia, Delaware and Maryland have agreed to long term power purchase agreements with the Mehoopany project under an arrangement arranged with the assistance of the National Renewables Cooperative Organization (NRCO). Together with the Flat Ridge 2 project, BP’s and Sempra’s combined investment in the two wind farms is over $1 billion.

So despite the natural gas boom and occasional controversies over wind power projects, energy companies and utilities still see wind as a viable business. Consumers want it, and wind even survived the “fiscal cliff” deal. Even Apple is interested in wind; so 2013 could yet prove to be a big year for wind power.

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

Image credit: NRCO

 

The rise of the sharing economy has led to new business models unthinkable five years ago. Renting someone’s room or that same person’s car for a few hours has become seamless--pesky details such as insurance and liability issues aside. Now the sharing economy, or collaborative consumption, has become far more mainstream.

And some would say a synonym of mainstream is “corporate.” More large companies are dipping their toes into the huge pool of sharing economy ideas that are springing up for just about every kind of good or service imaginable. Last week’s announcement that Avis would buy the grandaddy of the shared economy, Zipcar, was a sign that collaborative consumption has matured; others are terrified at the thought of a multinational taking over a nifty service with the aim of destroying it.

The emerging corporate presence into the sharing economy, however, is because of far more nuanced reasons.

First, the sharing of goods and services is here to stay. The reasons are varied, from the obvious such as money saved to developing a sense of community or the emergence of what some describe as the “asset-light generation.” To that end, companies are now confronting the fact that not everyone wants to own a car, a high-end handbag or the huge credit card bill when they buy their children’s back-to-school clothes. They will, however, gladly share them.

Next, the potential size of the sharing economy is huge, and could even become worth $110 billion. Even if its growth within a few years is only a sliver of that, there is still money to be made. Of course, the true size of the sharing economy will never be known. Nevertheless, for the corner office to ignore the sharing economy would be foolish. The trick, of course, is finding an opening. And one of America’s largest, and until recently, most conservative and stodgy industries, has been the trailblazer when it comes to cooperating, partnering and investing in the sharing economy.

The fact that fewer 16 and 17 year olds are quick to sign up for a driver’s license has long term repercussions on automobile manufacturers. So in the long run, automakers realize they have to adjust their business models for many changes including the change in driving habits. The increase in urbanization means that there will be less space for cars in the cities; and millennials are less and less interested in owning a car and dealing with the accompanying hassles such as insurance and parking.

So RelayRides, the car-sharing company dotted across the country from Silicon Valley to Boston, last year scored investment from GM. The year before that, Ford became the largest source of cars for Zipcar’s car-sharing fleet. Even BMW has dabbled within the sharing economy by partnering with ParkatmyHouse.com, a service that matches parking spaces with commuters. And before we become too distracted by the the Avis-Zipcar deal, remember Hertz’s On Demand service has succeeded with short car rentals for as little as $5 an hour. But it is not only the automakers who are dabbling into the sharing economy.

Retailers are starting to partner with sharing economy startups as well as encourage their customers to adopt more sustainable and responsible behavior. IKEA is tinkering with shared services firms; in Australia, the furniture megastore partners with the car-sharing company GoGet to link shoppers who need to take their crates of furniture home. And in its home country of Sweden, IKEA started a pilot program that allowed customers to sell used furniture, partly as a reaction to similar schemes that started up across Europe. Partnerships may not be a tacit endorsement of collaborative consumption; but companies, including IKEA, realize that to ignore this movement is to overlook potential revenues and new opportunities to build brand awareness.

Established companies are also taking an experimental approach with the sharing economy. One of the most environmentally destructive industries is the textile and clothing sector. Each hour over 100,000 items of clothing are disposed in landfills daily. And while many clothes-sharing services such as ThredUp thrive, watch for retailers to join the sharing economy revolution.

One company changing the relationship betwen us and with our clothes is UK-based Marks & Spencer. Last year, the department store chain started a “Shwopping” campaign that encourages customers to drop off old clothing--even if they were not M&S items--when they shop for new clothes. True, many of the clothes end up abroad or even recycled into new textile fibers; but some are resold within the UK. Encouraging customers to recycle clothes also allows the company to develop relationships with everyone from couture designers to local activists--and also provides fodder for the company to study its consumers’ shopping habits or even add to its historic archive.

