By Wauker Matthews

Let's say you smile and wave at a passerby one morning. Chances are, that person will then go on to smile and wave at another stranger. And so on and so forth. You've effectively created a chain of positivity -- just with one small, simple action.

Everyone has a better day because of it. Your choice to smile has brightened the world a little.

In the modern business world, transparency, authenticity and CSR have that same kind of effect on a grander scale.

What is CSR?

Corporate social responsibility (CSR), also known as corporate conscience, aims to positively involve companies with their communities in a way that is mutually beneficial.

In a way, when companies act responsibly and give back to their communities, they're setting off a positive chain reaction much like smiling and waving at a neighbor.

Not every company invests in this kind of sustainable business practice, though. Having remote employees can make it difficult for a business to get everyone involved in their CSR programs.

How do you get people who aren't in the vicinity in on the positivity?

If your company has remote employees, we have seven successful ways to get them involved with your CSR initiatives.

1. Make it easy and on-the-go

One of the absolute best ways to get remote employees involved in your company's CSR programs is to offer a way for them to donate to causes on the go.

Instead of going desk-to-desk to try to garner support for a program, your company needs only to launch a mobile fundraising campaign. Although starting a mobile fundraising campaign may sound intimidating, once you get started, it's surprisingly easy.

There are several ways to implement a successful mobile fundraising campaign. Chief among those ways is creating a text-to-give option for your company or organization.

It's quick and user-friendly, and who doesn't have their cell phone on them 24/7?

Take advantage of the mobile world in which we live.

For employees who are just out of reach, sending out an email that simplifies donating to charity can be a great way to help them engage in CSR.

 In that email, you can also include information for how to give via text.

Take a cue from churches: They're at the forefront of using text-to-give technology for fundraising. And they know how to use social media to promote it.

If donating is made intuitive and easy (and as accessible as a text message), even employees who never set foot in the office can feel connected.

2. Proactively highlight matching gift programs

Another great way to spread the joy (and the wealth), matching gift programs bring companies together with individuals to double their donations.

Matching gifts allow employees to donate to their favorite charities with the knowledge that their donations will be met, within reason, by their employers.

There are, of course, minimums -- usually $25 -- and maximums -- up to $15,000 with some companies. Regardless of the limitations, it's a great way to incentivize charitable giving.

But how will your remote employees ever know about this revolutionary opportunity if you never let them know?

The key is to highlight your company's matching gift programs by any means available to you.

Some of the best places to feature information about matching gifts include:

• In emails


• Across social media


• Through any communications platforms your company uses


• In the latest company newsletter

Once they know about your company's willingness to match their donations, they will be far more likely to donate themselves.

3. Pick a cause of the month

Why not allow your employees -- remote and otherwise -- the opportunity to become advocates for their favorite causes?

It's extremely easy to get started. Just allow your employees to help pick a new cause to support each month or quarter.

The most important factor, and the one that will keep your remote employees engaged, is to choose causes and organizations that are national or international but also have localized counterparts.

Some great national and international charities that have local branches are:

• Habitat for Humanity. It's an international nonprofit, but there are smaller branches everywhere.


• United Way. Technically, a worldwide organization, but there are volunteer sites all over the U.S.


• Big Brothers Big Sisters. A national mentoring nonprofit that has outposts in every city or state in the country.

The list goes on, but the point is to select a cause each month or quarter that has branches in every location that you have employees.

You can even have your employees vote for their favorite cause via email. The cause with the most responses will determine the following month's charity.

4. Encourage employees to stay involved with their alumni associations

Few things can compare to the swell of pride people experience when they're talking about their alma mater.

College is a magical time in most people's lives. A lot of people remind in touch with that time through alumni associations.

One of the top ways to engage your remote employees is by encouraging them to stay active with their colleges' alumni associations.

Many colleges and universities will launch capital campaigns in order to fund specific projects. Getting involved with a capital campaign is an easy and accessible way for your remote employees to feel like they're doing some tangible good.

Capital campaigns are sometimes called "brick-and-mortar" campaigns because they often fund large-scale projects like new buildings. Make sure your remote employees are aware of their schools' efforts by:

• Including information in newsletters.


• Sending out email reminders.


• Subscribing your office to listservs.

However you keep them abreast, it's crucial that they stay in-the-know. If they feel that they're making concrete contributions to a cause they truly care about, they will be more than happy to donate.

