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ScottishPower has become the UK’s first integrated electricity and gas provider to switch totally to renewable sources. 

         The company, which has 5.1 million UK customers, made the change by selling its remaining gas-fired power stations to Drax, the Yorkshire-based electricity generation group. 

         All ScottishPower’s electricity is now produced by wind power, much of it from the Whitelee wind farm on moorland outside Glasgow, which has 215 turbines generating up to 539 megawatts, making it the UK’s largest onshore site. 

         The company has another large wind farm under construction in East Anglia and is investing about £5.2bn ($6.7bn, €5.9bn) in renewables and smart grids during the next four years to make electricity cleaner and more affordable. 

         To minimise energy costs ScottishPower is using solar power at the same time. Industry observers think the entry of a large business into the arena could shake up the market as smaller companies and community groups have been the main operators until now. 

         Keith Anderson, chief executive of ScottishPower, told the press: “The solar market has had difficulties over the last week. But you look at where the technology cost is getting to, and the possibilities of integrating it with wind … how it balances from season to season wind and solar output, and we see a good opportunity there for further investment.” 

         ScottishPower, which has its headquarters in Glasgow but serves the whole of the UK, is not alone in its green ambitions. 

         A league table drawn up by Sust-it, an energy efficiency assessment agency in Gloucestershire, lists four smaller providers that draw all their electricity from renewable sources – Bulb, Ecotricity, Good Energy and LoCO2. Close behind them, a 99.8 per cent figure was given for Green Star Energy. 

         Some larger providers had poorer rankings. Southern Electric and SSE were said to obtain 37 per cent of their electricity from renewable sources, British Gas 33 per cent, and E.ON 29 per cent. 

         ScottishPower appears to match the best offered elsewhere in Europe. 

         Ørsted, the large Danish group, has reduced coal consumption by 73 per cent in ten years and will phase out coal during the next five years. Last year it divested its entire upstream oil and gas business. 

         As a result, Ørsted has more than halved its carbon dioxide emissions in a decade and intends to reduce them by 96 per cent by 2023. “This makes our target more ambitious than those agreed in the Paris Climate Agreement,” said the company. 

         Ørsted sees this policy as good economics. At present it supplies power to 9.5 million people and its ambition is to raise the figure to 30 million by 2025. 

         It describes its policy with the clichéd but commendable sentiment: “Together we can make a difference.”  

           

         

          

 

This article series is underwritten by Symantec and went through our normal editorial review process.

Genetic testing is a booming business. The global DNA testing market is set to reach over $10 billion by 2022, according to a study by Grand View Research. More than 12 million Americans have already sent their DNA to be analyzed by companies like 23andMe and AncestryDNA. And that number is rising: AncestryDNA sold about 1.5 million testing kits between Black Friday and Cyber Monday last year. With the top testing companies advertising holiday specials on their websites, there’s no doubt these kits will be found in many a stocking again this season.

But as DNA testing continues to grow in popularity, a key concern is often ignored: privacy. Testing companies have acknowledged that DNA data is sometimes shared with or sold to third parties for use in research. In July, 23andMe announced a partnership with GlaxoSmithKline through which the pharmaceutical company will use home DNA results from 23andMe’s 5 million customers for new drug research.

The thorny ethical questions that come along with handling such deeply personal data have become the keen focus of Peter Pitts. A former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, he now serves as president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest Forensic Genetics Policy Initiative, which advocates for greater scrutiny about the implications of data privacy around DNA testing.

“The industry’s rapid growth rests on a dangerous delusion that genetic data is kept private,” Pitts wrote in Forbes last year. “Most people assume this sensitive information simply sits in a secure database, protected from hacks and misuse. Far from it. Genetic-testing companies cannot guarantee privacy. And many are actively selling user data to outside parties.”

The popularity of these kits is understandable. For less than $100, people can discover their ancestry and uncover potentially dangerous genetic mutations. The problem, as Pitts sees it, is that these DNA results are increasingly leveraged for applications that go far beyond customer curiosity.

DNA testing companies profit, for example, from lucrative deals with pharmaceutical firms, yet customers rarely get a share of the revenue generated from their DNA results. In the case of the GSK partnership, customers can opt out of having their data used for research, but Pitts says the companies should pay the 23andMe customers whose DNA is used.

“There is almost a complete lack of awareness among the public about this issue,” Pitts told TriplePundit. “The DNA kits are being viewed as stocking stuffers or cocktail party conversation. People don’t think about the security of their DNA as they don’t realize its value. You can change your Social Security number or your computer password, but you can’t change your DNA. I’m not saying DNA testing doesn’t have value, but people don’t understand the privacy and security implications.”

Potential for misuse of data

Once genetic data has been linked to a specific person, the potential for abuse is vast and frightening, Pitts said. “Imagine a political campaign exposing a rival’s elevated risk of Alzheimer’s. Or an employer refusing to hire someone because autism runs in her family. Imagine a world where people can have their genomic building blocks held against them. Such abuses represent a profound violation of privacy. That’s an inherent risk in current genetic-testing practices.”

 

The problem, he explained, starts with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a 1996 federal law that allows medical companies to share and sell patient data if it has been “anonymized,” or scrubbed of any obvious identifying characteristics.

The Portability Act was passed when genetic testing was just “a distant dream on the horizon of personalized medicine,” Pitts noted. “But today, that loophole has proven to be a cash cow.”

For instance, 23andMe has sold access to its database to at least 13 outside pharmaceutical firms. One buyer, Genentech, paid $10 million for the genetic profiles of people suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

Data in the wrong hands

“Customers are wrong to think their information is safely locked away. It’s not; it’s getting sold far and wide,” Pitts told us. Further, many testing firms that generally don’t sell patient information, such as Ambry and Invitae, give it away to public databases, he explained.