The corporatizing of the shared economy is a long way off and, in fact, may never occur. As of now building supply companies such as Lowe’s and HomeDepot have not addressed the fact that most of us use a power drill for an average of 15 minutes a year; electronics retailers including Best Buy have not been quick to find new homes for the dated electronics that once sat on their shelves. Nevertheless, rise of the sharing economy is in part because of its maturity; and that evolution means we will see more large companies attempt to meld their business models in order for them to be part of this new evolution in consumer behavior.

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

Image credit: RelayRides.com

As a lead-up to Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, January 13-17, Masdar sponsored a blogging contest called “Engage: The Water-Energy Nexus.”  The following post was among the finalists.

The water-energy nexus – the fundamental connection between water and energy – may not seem an overly complex concept to initially grasp – and yet its implications are not fully understood in our industrial, resource-strained, climate-changed world.

​The fact is, climate is the third component of the water-energy nexus. No discussion on managing the energy-water nexus for a sustainable future is complete with considering the impacts and consequences of climate change.

Climate change, energy and the hydrological cycle

As climate change disrupts the global hydrological cycle, water-stressed regions, particularly in the developing world, face even greater impacts in the coming decades. Recent studies indicate climate models underestimate the rate of change in the global water cycle by as much as half. Adaptation to climate change is now a reality and the degree to which there is effective mitigation depends on how well – and how quickly – we manage a transition to a new, carbon-free energy economy. But to look only at the energy sector as a path to sustainability in a changing climate isn’t enough. Power plants dependent on water for cooling are already forced to scale back production as water levels in reservoirs and rivers fall due to heat waves and drought.

How do we respond in a world already experiencing rapid climate change and growing demand for power? Transitioning to non-carbon sources of energy is essential, but water implications are almost never a part of the policy and scaling considerations of these energy sources. Solar thermal and especially biofuel production can be more water intensive than the systems they may replace. Adapting to low-carbon energy systems must take into account complete life-cycle water impacts.

Getting the water where it is needed: energy and infrastructure

In a predominantly urbanized world 27 percent of people living in cities lack water pipes in their homes. Where there is infrastructure, it is often woefully outdated. In the United States there are 850 water main breaks every day, costing $52 billion annually and wasting enough water to supply the state of California for one year.

As global freshwater supplies become more strained, the trend is toward more energy-intensive water such as desalination, deep aquifer production, long distance pipelines and inter-basin transfer. As with the energy sector, analysis of water policy most often neglect implications of energy requirements.

“Energy constraints become water constraints. Water constraints become energy constraints,” says University of Texas associate professor Dr. Michael Webber.

Policy fragmentation: putting the pieces together

Despite the inexorable link between water and energy, the policy governing the two is often hopelessly fragmented. At the national and international level, this lack of policy integration is a core challenge for effectively addressing the water-energy nexus in a sustainable society. Only in the past several years has there been serious discussion on the water-energy nexus, let alone designing and implementing effective policy.

The challenge for policymakers is integrating the water-energy nexus in their decision and analytical process at a regional, national and global scale. There is no “one size fits all” solution. A study in Ecology and Society suggests the “first four steps” for assessing regional water security and energy sustainability – in summary:

2013 will see an acceleration in the investing attractiveness of companies embracing sustainability. The three drivers behind this investment trend are:

Emerging sustainability accounting standards. The world's 3000 largest companies face over $2 trillion in liabilities created by their environmental impacts. This is equal to 50 percent of their EBITA profits. The accounting industry is now exploring how to instruct corporations to report this off-balance sheet liability in their 10K. The growing awareness of this accounting change has begun to influence equity investment analysis.

C-suite engagement. There is growing awareness among CEOs, COOs and CFOs on how the solving of root cause problems with sustainable best practices will grow profits through lower costs and increased competitiveness. The result is the greening of the global supply chain and a focus upon product designs that "cost less, mean more."