To learn more about capital campaigns, check out this Ultimate Guide.

5. Host a "day of volunteering" (with a twist)

Hosting a "day of volunteering" is pretty self-explanatory. The twist comes with making it remote-friendly.

Just as you would with any other volunteering day, you would need to:

• Decide on a project or cause. Make sure the cause is local as well as national.


• Assign project leaders who can also coordinate with your remote employees.


• Create checklists for the projects.


• Email all pertinent information to every participant.


• Establish a way to keep all participants accountable for the work they do.


• Have fun with it! Make team T-shirts that can be mailed out to all participants.

The key to making a day of volunteering fun is to make it feel like a team sport, even if some of your team members are in other cities.

It should be about camaraderie and a shared sense of purpose. Philanthropy has an amazing way of tying people together.

6. Incentivize your employees by allowing them to lead

Studies have shown that employees who feel fully engaged are 2.5 times more likely to exceed their performance expectations than their disengaged counterparts.

How do you make remote employees feel more fully engaged with your CSR programs?

The answer is simple: You allow them to be more autonomous. You let them lead.

Whether that means they pick their own charities to support financially or they host their own fundraising events, as long as they feel like they're the responsible party, they're bound to feel more fully engaged.

There's nothing quite as rewarding as hosting a successful fundraiser or supporting a local charity, both monetarily and with volunteer efforts. Give your remote employees the opportunity to be the boss and make the decisions.

You might be surprised by what they come up with.

In fact, you may be tempted to adopt their social responsibility ideas for you next year's programs. Perhaps they'll inspire you to institute a matching gift program.

In any case, allowing your remote employees to establish their own programs is sure to have a positive impact -- not only on the world, but also on your employees.

7. Create a competitive advantage

Everyone loves a healthy dose of competition.

When you're planning your CSR programs, be sure to create some (friendly) competition.

You can have your in-office employees compete against your remote employees, or you can have your remote employees compete against one another.

Either way, making things more competitive will make things a little more interesting for everyone. 

Offer incentives for the winners--whether it's an extra paid day off or a gift card to a nice restaurant.

Make sure your incentives are worth working toward, and you're bound to have your employees both near and far competing to raise the most money for charity or volunteer the most hours.

Overall, keeping your remote employees engaged is fairly simple.

It's just a matter of creating opportunities that allow them to be just as hands-on as your in-office employees.

Everyone loves to feel like they're part of the team.

By making your whole company feel like members of the same team, you create a positive work environment that also just happens to be socially responsible!

Image credit: Pixabay

Wauker Matthews is Director of Sales at @Pay, an exciting new fundraising technology that makes it easy for people to give in just a few clicks from text, email, web, and social media. Wauker has been in brand & business development for over 8 years, helping organizations grow in both size and reach.

By Glenn Turner and Shayna Samuels

Raise your hand if you’re tired of hearing about Donald Trump. Seriously, unless you’re completely unplugged, you likely hear or see his name multiple times daily.  And though he’s constantly in our faces, unlike most presidential candidates, he’s paying for very little advertising. Yes, he says outlandish and offensive comments which garner media attention, but he’s so good at what he does that he is able to frame the messaging around the Republican primaries simply by not doing something – like opting out of a debate or skipping the Conservative Political Action Conference.  In essence, Trump has mastered what’s known as “earned media.”

According to the New York Times, over the course of the campaign, he has earned close to $2 billion worth of media attention ($400 million last month alone), about twice the all-in price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history.

Earned media refers to publicity gained through promotional efforts other than advertising. It’s word of mouth buzz – and it’s the most credible form of marketing. And, as Trump’s campaign shows, it has incredible potential impact. Consider how many millions of dollars Jeb Bush’s campaign spent on paid media – begging for attention and influence, to no avail.

What's the main lesson here for those businesses and organizations with a social mission?

Gone are the days of only being heard if you pay to advertise. While paid marketing still plays a role, the Internet – with social media at the helm -- has opened things up and leveled the playing field for everyone to have a voice.  Everyone seems to be racing to embrace and conquer the digital marketing landscape, but increasingly people are tuning out paid advertising, with some even opting to use ad blockers to eliminate it completely (nearly 200 million did in 2015).

Earned media is ultimately more effective.  So, what’s the secret for earning media successfully, assuming you’re not Donald Trump?  A strong public relations (PR) and media relations strategy.