 

Such transfers leave a big gap in privacy protections. “Hacks are inevitable. Easily accessible, public genetic depositories are obvious targets.”

If genetic data does fall into the hands of “nefarious actors,” Pitts warned, “it’s relatively easy for them to de-anonymize it. New lab techniques can unearth genetic markers tied to specific, physical traits, such as eye or hair color. Sleuths can then cross-reference those traits against publicly-available demographic data to identify the donors.”

Lost in the fine print

Pitts says that direct-to-consumer testing companies have been less than forthright about these dangers, usually burying privacy disclaimers deep in their contracts and refusing to disclose how long they keep customer data or how it can be used. New research published in the journal Nature found that genetic-testing companies frequently fail to meet even basic international transparency standards.

 

While Pitts maintains that AncestryDNA “all but owns the data that customers submit,” an AncestryDNA spokeperson said, “Ancestry very clearly disclaims any ownership of our customers’ genetic information.”

AncestryDNA’s Privacy Statement describes user provided content as information individuals provide about themselves or other living individuals when they voluntarily contribute to Ancestry.com’s services. The section on Genetic Information states that DNA data is stored so that it is “available for future testing,” but that such testing may be done only if users agree to Informed Consent for Research or otherwise consent to future testing. The section also states that genetic information may be used for “conducting scientific, statistical, and historical research.” It further states that if requested, it will delete all genetic information that an individual has submitted within 30 days. Those who have agreed to the Informed Consent to Research will not be able to have genetic information removed from active or completed research projects but Ancestry states it would not use it for any new research projects.

23andMe customers, Pitts said, have to wade through pages of fine print before learning that their information may be “shared with research partners, including commercial partners.”

Meanwhile, Invitae’s privacy policy reveals that it may use patients’ “de-identified” data for “research and development” or “general research purposes.” And the company can share that data with third parties such as public databases, other laboratories and universities.

Further, federal genetic privacy laws do not apply to life, long-term care or disability insurers. These companies are legally permitted to access genetic testing data and charge people higher prices or deny coverage based on their findings, Pitts said.

Regulators enter the fray

Some legislators have recently raised concerns about the privacy implications of DNA testing. In November, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York called for increased federal scrutiny of consumer DNA testing companies and their privacy practices. While the FDA regulates consumer DNA tests related to health, Schumer wants the Federal Trade Commission to force testing firms to extract all of the buried fine print about how they might distribute DNA data and broadcast it loud and clear.

 

“I think if most people knew that this information could be sold to third parties, they would think twice,” Schumer said at a press conference last month. “The last gift any of us want to give away this holiday season is our most personal and sensitive information.”

The state of Minnesota is also exploring legislation around direct-to-consumer DNA testing. While genetic testing companies doing business in Minnesota are subject to the state’s existing consumer protection laws, it lacks an enforcement mechanism for such companies, legislators noted. Pitts testified before the Legislative Commission on Data Practices in December.

Minnesota is looking toward Alaska, which has a Genetic Privacy Act that the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy advocacy organization, described as “exemplary” and “comprehensive.” The Alaska statute requires written informed consent for the collection, analysis, retention, or disclosure of DNA samples and test results. It also declares that a DNA sample and the results of any genomic analysis are the “exclusive property of the person sampled or analyzed.”

It comes down to trust and transparency

Pitts isn’t sold on regulation as the sole solution. “Honest, robust self-awareness is better than regulation,” he told us, adding that most DNA-testing companies have been “standoffish” in the face of regulation.

 

“These companies have to ramp up their awareness about government relations and overall be better partners in the genetic testing system,” Pitts said. “Trust and transparency” is at the heart of the issue, he continued. “There should be responsible parties on all sides of this conversation.”

For their part, the leading consumer genetic and personal genomic testing companies—23andMe, Ancestry, Helix, MyHeritage and Habit—joined the nonprofit Future of Privacy Forum to release Privacy Best Practices for Consumer Genetic Testing Services. They were joined by African Ancestry, FamilyTreeDNA and Living DNA in supporting the Best Practices as “a clear articulation of how leading firms can build trust with consumers.”

Some critics, however, have called out these best practices for being voluntary and for lacking restrictions on the use or release of de-identified data.

Both Ancestry and 23andMe have acknowledged the criticism that has come with more widespread use of their products. But the companies maintain that their customers understand the trade-offs and have the opportunity to opt out at any time.

Linda Avey, co-founder of 23andMe, concedes that nothing is foolproof. “It’s a fallacy to think that genomic data can be fully anonymized,” she told Undark, an independent digital magazine.

In short, it’s up to consumers to decide whether or not to use DNA-testing kits or similar services, but Pitts encouraged people to keep these acknowledged risks in mind when making their decision. “What you risk reveals what you value,” he concluded. “In the 21st century, we must learn to value our personal genetic code.

NOTE: This article was updated on 12/19/18 to include comments from an AncestryDNA spokesperson.

Image: Unsplash/Louis Reed

When the Trump administration proposed rolling back Obama-era fuel economy standards for the auto industry, the opposition was nearly universal -- except, of course, on the part of the oil industry. In the latest development, two new studies indicate that agriculture stakeholders will feel the impacts if the new fuel economy proposal goes into effect.

Climate change and fuel economy

For those of you new to the fuel economy topic, U.S. automakers have to abide by CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards set by the federal government.

The initial force behind the CAFE standards was the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, which touched off a supply crisis in the U.S. In response, Congress passed the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act.