The consumer search for "In me, on me and around me" solutions. Consumers are increasingly focused upon being smarter, healthier and greener. Consumers are moving past endearing ads about polar bears. They are increasing their focus upon how a product impacts their lives.

Based on these drivers, here are five industry megatrends that every investor should consider running from, running toward or embracing:

Run from coal

Coal is a fuel that the world increasingly cannot afford. Coal’s appeal is its price competitiveness on a therm-per-pound basis. That is a false cost analysis based on coal’s significant externality costs. I have shoveled coal. It is dirty. The cost to clean coal is high and climbing higher. Coal is also on a collision course with water. Producing electricity from coal takes a tremendous amount of water and last summer’s drought brought a curtailment of coal-fired power production due to a lack of water or because water supplies were too warm for effective cooling. China, which now accounts for half of the world’s coal consumption, is confronting a water choke point to its expansion of coal-fired power plants. In a not too distant future, China will have to choose between using water to support coal-fired electricity generation or for the production of food and the servicing of urban citizens. This also applies to U.S. states like Georgia, Alabama and Arizona that use a higher percentage of coal for electricity production and are increasingly confronting water supply constraints. Investors beware! Bottom-fishing for coal companies, or companies that rely upon cheap coal-fired electricity for their competitive advantage, have risks similar to attempting to catch a falling knife.

Run toward natural gas

Hydraulic fracturing has upended the energy industry. Natural gas’ growing supply and price competiveness is stealing market share from coal. It is blunting the growth of renewable energy. It is poised for global revenue growth. A telling example is the recent milestone shipment of LNG from Norway to Japan through an Arctic shipping-lane emerging due to global warming. The only potential overhype for natural gas is its potential growth in vehicle transportation because a gaseous fuel is typically not competitive against liquid fuels’ energy density. While the evidence is still emerging on how hydraulic fracturing might be a long-term risk to water supplies, the natural gas industry has been effective in adopting technologies, operating practices and lobbying that is limiting its current exposure to the type of constraining regulation now confronting coal. Sempra is an example of a company positioned to realize revenue growth from generating electricity with natural gas and delivering its through pipelines and LNG ports.

Run toward LED

Lighting is a significant cost because it accounts for approximately 20 percent of U.S. commercial and residential electricity consumption. LED is a technology solution that cuts electricity costs by using one-tenth the electricity of an incandescent lightbulb. LEDs have a much lower heat signature that reduces the cooling load of a building further saving energy and money. The auto industry has fallen in love with LED lights for their looks and most especially because of their limited energy requirements on a car's battery. LED technologies are benefiting from Moore’s Law that is pushing production costs toward price competitiveness against all other lighting technologies. Winners in this space include the LED lighting manufacturers plus lighting contractors, building owners and cities that benefit from lower operating costs due to LED street and signal lighting.

Run toward car companies

The car industry has embraced sustainability based upon their analysis that the price of gasoline is not going to go down and stay down, no matter how much we drill. Their 2013 strategy is to redefine a "fun" car as being turbo-charged and digitally connected while also introducing fun-to-drive hybrid and hybrid-electric cars that are becoming affordable. Their challenge is the Millennial generation that is increasingly viewing car ownership as a cost to them and their environment that should be minimized. For the Millennial generation, it is Apple’s “Think Different” mentality that drives their car purchase behaviors compared to their parents' “See The USA In Your Chevrolet.” 2013 should see continued record-breaking car sales assuming gasoline prices continue to remain in the $4+ per gallon range and the Fed’s monetary-easing policy continues to make car-financing almost cost-free.

Embrace results

Sustainability's underlying investment appeal is its ability to deliver profits by solving root cause environmental and social problems. Apple and its superior product designs are the poster child for how investors and consumers are focusing upon results. Apple products just work. Apple’s shift to the cloud is reducing costs and waste streams. Apple has become a revenue-generating machine because its digital products, apps and software are just darn cheap, have no consumer waste stream and often are free through seamless updates to an owner’s iPhone, iPad and computers. Apple’s continued results-based success with consumers is setting the performance bar for all businesses. Yes, Apple needs to improve its fair labor practices. Yes, they need to incorporate recycling more aggressively into their product designs. But the great news for Apple, and every other business that seeks to copy Apple’s results-focused strategy, is that consumers are rewarding companies with purchases if they see evidence of "mean more and cost less" results.