Unlike paid advertising, media relations and PR focus on building relationships and garnering authentic coverage.  You’re not an ad in the sidebar; you’re the focus of the story.

PR can be an untapped gold mine for mission-based digital marketing. You’re not just selling something; you have a larger purpose – a heart, an emotional connection to your issue. With strong PR, you can get others to share your story, raise awareness of your cause, build relationships with those who support it, and create social change.

Consider Patagonia as an example. For nearly 20 years, the company has initiated environmental campaigns to tackle issues that matter to its outdoor-enthusiast customers.  Each one has led not only to making the world a better place, but also to immeasurable earned media. The company's VP of marketing said that paid advertising is the “dead last” thing Patagonia wants to do. The company’s worth is upwards of a billion dollars, and it has millions of enthusiastic fans on social media and beyond. Good PR is powerful.

PR and media relations can also boost your digital marketing efforts in the following ways:  

1. Ignite stories into viral digital campaigns. A recent example was Random Acts of Kindness Week, an annual campaign coordinated by the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation since 2000. This year we at Ripple Strategies (our social impact PR firm) took the story of the organization and its inspiring event to the media and the campaign went viral. #RandomActsofKindnessDay ended up the #1 top trending hashtag on twitter with almost 170,000 tweets in one day. Influencers, celebrities, and heroic everyday folks performed acts of kindness and shared their stories on social media including: Sesame Street, Ellen DeGeneres, Disney, Amy Poehler, Dr. Phil, Whole Foods, Coca Cola, Starbucks, AirBnb, Today Show and many more. Verizon gave away free lunches; the Pittsburgh Steelers had a random drawing for a player’s helmet; Columbia Records gave away CDs … the list goes on. It was the foundation's most successful campaign to date -- fueled by a pre-launch PR push to get influencers to share their stories.


2. Align your organization or business with trusted sources. There are certain outlets that are widely considered legitimate news sources –  CNN, the New York Times, NPR, etc. If someone reads or hears a story about you from one of these trusted sources, it creates instant credibility through third-party validation, which is more valuable than digital marketing ads from unknown sources – of which there are an overwhelming abundance.  Have you ever heard of Christopher Gray or Audrey Cheng? Probably not. Yet, they’re social entrepreneurs that made the Forbes list of 30 under 30 for 2016 and you have to admit – simply reading about them in a trusted source like Forbes makes them seem more trustworthy and successful.


3. Result in high-quality promotion. Typically in digital marketing the main goals are quantitative – more likes, more clicks, more impressions. Smart PR focuses instead on quality. Which would have more influence over you -- 10 digital side-bar ads or one compelling article with compelling messages in an outlet you trust? Likely the latter.

Ultimately, while digital marketing can be fruitful, a strong PR plan and media relations strategy can be immeasurably more powerful. Ads come and go. Clicks and likes are nebulous metrics. Stories inspire. Stories stick. And stories last – they can be referred to and shared for years to come. Never underestimate the power of earned media.  Donald Trump sure doesn’t.

Image credit: Flickr/DonkeyHotey

Glenn Turner and Shayna Samuels are co-founders of Ripple Strategies, a PR Firm Specializing in Media Campaigns that Accelerate Social Change.

By Kevin Ireland

Rising consumer consciousness is continuing to heighten demand for plastic feedstock that isn’t quite so harmful to our planet. There are a number of strategies for limiting the impact of plastic production, and no single one is likely to solve the sustainability problem on its own.

Taken together, though, the four strategies introduced below represent real promise for limiting the amount of non-renewable feedstock associated with plastic production. They help us to make better use of the materials that have already been produced and ensure that we’re not pushing the problem of petroleum-based plastic production off on the next generation.

We’d like to take some time to call attention to these strategies — especially some of the lesser-known ones — highlighting the merits of each strategy while touching on why sustainable plastics matter at all.

Four keys to a more sustainable plastic industry

“It would be silly to suggest that we do away with plastics. They are too valuable, too ubiquitous and too useful. What we should do away with, however, is the way that they are made, some of the ways that we use them, and certainly what we do with them when they have done their job.” -- Tom McKeag

Tom McKeag is the executive director at the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry and an expert sitting at the intersection of sustainability and design. Above, he touches on the reasons we can’t leave plastic production in the rearview mirror and also the hurdles that need to be cleared before we can produce it sustainably.