Unfortunately, consumption continued to creep upwards after the 1970's. Domestic fuel supply concerns once again prompted Congress to take more action. Higher fuel economy standards were finally imposed in 2007 under the Energy Independence and Security Act.

When President Obama took office in 2009, climate change entered the picture. The Union of Concerned Scientists sums up the merger of air pollution standards with fuel economy goals:

In 2009, a historic agreement between the Federal Government, state regulators, and the auto industry established a national program to implement these first meaningful fuel efficiency improvements in over 30 years and the first-ever global warming pollution standards for light-duty vehicles.

The agreement called for coordination between Clean Air Act standards and fuel economy standards, easing the way for the auto industry to create fleets that comply with both.

The agreement also meant that EPA and the California Air Resources Board would join the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency to implement fuel economy standards.

In addition to efficiency improvements, the first phase of the new program called for a 23 percent improvement in pollution by 2016. Further improvements were slated to occur under the second phase, from 2017 to 2025.

Climate change and the new MIT study

When Trump took office in 2017 he vowed to roll back the standards. Last summer, the process went into motion.

On August 2, NHTSA announced its intention to freeze CAFE and tailpipe pollution standards at 2020 levels, under a proposal called the SAFE Vehicles Rule.

SAFE stands for "Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient." In accord with the emphasis on safety, NHTSA cited this reasoning:

. . . If adopted, the proposed rule’s preferred alternative would save more than $500 billion in societal costs and reduce highway fatalities by 12,700 lives (over the lifetimes of vehicles through model year 2029).

That brings us to the first of those two studies. Last week, MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Christopher Knittel and colleagues from other top schools threw cold water on the whole idea that the fuel economy rollback would save lives or anything else, for that matter.

In an article published in the journal Science, they analyzed the Trump administration cost-benefit study underpinning the proposal. They found crippling flaws in the assertion that continuing the Obama standards would result in more traffic deaths and more cars on the road. They also found no evidence for the assertion that the Obama standards would result in increased costs that outweigh societal benefits.

As for those societal benefits, that's where fuel economy intersects with climate change and the interests of the global agricultural community.

By rejecting the Obama-era emphasis on global greenhouse gas emissions within the fuel economy space, the Trump administration in effect throws the agricultural community under the bus.

Energy Manager Today highlights an observation from Knittel, which teases out the geopolitical as well as environmental impacts:

The 2018 study eliminates the prior study’s global focus, targeting only the U.S. “This is a major difference that reduces the social cost of carbon from $48 per ton globally to a cost of only $7 per ton in the U.S. By ignoring the rest of the world, the study reduces the benefits of fuel standards from $27.8 billion in 2016 to $4.3 billion in 2018, effectively announcing to the world that the US. does not care about climate impacts outside of its borders, even those faced by our strongest allies,” [Knittel] notes.

Agriculture and fuel economy

The impact of global warming on farmers is all too evident right here in the US. In 2013 the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued this warning:

Effects will vary among annual and perennial crops, and regions of the United States; however, all production systems will be affected to some degree by climate change. Agricultural systems depend upon reliable water sources, and the pattern and potential magnitude of precipitation changes is not well understood, thus adding considerable uncertainty to assessment efforts.

One of those climate change impacts is a strange phenomenon in which rainfall increases, and yet rivers -- a key source of irrigation for farmers -- are drying up.

That's where the second study comes in.

Billed as "the most exhaustive global analysis of rainfall and rivers," the study included data from 43,000 rainfall stations and 5,300 river monitoring sites in 160 countries, under the auspices of Australia's University of New South Wales in Sydney.

Based on that data, the researchers concluded that the culprit is a pattern of storm events following dry conditions. That pattern results in more water being captured in soil rather than running off to rivers.

The cycle is exacerbated as farmers seek more water to irrigate dryer soil, as explained by head researcher Ashish Sharma :

"We believe the cause is the drying of soils in our catchments. Where once these were moist before a storm event - allowing excess rainfall to run-off into rivers - they are now drier and soak up more of the rain, so less water makes it as flow.

"Less water into our rivers means less water for cities and farms. And drier soils means farmers need more water to grow the same crops. Worse, this pattern is repeated all over the world, assuming serious proportions in places that were already dry. It is extremely concerning . . ."

Here in the U.S., the Colorado River -- which feeds breadbasket states in the southwest -- is drying up to the point where federal monitors may need to impose mandatory restrictions.

The Colorado River is already under stress due to population growth, fossil fuel extraction and farming.

With new evidence that climate change is contributing to stress on agricultural water resources, farmers have all the more reason to step up and advocate for climate action, including stricter fuel economy standards.

Image credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A few years ago, Paul Gambill, the CEO and founder of Nori, a startup aimed at creating a blockchain-based market for carbon removal certificates, was grappling with what he called “a simple problem” - that the world was making the quest to take on climate change far too complicated.

Rather than despair over climate change, Gambill said his engineer’s mind told him there had to be a solution. Gambill, with experience developing mobile and web applications for companies like Nike, Target and Starbucks, established the first-ever community dedicated to the large-scale removal of carbon from the atmosphere, Carbon Removal Seattle. That led him to think about taking the same approach to a global level.

“I was curious about why there were not more efforts to solve the whole thing and make it go away. It seemed to me this was a simple problem. There are too many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There had to be a way to pull them out, and create a value for them, so people have an incentive to remove carbon,” Gambill told TriplePundit.

With plans to launch in early 2019, Nori’s goal is to create a new way for anyone in the world to pay to remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The company does so by connecting buyers and suppliers in the world’s first carbon removal marketplace with a mission to reverse climate change, Gambill says.