The final article in this series to be posted tomorrow is on Sustainable Economics in 2013.

Bill Roth is an economist and the Founder of Earth 2017 He coaches business owners and leaders on proven best practices in pricing, marketing and operations that make money and create a positive difference. His book, The Secret Green Sauce, profiles business case studies of pioneering best practices that are proven to win customers and grow product revenues.

By Symon Hill and Anna Simpson

On-the-go access to energy and communications is changing our relationship to the world around us.

In a touring exhibition that visited London in 2012 and will be at the Sydney Festival until March 2013, the Chinese artist Song Dong displayed all the contents of his mother's flat – over 10,000 everyday objects. Not exactly the contents of a backpack, though there were several backpacks among the halls of a single person's sprawl.

Song's mother, the artist explains, would cling onto everyday objects because they offered her a sense of security – something anyone who has lived through political upheaval or the fear of scarcity will understand. But a new generation of consumers is cultivating a very different relationship to personal belongings. Living light is their aspiration, their daily needs answered by a single object – a sleek smartphone or slender tablet.

In years to come, people may live lighter yet, suggests Gerd Leonhard, CEO of the Futures Agency. These personal devices, with all their cloud-based functionality, will have moved into our minds. If we require energy on the move, our clothes will harvest it through integrated photovoltaic or piezoelectric generators...

We're witnessing the rise of the modern nomad, "defined not by what they carry but by what they leave behind." That's the definition The Economist proposed nearly five years ago, in a feature written in anticipation of a wireless world, called Nomads at Last.

A tide of consumers favor access over ownership

What the author didn't foresee was today's triple whammy of nomad-friendly trends. Anytime-anywhere connectivity is one of them. Then there's the rise of decentralised energy, in which anyone who can afford the kit is able to generate, store and even sell their own power. And finally, there's the tide of consumers who favour access over ownership, met by the rapid growth of peer-to-peer lending and sharing schemes.

With the likes of Airbnb, the light-footed can feel at home anywhere in the world. Already, for many, the bedroom wall has been replaced by Pinterest as a place to hang your favorite things…

So, what does all of this mean for sustainability? Fewer belongings and more sharing may hold promise for resource-efficiency – but it all depends on tight management. One counter-trend could be unnecessary maintenance to ensure hygiene: more washing of clothes, sheets and towels, and so on. Fleura Bardhi, a research professor in consumer behavior at Northeastern University, Massachusetts, is interested in the evolution of "alternative relationships to the material world." After all, new nomadism isn't simply about being on the move: it's about a world in which "your own place" and "your own stuff" no longer make such a difference – to your productivity, your wellbeing, and even your identity.

"Our relationships to place and people are becoming more 'liquid', they're changing constantly," says Bardhi. "It means we also have to adapt and change. The most successful are those who can adapt very quickly."

This could be good news for behavior change: the less attached we are to our bad habits, the more easily we can switch to better ones. But it could also go the other way: a more sustainable action may never become a habit if the context is always changing. For the business community, the implications of a shifting world go far beyond working from home and video conferencing. Daniel Pink, author of Free Agent Nation, anticipates a shift towards self-employment.

"If you look the underlying economics of why firms exist – such as high transaction costs and coordination problems – then, as those forces dissipate, companies themselves might become less necessary," Pink said.

Indeed, if individuals can maintain their professional profile through their own networks, the attraction of an official job title could fade. As Pink puts it: "When talented individuals can have the communications and computing power companies once had, they need organisations far less than organisations need [them]."

What role might these highly adaptable "free agents" play in building resilience around them? Already, greater connectivity is helping relative strangers identify common problems and engage in fruitful collaborations – from spontaneous one-offs to organised "hackathons."

If sharing more space and more stuff means we also develop a greater sense of our dependence on common resources – including each other – then there's much to look forward to.

Content to roam

Symon Hill visited a Bedouin community in the West Bank.