What plastics are made of, the way we use them and what we do with them after they’re gone are themes touched on throughout our strategies for more sustainable plastic production. As McKeag suggests, there’s not one thing wrong with the way we’re producing plastics today. The entire lifecycle of these materials needs to be addressed; from the way we select the materials we use to the ways we’re able to dispose of them after their useful life has ended.

Here are our four ways to make plastics more sustainable:

1. Renewable feedstock

Organic materials such as starch and other natural fibers can replace petroleum-based feedstocks, greatly reducing the reliance on carbon-dioxide-emitting fossil fuels. Since each gallon of gasoline burned puts nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, cutting the amount of petroleum used in plastic production wherever possible is a smart step.

Reducing petroleum feedstock by 25 percent can decrease greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to removing 16.5 million passenger cars from the road every year.

 

2. Reclaimed feedstock

Biobased industrial byproducts have proven effective fillers for petroleum-based plastics. Wood fibers reclaimed from milling operations and agricultural byproducts from farms can also be used to reduce reliance on non-renewable materials. In some cases, renewable or reclaimed materials can reduce the amount of non-renewable petroleum-based feedstock by up to 70 percent.

Reducing petroleum feedstock in plastics by just 10 percent saves 280 million barrels of oil a year, reducing CO2 emissions by the equivalent of the CO2 sequestered by 250 million acres of forest.

3. Recycled feedstock

Recycled plastic feedstock is commonly subdivided into two categories: pre-consumer and post-consumer. Pre-consumer recycled material tends to refer to the gathering of the scraps that accumulate, from molders and extruders for instance, and reintroducing them into later production processes. Post-consumer recycling, on the other hand, is the more commonly recognized process of recollecting plastic items after they’ve reached the end of their desired use.

Though plastic recycling has come a long way, it’s still a process that’s far from efficient. A number of problems, such as the difficulty in collecting and sorting different types of plastic materials, have so far kept high percentages of plastic waste from being effectively recycled. Here's how much one ton of recycled place could save in terms of oil, energy or landfill space:

4. Biodegradable materials

Biodegradable plastics are not a solution for plastic litter, but they can help reduce landfill waste, especially when used for food service in conjunction with composting of food waste and in many packaging applications.

Solid waste landfills are one of the largest man-made source of methane gas (CH4) in the United States. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, 23 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than CO2.

Increasing the composting of food scraps by 25 percent in the U.S. would decrease GHG emissions equivalent to saving more than 15 million barrels of oil per year.

And reducing waste disposed in landfills can have climate benefits equivalent to removing 21 percent of the U.S. coal-fired power plants.

While the problems of waste and pollution are large and complex, sincere efforts on all of these fronts will decrease the environmental impact of the plastics products we use every day.

What do you think? Did we miss any ways the plastic industry can strive to become more sustainable? Let us know in the comments below!

Featured image: Pixabay; all other images courtesy of Green Dot

Kevin Ireland is the Communications Manager at Green Dot, a bioplastics company.

GRI, pioneer of the most widely used sustainability reporting standards, and CDP, host of a global collection of self-reported climate change, water and forest-risk data, have just released their latest linkage guidance to support companies in their reporting on climate-related impacts.

The updated documents from GRI and CDP will enable organizations to report on their critical climate change and water impacts, and ultimately take steps to reduce these impacts, using the very latest guidance.

Estimates by the International Finance Corporation and Carbon Trust predict the global cost of climate change impacts will stand between US$ 2 trillion - US$ 4 trillion by 2030.  

The latest guidance comes at a timely moment ahead of Earth Hour on Saturday 19 March and following the 21^st annual meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP21), which set a new target for organizations and governments to take action to reduce their impacts on climate change to ensure we stay well below the 2-degrees Celsius threshold.

Of all the reports held in the GRI Sustainability Disclosure Database for 2015, 21% (more than 3,000) reported on climate-related impacts using both CDP and GRI. The US saw the highest share of reports referencing both GRI and CDP – 55% during 2015, and these figures are expected to increase as more organizations begin monitoring their impacts on climate-related issues.

 

 

Sky is broadcasting a new advert to reach out to its 21 million customers in the U.K. and across Europe to encourage them to take part in WWF’s ‘Earth Hour’ this Saturday, 19 March. For Earth Hour, people are being asked to switch off their lights for an hour, starting at 8:30 pm, to show support for the planet and awareness of climate change.