Tapping into transparency of blockchain

The company has created a cryptocurrency called a Nori token; one token equals one tonne of carbon removed. Once a carbon removal claim is verified by an accredited independent third-party, Nori issues a Carbon Removal Certificate (CRC).

The transparency of the blockchain—meaning, the cryptographic proof that what is on the blockchain is what actually occurred in the digital world—ensures easy auditing of the lifecycle of the CRC, according to a Nori white paper.

“A Nori token is sort of like a gift card for a future carbon purchase,” Gambill explained. “The buyer can sell it or hang onto it. He or she can sell it for cash or another cryptocurrency. This creates a universal, market-driven price for carbon, something that economists and companies have wanted for decades.”

Power to the people

Nori converts what has been a lengthy, costly, and unreliable process to a simple e-commerce transaction, Gambill adds, which can be as large as a company paying to remove megatons of carbon or as small as an add-on to a taxi ride.

The continual wrangling over a global climate treaty—the COP24 climate talks last week barely ended in agreement on a set of rules to help curb global warming—is yet more evidence, Gambill told TriplePundit, “that people are sick and tired of waiting around for policymakers and politicians to do what needs to be done.”

“We’re saying, ‘Forget that, let’s put the power in the hands of everyday people and everyday companies to start cleaning up the atmosphere. There is no need to wait for large scale voter approval or policy changes. You can deal with the carbon problem right now,” he said.

Problems with current offset market

“Carbon offsets don’t solve the problem,” Gambill says.

Nori’s aim is to remove the seven or eight layers of middlemen in the traditional carbon offset markets, and to reflect the true market value of removing one ton of carbon from the atmosphere— rather than government-defined price ceilings and floors. It would resemble a simple e-commerce transaction.

Greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere should be treated like any other waste stream, Gambill argues. Just as most people pay garbage collectors to remove waste and break it down, recycling what they can, and responsibly storing the parts that can’t be recycled, Nori would become the garbage collectors of greenhouse gas emissions, he says.

“Considering them as such brings the issue onto an economic—rather than moral—plane,” he adds.

Providing incentive to scale new technologies

As futuristic as it sounds, there are already many viable ways to remove and store carbon from the atmosphere, Gambill notes, including regenerative agriculture, afforestation, biochar, marine permaculture, bio-energy with carbon capture and storage, mineral carbonation, direct-air capture and the use of more climate-friendly construction materials.

The pioneers behind each of these methods need more funding to scale their solutions, as well as a price signal to ensure their upfront costs will be worth the investment—and that is what Nori would address, he explains.

By creating a fair and transparent marketplace for activities that remove carbon dioxide, Nori says it will drive the expansion of a brand-new global industry that will restore the carbon balance in the atmosphere, he predicts.

Helping farmers sequester carbon in the soil

The first methodology on Nori’s platform is regenerative agriculture. There are plenty of reasons for this, Gambill explains. Agriculture and food companies want farmers to transition to this type of farming, but have often not been able to adequately account for and verify removal of carbon from the soil. And farmers, faced with soil erosion and the cost of fertilizer, are all in favor of adopting practices that are more sustainable—while making money for removing carbon.

Turning carbon into a cash crop is the aim of the collaboration announced last month between Nori and Granular, which gives farmers access to software and analytics to increase their overall profitability. Together, they are working to enable farmers to get paid for sequestering carbon in their soils.

“This is a big deal because farmers use Granular for planning and operating their growing practices, and in the process they capture a lot of data that is useful for measuring the carbon that they store in the soil,” Gambill says. “We want to make it as simple as possible so farmers who are already working to restore the health and quality of their soils can easily monetize that.”

Finding the buyers

Gambill says he expects the buyers on Nori’s platform to be people and organizations who have long wanted to neutralize their carbon footprints. But these same buyers generally don’t trust that the carbon offset credits offered for sale in traditional markets have actually accounted for avoiding or removing emitted carbon dioxide in the full amount they purport.

Nori believes airlines, which currently have no way to directly neutralize the carbon footprint of air travel, will be among those first movers, along with cities and government that can use the Nori platform to meet and motivate commitments to reduce or even negate carbon emissions.

To grow the market, tokens will be heavily discounted compared to the typical price of carbon markets, anywhere from $1 to $20 per ton of carbon. Nori’s tokens will cost $0.075 per ton for corporate customers and $0.15 per ton for investors.

Taking the first leap

A company called Kyero, which manages Spanish property transactions for overseas buyers, was the first to take the leap. The online business realized its carbon footprint was larger than they had assumed, considering the flights taken by its staff, the electricity consumed and heat generated by data centers and that their business model is built on encouraging clients to take a lot of long-distance flights.

As co-founder Louise Dell described her dilemma in an article on LinkedIn, realizing the true scale of the carbon the company was emitting, directly or indirectly, into the atmosphere could have been a moment where she would “wave my hands in the air and bemoan the futility of trying to do something - and excuse myself from doing anything at all.”

That changed when she found out about Nori, she writes. Kyero invested in order to remove double the amount of its CO2 footprint for the next 10 years. Furthermore, Kyero will acquire these carbon removal tokens so that it can remove carbon emissions at a rate twice of what the company’s customers are projected to generate over the next 10 years when flying to Spain.

“At this early stage there are many unknowns and what-if's about the marketplace Nori is creating,” Dell acknowledges. “Maybe the sensible thing would be to stand back, do nothing and see if they make it? There are so many ways to justify playing a ‘wait and see’ game - but, we know how that’s likely to play out. Besides which, Kyero is a marketplace business, so we understand that ‘someone’ has to jump first to get the ball rolling.”