"We'll put it on Facebook," joked Nisreen as she posed for a photojournalist. It's not an unusual comment for a 17-year-old girl. But it was surprising to hear it in the desert.

Nisreen lives in the Bedouin community of Al Rashayda, a collection of tiny tented settlements spread over several miles in the southeastern corner of the West Bank. Once nomadic, its movements are now restricted by the Israeli army's training exercises.

Nisreen's cousin Ali [pictured] is leading goats over the hills. If he needs to contact his family, he will use his mobile phone. Meanwhile, young men are texting on phones that appear to be swinging from the top of a tent. Looking up, I see the tent's wooden frame has electricity sockets, with phone chargers plugged in.

The community's goats and camels are kept well away from the sparkling solar panels that make this communication possible. Funded by UK aid money, they were fitted by Christian Aid and the YMCA, along with a water pipe that the electricity helps to power.

"We thank God the water is here," said Nisreen's mother. It means a bath every three days rather than weekly. Nisreen and her sister Tahany use it to sustain a vegetable patch.

Christian Aid emphasizes that the pipe and solar panels were requested by the villagers themselves. The villagers told me the initiative came from a young woman, who I couldn't meet because she was busy with the olive harvest. She's also studying through the Open University. The internet helps.

Symon Hill is author of The No-Nonsense Guide to Religion. Anna Simpson is Managing Editor, Green Futures.

[image credit: gckphoto: Flickr cc]

Apple may be the world’s valuable company and brand, but to sustainability and corporate social responsibility advocates, the company is often a pariah. A patent application the company filed last year, first revealed on the Apple Insider blog, shows that some of that cash on which Apple is sitting could be invested in a new clean energy technology.

Filed last year, the application describes a set of rotating blades that converts rotational energy from a wind turbine into heat that is then stored in a vessel containing “low heat capacity fluid.” The system would then selectively transfer the heat as needed from that low heat capacity fluid to a “working fluid” and hence would generate electricity. Heat, not rotational energy, would would be the result of the turbine’s blades rotating; and even more exciting, energy could be used when needed, as when there is little or no wind.

The bugaboo of conventional wind power turbines is the inconsistent amount of energy generated due to the fluctuations in the speed of wind. There is not often enough wind during peak demand, and conversely turbines could produce excessive amounts of energy during periods of low demand. Plus the pesky issue of energy storage hinders the ability of wind power to contribute effectively to local grid systems. So according to the lead author of the patent application, Jean Lee, “what is needed is a mechanism for mitigating variability and/or intermittency associated with the production of electricity from wind energy.”

One key component that would allow this technology to work is the friction between the rotor blades and that low heat capacity fluid. That fluid could be ethanol, nitrogen, an inert gas or mercury. In turn that insulated vessel-containing fluid could both obtain and store energy from the wind turbine and generate energy when wind is lacking. During such times a conductive rod or radiator would boil that fluid and the resulting steam would rotate another turbine connected to a generator.

Why would Apple pursue this? As is the case with many technology companies, much of the company’s carbon footprint lies in their data centers that are always ravenous for energy. As Fast Company’s Ariel Schwartz points out, Apple’s business will rely more and more on cloud technologies such as iTunes and of course, iCloud. So as Apple dabbles in clean energy, it would only make sense they develop their own--proprietary, no doubt--technology.

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

Image courtesy U.S. Patent Office

The cost of solar energy continues its downward trajectory, but it is still out of reach for many individuals and organizations. Oakland-based Mosaic, however, is doing its part to make solar more accessible and affordable. Its collaborative investment model is leading the way to making the rise of the sharing economy entrench itself within the energy industry.

The way Mosaic works is similar in concept to crowdfunding sites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo. But, unlike those successful sites, which are generated by donations with occasional promises of incentives, Mosaic provides a rate of return that varies by project. In turn this small startup, which for now has 14 employees, offers the opportunity for investors and true believers to put their money where their mouths are--and for as little as $25 per individual.