Sky will launch a social media campaign with #SkyandWWF and #EarthHour to urge participants to make “one small change” for the planet, and has scheduled a special Earth Hour anthology of environment-themed programmes to be broadcast this week on Sky Go, On Demand, Sky Movies, and Sky 1.

Earth Hour supporters can sign up for Sky’s social media thunderclap here. To learn more about the campaign, visit the website.

The Earth Hour initiative follows Sky Rainforest Rescue, the company’s six-year partnership with WWF, which delivered messages about the issue of deforestation and saved a billion trees in the Amazon.

Last year the Obama administration announced that offshore drilling along the southeast Atlantic coast was on the table, but yesterday the Interior Department reversed course. In a statement issued on Tuesday, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewel and Abigail Ross Hopper, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), announced that sites off the coasts of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia would not be included in the BOEM’s outer continental shelf (OCS) oil and gas leasing program.

After what the Department of the Interior described as a lengthy public comment period, Secretary Jewel said that several reasons were behind the Obama administration’s policy shift. In an interview with the Washington Post, a spokesman from the Pentagon said military officials had reviewed the Interior Department’s assessment of offshore regions ripe for oil exploration — and revealed that they were integral to live training exercises and systems testing activities that are important to the U.S. military’s readiness. Local opposition, even in South Carolina, one of the most politically conservative states in the U.S., was another factor.

Limited infrastructure and current market dynamics within the global oil market were also behind the decision to delay any Atlantic coast offshore drilling until at least 2022. Depending on the amount of investment, offshore oil drilling has a long payback period. Chevron’s Jack/St. Malo offshore oil project 280 miles south of Louisiana, for example, was planned with the expectations that it would generate 100 million barrels of oil at $100 a barrel to pay off its $8 billion price tag plus operating expenses. As Forbes has noted, when oil fell to $68 per barrel in late 2014, the company needed to pump another 50 million barrels to cover its costs. With the price of oil now hovering between $30 and $40 a barrel, that payback period has been drawn out another few years. Depending on the water’s depth at which oil is drilled, the break-even price for offshore oil projects runs anywhere from $60 to $80 per barrel.

Most environmental groups welcomed the administration's decision, but overall their support was tepid. “What’s needed now is for the administration to finish the job of protecting essential American waters and all they support by keeping oil and gas rigs out of Atlantic and Arctic waters  —  permanently,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), in an emailed statement to TriplePundit. “That’s what it will take to safeguard both of these oceans and to defend future generations from the growing dangers of climate change. We can’t afford to lock our children into decades more of carbon pollution from burning these dirty fuels.”

Other activists were quick to point out that the Department of Interior has approved oil and gas lease bids for 10 potential sites in the Gulf of Mexico, and another three in the Alaskan Arctic. “President Obama has spared the people of the Atlantic coast from another oil catastrophe, but in allowing new drilling in the Gulf and Arctic, he’s keeping all of us on course for climate catastrophe,” said Elijah Zarlin of Credo, a wireless telecommunications firm that has donated a portion of its revenues to environmental causes since the mid-1980s. “Any new offshore drilling is incompatible with a stable future and it is incompatible with the commitments that President Obama has made.”

The energy industry was largely unhappy with this announcement and portrayed President Obama as a one-man economic wrecking ball. The American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the U.S. oil and gas sector, slammed the Department of the Interior’s decision as one that “appeases extremists,” and called the announcement a mistaken one as “this is not how you harness America’s economic and diplomatic potential.” The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy also lashed out, issuing a statement that pegged the Obama administration’s drilling plan as “catering to fringe constituencies at the expense of energy security and the American economy.”

Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, but U.S. production of crude oil has skyrocketed during the Obama administration. When Bill Clinton was president, domestic oil production ranged from 5.8 million to 6.8 million barrels per day. Those numbers were generally in decline, and they continued to drop while George W. Bush was president, falling to a low of 5 million barrels a day in 2008. Since then the rate of domestic oil production has leapfrogged rapidly — last year the daily average crude oil production was 9.4 million barrels, almost double Bush’s last year in office.

Meanwhile, renewables such as solar and wind power, the oil and gas industry’s kryptonite, have also been on the upswing since 2009. About 10 percent of the country’s power is now generated from clean energy. And oil will hardly go away anytime soon, due to American’s affinity for driving and the country’s reliance on trucking to move goods across the country. As the cliché goes, if a politician is angering everyone across the political spectrum, he or she must be doing something right.

One could certainly say this applies to President Obama with yesterday’s announcement and his energy policy since he took office in 2009.