Democratizing the power to remove carbon

While the major buyers in the Nori marketplace are expected to be companies, the founders wanted to make it broadly available to any individual over the age of 18 by launching a crowdfunding campaign. The initial target was to sell $50,000 worth of tokens, a figure that has more than doubled so far.

Recognizing its novelty and its complexity, Nori is actively engaged in educating people about how its platform will work. It hosts a weekly podcast called “Reversing Climate Change” and has launched a webinar series to provide updates, gather feedback, and dive into specific topics around its market design.

“Ultimately our goal is to show people that carbon removal really is possible, that the incentives do exist,” Gambill said. “Too many people have been afraid of climate change, but there are solutions, if we build the right incentive structures.”

Image credit: Aleksandr Eremin/Unsplash

Originally published as The Big Story in the Brands Taking Stands weekly newsletter; click here to sign up.

Since its beginning just over one year ago, I’ve argued in this newsletter that the private sector is the best hope for systemic social change in a time when most other institutions do not seem up to the task. Corporate activism is increasing due to governmental dysfunction and institutional ineptitude and paralysis. Employee activism is on the rise, buoyed by heated rhetoric about social movements and hot-button political issues.

In the brands taking stands department, the bigger picture is being addressed because companies realize that adopting sustainable practices internally only goes so far. Without corresponding changes within the larger society, the effectiveness of many corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability practices is limited. And social restlessness is showing up in the workplace, as a younger workforce insists that companies tackle such issues as racism, gender equity and LGBTQ rights as “business as usual.”

This is new territory for business, and it’s no wonder that many previously unasked questions arise. Thankfully, thoughtful researchers are hard at work asking the right questions and offering some possible answers.

The basic issues for companies are outlined in a recent blog by Joss Tantram, a founding partner of Terrafiniti, a U.K. sustainability consultancy: “Just what are the expectations, limitations and challenges which companies should consider when undertaking activism?” Tantram proposes “common self-interest” as the best guide in navigating this uncharted territory. He defines nine points of measurement, from focus and brand cohesion to societal capacity. He points complex questions—such as “does the project/activity focus upon a common problem or systems-level challenge that is preventing/slowing the move toward a sustainable, equitable economy?”—to concise, specific targets, such as “creating enabling conditions.”

In conclusion, Tantram comes down in favor of corporate activism: “If we are truly interested in encouraging and supporting companies to play a role in developing a sustainable world, then we should also be interested in those which undertake activism to address or respond to clear social and ecological challenges.”

What does this new world of corporate activism look like for employees? Jim Starr, president and chief executive officer for America’s Charities, spells out the details in a recent blog for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

“There are certainly many levels and degrees to which employers can step up and address employees’ growing demands for companies to take stands on important issues. The good news is many companies are already well-positioned to provide their employees an outlet for their activism in a way that also aligns with the company’s core values.”

Starr describes six CSR program elements to engage with and support employee activism. They range from matching employee giving to providing resource groups. Another key is leadership buy-in, without which programs are likely to fail. He cautions that “employee engagement and workplace giving programs must be embedded in a company’s culture, values and actions,” not just bolt-on, feel-good initiatives.

Starr acknowledges that “the rise of employee activism presents new challenges for companies in striking the right balance between engaging their employees in issues that matter to them, staying true to their corporate mission and values, and being a force for social good.” But he concludes that meeting these challenges successfully is integral to the purpose of business today. A company’s value is now being measured in part by its ability to provide a platform for its employees to address the social causes that matter to them, as well as by its profitability.

I think it’s clear that values are now a part of valuation in the new world of business activism.

Be sure to stay informed about the latest in corporate responsibility and corporate activism with the Brands Taking Stands newsletter. And follow us on Twitter @BrandsTkgStands.

Image: AdobeStock/EtiAmmos

Whether you like them or not, electric scooters are destined to remain part of our urban transportation future. Enabled by ever improving and cheaper batteries, along with the convenience of being able to unlock them with your phone, they will continue to be a compelling choice for city dwellers who find themselves in a hurry.

They also solve the eternal logistics challenge of moving people over the “first and last mile.” The usefulness of public transportation has always been limited by only being able to move people from either bus stop to bus stop, or train station to train station. But mass transit rarely picks you up where you are, or gets you exactly where you need to go.

Mobility solutions for the first and last mile have consequently become a booming business, and this segment has come to be known as the “micro-mobility” market.

Micro-mobility transportation solutions have been defined as those which can carry one or two passengers and includes both traditional options - such as bicycles - along with the battery-powered newcomers including e-bikes, scooters and even small electric cars.

Additionally, micro-mobility devices encompass other even smaller-sized innovations such as electric skateboards, and even a one-wheeled skateboard with a large central wheel in the middle of the deck: as in one designed by Future Motion, which claims is recreating the feeling of snowboarding on fresh powder.

Such has been the growth of these last mile transportation solutions that some are calling it the micro-mobility revolution, and it’s happening despite the well known disdain many members of the public have for electric scooters. The detractors, though, are actually in the minority.

In an interview conducted by radio station WBUR in August with transportation expert Regina Clewlow, she said 70 percent of people in major U.S. cities view the omnipresent electric scooters scooters positively. And because people have become accustomed to hailing an Uber or Lyft with their phones, unlocking these devices in a similar fashion has become second nature. But of course, the scooter rental model isn’t the only game in town.

In the case of Future Motion’s “Onewheel” product, there is no option for app-based commercial rental. If you want to ride one of these, you’ll need to buy the $1,400 device directly from the company. Financial backers nonetheless see the company’s business model as a viable one, with Future Motion having secured $7 million in funding, according to an article recently published in Inc. And unlike most technology products, including pretty much all of the battery-powered scooters you see on city streets, the Onewheel is made in the USA.