The results are opportunities for organizations such as affordable housing communities and nonprofits that seek power from the sun but cannot afford the cost of installing solar energy systems. One of Mosaic’s latest projects is a solar array on top of the Youth Employment Partnership (YEP), Oakland’s largest and oldest youth employment training agency. The 40-year-old nonprofit has trained at least 30,000 youth via various programs and has refurbished 50 homes in east Oakland for low-income families. Last month, YEP held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on its roof after its quest to raise over $40,000 for a 196-panel installation proved successful. Mosaic provided the platform through which over 50 investors could raise enough money to offer YEP a 60-month loan. The project will eventually save the organization a minimum of $55,000 over the next 10 years and, according to the San Jose Mercury News, $160,000 over the life of the project.

Additional projects are on the drawing board, including affordable housing projects in Salinas and San Bruno. The process for investors is seamless. First, Mosaic links investors to solar projects in need of financing. Later, as the solar array generates power, it gains revenue by selling electricity to that solar customer. That project, in turn, uses the revenue to pay yields to those investors. Mosaic so far has received seed money in the form of a grant from the Department of Energy as well as financial backing from San Francisco-based Spring Ventures.

Like any investment fund, pooling money in Mosaic has its risks. Anything could go awry, from bad weather or inverters or other equipment not performing the way the manufacturer had promised; suppliers that go bankrupt or the termination of local government rebate or tax incentives could affect a project’s financial performance as well. Investors have access to prospectuses on Mosaic’s site outlining each project’s risks. Nevertheless, in a world where someone passionate about affordable senior housing, or clean energy--or both--can do his or her part for as little as $25, Mosaic may be onto something that could easily be replicated in other industries. So far, the $1.1 million invested in several projects have benefited from a 100 percent on-time payment rate. So far, this sharing model is working and shining bright.

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

Image credit: Mosaic

As a lead-up to Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, January 13-17, Masdar sponsored a blogging contest called “Engage: The Water-Energy Nexus.”  The following post was among the finalists.

By Andrew Kear, PhD

Establishing a sustainable balance between energy and water is fundamental to the survival of humanity.  This energy-water crisis relates to nearly all of the present and future environmental problems confronting our planet – from climate change to fossil fuel dependence, from over-population to agricultural practices.  The complex interrelationships and resulting problems defy simple solutions.

Arguably, technology is no panacea and historically, it has created new and unforeseen problems.  For example, the present global unconventional natural gas boom spurred by technological innovations such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, has opened vast non-renewable energy supplies at the expense of water quality, quantity, and availability.  Achieving sustainable (i.e. renewable) global energy solutions will not eliminate water insecurity, especially in water-poor nations, but it will remove one unnecessary stressor to our precious water resources.

​At what level of action and in what manner should we address the energy-water crisis? While water and energy policy are largely regarded as separate arenas, specifically in the U.S. context, they should be treated holistically within the same political debate.  Thus, redefining water and energy as inseparable is critical.  From the grassroots to the global political sphere, immediate problem redefinition and political action are prerequisites to stalling the energy-water crisis.  In the affluent world, individuals can eat less meat, pressure politicians, drive less, buy local food, direct consumerism to greener products, and form broad coalitions promoting social/political change.  Individual lifestyle changes and political action in the global north are insufficient and political institutional action at the municipal, state, regional, nation-state, and international level must follow.

Governmental policy solutions range from the one-size-fits-all, prescriptive command-and-control style regulations to market-based initiatives (MBIs) to more sustainable options. For example, renewable portfolio standard policies (RPSs) mandate that major energy providers produce a certain percentage of their energy from renewable supplies such as wind and solar by a certain date.  Not only will these state and national policies advance water conserving energy sources, it will create a business opportunity where technological advancements and economies of scale can reduce prices.  This, in turn, will enable the developed world to transfer this technology to the developing world, moving them up the energy ladder to renewables and effectively skipping the fossil fuel addiction completely.

What can individuals, businesses, the collective, and governments do to achieve energy sustainability and increase water security?  Enact RPSs, promote sustainable practices, transfer renewable energy technology to the global south, fundamentally redefine how energy relates to water, and replace the fossil fuel paradigm with a renewable, water-conserving paradigm.  This requires immediate action from the individual to the global level and with present policies, our energy and water are running out.