Selling to the consumer means Future Motion’s business model depends on building a brand around the device rather than (in the case of scooter rental companies) building a brand around the app.

And there’s a case to be made for private ownership of micro-mobility devices over the rental model. For example, consider whether electric scooters would be less frowned upon if the devices were taken care of by their owner rather than used and then left - or according to critics - discarded on the sidewalk.  

One commenter writing on a scooter rental company’s Facebook page recently observed that scooter rental defeats the main benefit a scooter has in the first place; that as a small vehicle, it can be taken into the workplace with you and doesn’t need to be secured or left outside. Indeed, if scooter riders folded up and took their scooters into the office, it would alleviate one of the main complaints they’ve attracted - the haphazard abandonment of the devices, posing a hazard to pedestrians.

Another commenter disliked the fact that a private scooter rental company is locking their scooters to city-provided bicycle parking, arguing that the for-profit company is piggybacking on publicly-funded infrastructure. Furthermore, all scooter rental companies are finding challenges in navigating regulations, which impede acceptance by host cities.

These problems aside, however, we’ve written before that responsible growth will almost certainly secure the place of scooter rental operations going forward, and the financial backing is in place.

And arguably, of course, personal ownership is a less sustainable model than a shared-by-the minute rental model, but as we’ve learned, if people are throwing scooters into the ocean or destroying them, the rental model isn’t without waste. Furthermore, in China, an oversupply of bicycles in bike share programs has resulted in literally mountains of discarded bikes; check out the photo included in this article in The Atlantic.

No doubt though, we can expect the micro-mobility market to continue to be made up of both the fleet operators and those that prefer private ownership. And new types of devices will no doubt be added to the mix as well. As the founder of Future Motion told Inc., “It’s not a winner-take-all. Different people have very different personalities and values and want to ride different things. That’s what allows this to be a vibrant space.”

Image credit: Maurizio Pesce/Flickr

The U.S. will be a majority-minority nation in the coming decades, but you wouldn’t guess it by looking at the gender and minority representation among the top executives and corporate boards of America’s most successful companies, according to the just-released 2017 Corporate Diversity Survey from U.S. Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey.

According to Pew Research Center, the percentage of the U.S. population comprised of non-Hispanic whites will decline from 62 percent today to 46 percent by 2065. At that point, Pew estimates that the country will be approximately 24 percent Hispanic, 14 percent Asian, and 13 percent African American.

Little progress since 2010

But in Menendez’s survey of the Fortune 100 (with 61 companies responding), white men continue to represent the majority of corporate board seats at 50.8 percent and 53.4 percent of all executive team positions. Women comprised 25.3 percent of all executive team positions and racial or ethnic minorities represented 16.3 percent.

African-Americans held 10.9 percent of corporate board seats, Latinos 4.9 percent and Asian-Americans 3.6 percent. Native Americans did not hold a single board of directors position among the sampled companies. Women of color made up 5.6 percent of corporate board membership.

“Our survey results suggest that progress on diversity has been sluggish at best,” Menendez said in releasing the report Dec 12, adding that women and people of color only saw an average two to five percent increase in overall representation since 2010. “While these numbers demonstrate tangible progress, we cannot lose sight of the fact that women are half of the country’s population, people of color are more than a quarter, and the nation is only growing more diverse.”

Make diversity numbers public

Menendez, chair of the Senate Democratic Hispanic Task Force and the highest-ranking Latino in the U.S. Congress, has long championed corporate diversity; this the fourth such survey undertaken by his Senate office. Of course, Menendez's own conduct has caught plenty of attention over the past few years.

The senator has faced his own clashes, largely over ethics. He was indicted on federal corruption charges in 2015 for allegedly accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and bribes, although his trial ended last November with a mistrial. The Justice Department dropped the charges in January 2018. The Senate Ethics Committee, however, admonished Menendez in April. In a closely watched race, he managed to win his third term in the Senate in the mid-term election with 54 percent of the vote in a blue state that has not elected a Republican senator since 1972.

Transparency and accountability, however, are at the center of Menendez's mission when it comes to corporate diversity. His survey noted that only 37.7 percent of the companies sampled have numeric targets for diversity at the executive team level and only 11.5 percent set specific targets for diversity on their Board of Directors.

Menendez was joined by Cedric L. Richmond, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Judy Chu, Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and Joaquin Castro, Chair-elect of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (who is said to be making a Presidential run in 2020) in co-signing a letter to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

They are asking that the EEOC, which conducts a wide-ranging survey of every employer in the U.S. with 100 or more employees, to make public any data categorized by race, ethnicity and gender for executive and senior-level officials and managers for America’s 500 top-performing companies, beginning in the year 2000 and every year going forward.

“We believe public information and transparency are the first stepping-stones towards a more inclusive America,” the legislators wrote.

AT&T’s diversity chief says work not done

In a press call presenting the survey’s findings, Menendez was joined by Chu, Castro, Corey Anthony, Chief Diversity Officer for AT&T, Idalia Hill, Communications Lead for the CEO Action Network and Cid Wilson with the Alliance for Board Diversity.

“You absolutely have to have commitment throughout your organization, from the very top to the employees who are interacting with the customers,” Anthony said, noting that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has set “clear expectations” around four pillars for diversity and inclusion and AT&T publishes an annual Diversity & Inclusion Report.

While AT&T’s workforce is similar to other technology, media and telecommunications companies (over 30 percent female and 40 percent people of color), the number of black employees is nearly 10 percent higher than the average for these companies and the number of Latino employees is about 6 percent higher, according to AT&T’s 2017 Diversity and Inclusion Report. People of color make up 36.9 percent of AT&T’s management.