[image credit: fox_kiyo: Flickr cc]

When the Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants launched in 2012, it focused attention on the high levels of indoor air pollution caused by the widespread use of primitive cookstoves in undeveloped countries. The new coalition also helped to shine a spotlight on a largely invisible but critical piece of the global warming puzzle, and that is the "black carbon" pollutants from primitive cookstoves used by an estimated three billion people worldwide, a number that is bound to shoot up along with the pace of population growth.

Now researchers have added another element of urgency to the clean cookstoves movement, with studies showing a link between the use of primitive cookstoves and outbreaks of bacterial meningitis. However, in order to realize the full benefits of cleaner alternatives, researchers are also beginning to explore the intricate network of issues that surround the simple act of cooking.

Simple cookstoves, complex issues

At its most basic level, the clean cookstove issue is a straightforward matter of public health. As described in a new article by  Cheryl Dybas of the National Science Foundation (NSF), primitive cookstoves that are used indoors with little or no ventilation can expose a household to high levels of smoke from burning wood, charcoal, coal, animal dung or agricultural waste.

The result is premature death from heart and lung disease, especially among children, at an estimated rate of 4 million people per year. Pneumonia in children and low birthweight in infants have also been linked to cookstove smoke.

Despite their small size, cookstoves also encompass a wide, complex network of social, economic and environmental issues. Depending on the type of fuel used, and the effort or expense involved in obtaining it, primitive cookstoves can put enormous stress on local natural resources, especially when charcoal is involved. Fuel gathering can also constrain a household's ability to use time more productively, contributing to long-term economic malaise.

Some advocacy organizations have pointed out that fuel-gathering in remote areas also exposes women to a higher risk of sexual violence, though at least one researcher has cautioned against assuming that clean cookstoves could provide a universal solution.

New threat from cookstove smoke

According to Dybas, the latest twist in the cookstove story is a possible link to meningitis in Africa's "meningitis belt," which covers approximately 300 million people in The Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Central African Republic, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Studies are showing that households exposed to smoke from cooking over open flames are nine times more likely to contract meningitis, a potentially deadly inflammation of the membrane around the brain and spinal cord.

Clean cookstoves in context

The clean cookstove movement provides a seemingly simple solution, but all too often it's the transition from point A to point B that proves complicated.

For example, dry-season dust in the meningitis belt could also be a significant factor, which would not be addressed by transitioning from one mode of cooking to another.

Depending on the type of clean cookstove, another factor is the willingness or ability of the household to keep the new equipment in good working condition and to use the proper fuel, as recently reported by National Geographic.

To examine cookstoves in a broader context, NSF has provided a grant for a first-of-its-kind study that expands the public health issue to include coordinated research by atmospheric, engineering, statistical and social scientists.

This quote from Sarah Ruth, a program director at NSF, sums it up:

"The adoption of more efficient cookstoves could lead to significant improvements in public health and environmental quality, but research has usually focused on the effects on individual households, local air quality, or the weather and climate system. By integrating the physical, social and health sciences, these scientists are providing a more complete analysis of the costs and benefits of improved cookstoves."

New alliances for clean cookstoves

In the meantime, the clean cookstove movement continues apace. The Climate and Clean Air Coalition to Reduce Short-Lived Climate Pollutants is a project of the U.S. with Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico, Sweden, the U.S. and the UN Environment Programme.

The coalition, in turn, coordinates with other public-private programs already underway, most notably the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, which aims to develop a market for clean cookstoves.

To underscore the level of corporate interest in this type of project, the Alliance was kickstarted by the Shell Foundation. Dow Corning and Morgan Stanley are among the other major private sector partners.

The transition to cleaner, locally produced cooking fuels could also have a ripple effect on sustainable economic development as well as public health, as envisioned by the clean cookstove project CleanStar Mozambique. This project also has some private sector heavyweights behind it, including Novozymes and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, as well as the Soros Economic Development Fund.

Another good example of the integrated approach is a new organization called Engineering for Change (E4C), which describes itself as a "growing community of engineers, technologists, social scientists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and local community advocates who are passionate about improving quality of life."

[Image: Primitive cookstove by Engineering for Change]

Follow me on Twitter: @TinaMCasey.