Supporting the CEO Action Pledge

Stephenson is among the more than 500 CEOs who have signed the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion Pledge, the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace. By participating, CEOs pledge to promote a workplace that respects and welcomes diverse perspectives and experiences.

“We have very clear policies and accountability around diversity and inclusion and while we are proud of the work we’ve done, we are not declaring victory. There are opportunities for us to improve and we are always in continuous improvement,” Anthony said at the press conference.

One such action AT&T has taken, according to Anthony, is increasing both the dollar spend and number of diverse suppliers among AT&T’s suppliers. Menendez’s survey noted there is plenty room for improvement here across the board: on average, companies only spent about 8.3 percent of their procurement of goods and services budget on women-and-minority-owned businesses.

How to push the pace of change

Among Menendez’s recommendations: CEOs must lead the way, incentivize progress by tying diversity goals to bonuses, build a pipeline of qualified minorities and women and embrace transparency.

“As more companies open up about their diversity and inclusion practices, consumers will be faced with the choice of sponsoring those that reflect their values and interest while shying away from companies that choose to remain homogeneous and non-transparent,” Menendez said.

Image credit: Office of Senator Bob Menendez

A new report from the nonprofit KnowTheChain measured 43 of the world’s largest clothing and footwear companies' efforts to address forced labor, and concluded the industry was not making enough progress. KnowTheChain’s researchers made the point that the average score was only 37 out of a possible 100, with more than two-thirds of companies surveyed scoring below 50. While this is a marginal improvement from the nonprofit’s 2016 report, this most recent survey made it clear it believed such efforts have been too little and too slow.

“The sector as a whole isn’t doing enough,” said Kilian Moote, KnowTheChain project director in an interview with TriplePundit. “For example, 18 companies scored zero on factors related to recruitment.”

Forced labor is among the human rights problems that have been well-documented across the textile and apparel industry’s global supply chain. Whether it’s slavery in cotton fields, human trafficking of factory workers or the still-widespread use of child labor, there is still a lot that companies must address to ensure their supply chains are free of labor abuses. And it is a huge challenge that is a long way from being solved, as the International Labor Organization estimated in 2016 that 25 million people were working in forced labor at any moment in time.

The root cause of these abuses are certain accepted practices, such as the one Killian mentioned above – recruitment, namely, the pervasive use of agencies to find workers for factories and workshops. These agencies often charge migrant workers large fees just to land a job, and there is ample evidence that these high fees push poor migrants, many of whom take on debt in order to secure work, into forced labor situations.

“[There is] growing acknowledgment that no worker should have to pay to work today, particularly in a world where more and more workers are migrating specifically for work,” said Moote. In fact, the companies that scored highest on the rankings, adidas and Lululemon, are unique in that they require direct employment of all workers across the supply chain – a requirement that KnowTheChain believes other companies should consider implementing.

Another key challenge that has been an obstacle to progress is the complexity of supply chains, and the interconnectedness of the industry. Namely, most major global brands engage the same suppliers, or source from the same regions where textile factories and labor abuses are rampant, such as Bangladesh, Cambodia or Vietnam. Namely, one company can only do so much to solve this problem.

“What we would like to see is the sector as a whole start moving to address certain fundamental risks,” said Moote. 

On this front, there are optimistic signs that things will get better in the coming years. In October, the American Apparel and Footwear Association, which represents more than 1,000 global name brands, retailers, and manufacturers, announced a commitment with the Fair Labor Association to address potential forced labor risks in their supply chains. 

“This commitment shows that our industry does not tolerate forced labor, [and] it also shows our customers that we take this issue seriously and are proactively working together...to initiate measures to ensure these values are respected throughout the supply chain,” said Rick Helfenbein, president and CEO of the American Apparel & Footwear Association, in a press statement.

For Moote, commitments like this can really make a difference. “What we really need to see is greater opportunity for engagement and collaboration among what are traditionally seen as competitors,” said Moote. “It’s not a unilateral issue that you can singularly address; we need to see collective action on these deep seeded risks.”

KnowTheChain says it will continue to highlight what is working, and what’s not, and track progress on a goal that all of us must share – eliminating forced labor from the apparel and footwear supply chain. Hopefully, when the next report comes out, we’ll see more progress towards ending forced labor in global apparel and footwear supply chains.

Image credit: NYU Stern BHR/Flickr

Leading African mobile pay-as-you-go solar providers continue their efforts to build out services that provide rural Africans who lack access to the grid a variety of consumer and household goods and services, including emissions-free electricity.

In the latest development, pay-as-you-go solar provider Azuri Technologies and Unilever recently launched an e-voucher program that links Azuri's solar home lighting system with one of Unilever’s laundry detergent brands. Azuri home solar customers who purchase a “Quad” lighting system will receive e-vouchers for free Sunlight washing powder each week they top off their pay-as-you-go solar energy systems via wireless provider Safaricom's network.

Such partnerships are important, these companies point out, as approximately 600 million people in rural sub-Saharan Africa lack access to safe, reliable and affordable electricity service and all the benefits it provides. Pioneering mobile pay-as-you-go home solar providers such as Azuri and M-Kopa are showing that it's economically feasible to expand clean energy access to consumers across this region, thereby laying a foundation for sustainable development.

“This is an example of how Azuri is helping rural consumers to access modern services and goes beyond just providing lighting as a service. Through our collaboration with leading consumer and telco companies such as Unilever and Safaricom, off-grid households are finally enjoying the benefits that technology and modern living can bring, powered by solar,” said General Manager for East Africa Snehar Shah.

The e-voucher program expands on the partnership Azuri and Unilever announced this past August, which they made during a visit to Kenya by United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May and U.S. business leaders, including Azuri CEO Simon Bransfield-Garth, in an effort to boost trade between the two nations.

Under the terms of the agreement, Azuri's solar home energy system will be co-branded with Sunlight products and offered to customers through Unilever's distribution network. Unilever products are marketed and sold via a network of some 67,000 small shops throughout Kenya, which helps expand Azuri's reach into rural areas of the country.

Azuri’s solar home lighting package includes a 10-watt solar panel, four LED lights, USB port for mobile phone charging, rechargeable radio and rechargeable flashlight. The system features Azuri’s HomeSmart machine-learning technology, which adapts to household usage and adjusts to meet each customer’s needs. The technology monitors weather conditions and adapts to ensure lighting during the evenings, according to Azuri.

“The partnership with Azuri will help deliver life-changing solar technology to off-grid communities and provide Unilever customers and traders with the benefits of modern energy. Solar power is proven to support the local and wider economy and further supports Unilever’s commitment to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs],” said Justin Apsey, Managing Director East Africa at Unilever.

A growing number of sub-Saharan African governments are turning to pay-go home solar and community "solar plus storage" microgrids as a means of realizing rural and national electrification goals, as well as related national and international initiatives aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the SDGs. Kenya President Uhuru Kenyatta recently announced a 100 percent-by-2020 renewable energy goal. Renewable energy currently supplies 70 percent of electricity in Kenya, according to several sources.

A recent study concluded that owners of solar home systems increased their incomes by $35 per month on average, the companies noted. In addition, the results showed that children were spending more time studying in the evenings. Finally, Azuri says that to date, the company has created over 2,000 new jobs through its Kenyan partner companies to sell, support and maintain solar home systems.

Image credit: Azuri Technologies/Facebook

Technology companies swept nine of the top 10 spots in the 2018 Rankings of America’s most "just" companies, with personal products giant Procter & Gamble as the only non-tech firm in the top 10. Americans, when asked about the issues they consider most relevant to just corporate behavior, put worker pay and treatment first. The message isn’t subtle: Americans want an economy that gives people more of a stake in its success.

“It is tech heavy because tech does such a great job on worker pay and that’s our number one metric,” billionaire and hedge-fund pioneer Paul Tudor Jones, one of the founders of Just Capital, told CNBC.

Microsoft ranked first, followed by Intel, Alphabet (the holding company that owns Google), Texas Instruments and IBM. Other technology companies among the top 10: NVIDIA, Adobe Systems, VMware and Cisco Systems. Among the factors that gave Microsoft its prized spot was its 100 percent compliance on pay equity. In fact, 39 of the top Just 100 have conducted pay equity surveys, according to the Rankings.

A Wall Street out of step with the people

Of the major sets of issues polled in the survey, the experience and satisfaction of workers have a weight of 25 percent (worker pay and treatment); customers 18 percent (fair treatment, privacy and honest sales terms); and products 14 percent (products and services should be high quality, fairly priced and beneficial to society). Other issues are environment at 13 percent, jobs at 12 percent and communities at 11 percent.

Americans care most about how they are paid and treated as workers and respected as customers, but Wall Street manages companies for profit, tied to quarterly earnings. That is the kind of disconnect that Just Capital is hoping to illuminate through its rankings, according to its founders.

The Just Capital Rankings encompass the 1,000 largest publicly-traded companies in the U.S. and are based on a nationwide polling of public attitudes toward corporate behavior, with over 9,000 respondents in 2018.

Restoring faith in capitalism

Founded in 2013 by Tudor Jones, along with other business, finance and civil society leaders like Deepak Chopra and Arianna Huffington, Just Capital describes its mission as building an economy where serving the broader interests of all stakeholders – including workers, customers and communities – can be a mechanism that drives financial success.

 

Today, that’s not the case. In 2017, 82 percent of all wealth generated went to the wealthiest one percent of the global population, according to an Oxfam report. Worker productivity in the U.S. grew by 74 percent between 1973 and 2013, yet compensation grew by only 9 percent during the same period, reported The Economic Policy Institute.

Restoring faith in business and capitalism as a force for greater good is the goal of july Capital. But it’s one that will take some convincing, especially for younger people. According to a Harvard University study, 51 percent of young people aged 18-29 claimed they don’t even support capitalism.

Outperforming their peers

Microsoft not only performed well in the category of workers, but on various issues as well: environment, customers, leadership and stakeholders. It has publicly committed to slashing its carbon emissions 75 percent from their 2013 level by 2030. That goal means slashing the company’s prodigious data center electricity consumption in half, made possible by projects like one on its Redmond campus, where a server farm runs on natural-gas-powered fuel cells instead of conventional electricity.

Microsoft finds itself in good company. In 2018, companies in the Just 100, compared to other Russell 1000 peers on average, paid their median workers 26 percent more; paid a living wage to 12 percent more of their workers; were nine times more likely to have conducted gender pay equity analyses; and four times more likely to offer flexible work hours or day care and have diversity targets. They had four times as many women directors, 90 percent fewer environmental fines and were eight times more likely to recycle (41 percent compared to 5 percent).

And none of this progressive corporate behavior came at the sacrifice of the bottom line. On the contrary, the Just 100, compared to the Russell 1000, had a 5 percent higher return-on-equity, 23 percent versus 18 percent. Expecting that investors will take notice, the Just 100 companies will be included in Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s Just U.S. Large Cap Equity ETF, the first ever exchange-traded fund based on just business behavior, constructed from Just Capital’s Rankings.

Image credit: Pixabay