The connection between microfinance and sharing economy might look a bit strange at first, but these two have actually quite a lot in common. After all, both of them are disruptive concepts that empower people and offer alternatives to the current economic system.

At the same time, there’s a big difference in their level of maturity – while the sharing economy is still at its infancy stage, microfinance is in an adolescent stage, with a total of $70 billion in loans, more than 100 million “customers,” one Nobel Peace Prize winner, and even a feature on the Simpsons.

The similarities between microfinance and the sharing economy, together with the differences in their maturity levels, provide a great opportunity for the sharing economy to learn some valuable lessons from the more experienced microfinance, just like a young kid learning from his older sibling.

There are many lessons to be learned from microfinance, but these are the four most relevant ones to the future of the sharing economy. Applying them correctly can help the sharing economy move forward successfully and maybe even get its own mention on the Simpsons.

1. Keep it real

Prof. Rodrigo Canales of Yale School of Management describes a belief that was once common among some microfinance people. “My grandchildren will have to go to a dictionary to see what poverty was, because through microfinance, we've solved poverty.” This sort of expectation is unrealistic because no matter how effective microloans are (and in some cases they aren’t), they just can’t fix all the problems that cause poverty, such as a bad education system, non-functioning government, violence and so on.

Similarly, you can also find voices in the sharing economy who view the sharing economy as the ultimate fix. “We can neither survive nor live well unless we share,” Neal Gorenflo wrote on the preface for “Share or Die.” Well, just like microfinance alone won’t save us from poverty, it doesn’t seem likely that sharing alone will be the answer to our problems.

The ability to keep it real when it comes to the impact of microfinance has helped not just to acknowledge its limits, but also to better understand how it should be used within these limits in order to maximize its impact. Keeping it real when it comes to the sharing economy will probably provide us with similar results and, eventually, with greater impact.

2. More scale doesn’t necessarily equal more impact

One of the most important issues the sharing economy is dealing with now is how to effectively scale up. In the microfinance sector scaling was and still is a challenge. For a long time the dominant thought was that if you want to increase impact, you need to grow, or in other words, more scale equals more impact.

While in some cases this equation is indeed correct, we need to remember that bigger is not always better. As Ignacio Mas and David del Ser wrote earlier this year in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “it is the ambition of scale, rather than pure greed, that pushes most MFIs and their managers to be more financially driven, and social objectives take a back seat.”

Prof. Canales adds another argument. “Scale is going to mean lower cost. Lower cost does allow you to reach more people. But if you have a lower cost in your business model, you cannot provide more costly services. Then you've constrained your business model in a way that if there's a population that requires a more costly service, you're opting out of that,” he wrote.

The bottom line is clear. Thinking about scaling up? Prepare for tradeoffs, even substantial ones.

3. Greater profitability can attract the wrong investors

Impact might not be the only place where organizations in the sharing economy might need to make tradeoffs once they grow. Their whole identity might be in jeopardy as they grow and become more profitable, attracting capital from investors solely interested in maximizing their return on equity.

While not everyone believes greedy investors are the cause of some of the scandals we have witnessed in microfinance in the last couple of years, others believe that “microfinance has been hijacked by profiteers.” Yet I believe both sides would agree that IPOs, like those of Compartamos or SKS, increased the tension between the social and commercial components of the microfinance’s identity, often shifting companies from a social to a commercial orientation. Companies in the sharing economy who might be considering such a path should take that into consideration.

4. If you want to stay true to the mission, you have to stay true to the mission

This is a quote from Tony Sheldon of the Yale School of Management. What Sheldon means is that organizations with a social mission should learn from microfinance that first, there are implications for every step they take to move forward and they need to remember that. Second, they shouldn’t ignore tradeoffs no matter how strongly they believe they can avoid them.

And last but not least, eventually it’s not the organization’s level of profitability, its size or whether it’s a nonprofit or a for-profit that matters, but the extent to which the organization stays true to its mission. Once you remember to keep it your first priority, the remaining pieces of the puzzle will fall into place.

[Image credit: elFrank70, Flickr Creative Commons]

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