Image credit: Leon Kaye

This is turning out to be a very bad year for the "clean" image of natural gas. It's only mid-March, and the episodes are piling up: earthquakes in Oklahoma, water pollution in Pennsylvania, continued fallout from a massive natural gas leak in California, and new federal scrutiny of methane emissions from drilling sites on public and tribal lands.

In the latest development, a proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal on the Oregon coast called the Jordan Cove Energy Project has failed to achieve approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The Jordan Cove LNG facility and fracking

As described by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) timeline, the company behind the project filed its application for the Oregon liquified natural gas terminal in 2013. The facility is slated for Coos County on the Oregon coast, at the site of a former Weyerhauser paper mill.

The sole source of supply for Jordan Cove would be a yet-to-be-constructed natural gas pipeline, which would supply up to 1.03 billion cubic feet per day. The natural gas would be liquified at the terminal, resulting in a maximum of 6.8 million metric tons yearly of liquified natural gas.

As for the pipeline, about one month after the Jordan Cove application, the company Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline, filed for construction. The pipeline is planned to be 232 miles and 36 inches in diameter, running from east to west across four Oregon counties: Klamath, Jackson, Douglas and Coos.

The source of the gas would be a terminal at the eastern edge of Oregon near the town of Malin, providing access to two existing points, the Ruby Pipeline and the Gas Transmission Northwest systems.

That's where the fracking comes in. The Ruby pipeline was constructed on the heels of the Western fracking boom, to transport natural gas from Wyoming and Colorado to California, Oregon and Washington state (Gas Transmission Northwest is a much longer pipeline originating in Canada).

It's also worth noting that when Jordan Cove was first proposed in 2004, it was to be a natural gas import facility. The U.S. natural gas industry had not yet taken off with the advent of fracking, which came about only after the Bush administration engineered a loophole in federal water-safety regulations.

However, fracking was not the issue that ultimately doomed the Jordan Cove LNG project, at least not directly.

Jordan Cove and greenhouse gas emissions

Once the export facility and pipeline applications came to light, environmental groups and property owners quickly objected to the project. By 2014, local newspaper the Oregonian was sounding the alarm. Under the heading "Jordan Cove LNG in Coos Bay could quickly become one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in Oregon," reporter Ted Sickinger noted that the only remaining coal-fired power plant in the state is slated to shut down in 2020, leaving Jordan Cove in the lead:

"Most of Jordan Cove's carbon emissions would come from energy used to liquefy natural gas for shipping," Sickinger noted. "That requires a dedicated power plant on the North Spit of Coos Bay with a capacity of 420 megawatts – enough to serve more than 400,000 homes.

"Jordan Cove also needs to purify incoming gas before liquefying it, and the carbon dioxide extracted would be vented to the atmosphere, accounting for about 20 percent of overall emissions."

The only other comparable single source of greenhouse gas emissions in Oregon would be another proposed LNG facility near the town of Warrington.

However, greenhouse gas emissions didn't do in Jordan Cove, either.

Follow the money

The project received a conditional federal approval to export gas in 2014, but the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development issued a series of holds over the project's application for coastal management certification.

Though the project initially passed its federal environmental review last fall, last week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) lowered the boom in a move that "stunned supporters and critics alike," the Oregonian reported.

Actually, FERC's argument was quite simple. The export facility was aimed at markets in Asia, but demand for natural gas has plummeted in that part of the globe.

With no clear customer base for the project, FERC was practically forced to deny the permit for the LNG facility. The alternative would be to give the go-ahead for the pipeline, which according to the Oregonian would have been a complex and highly contentious undertaking, to say the least:

"Meanwhile, the companies had been unable to negotiate easements with more than 90 percent of 630 landowners along the 232-mile pipeline route, and would have required the widespread use of eminent domain to secure the necessary rights of way. The commissioners noted the landowners' concerns with land devaluation, loss of revenue and harm to business operations, including timber, agriculture and oyster harvesting."

FERC took into consideration comments by property owners, the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations, but in the end it was the global natural gas market that made the difference.

Ironically, the natural gas industry has been lobbying furiously for the Obama administration to approve construction of more natural gas export terminals in order to sustain growth in a glutted domestic market, made more challenging by the skyrocketing increase in domestic renewable energy production. The approvals have been coming, but slowly.

Only one new LNG export facility in the mainland U.S. has been completed and is in operation, the Sabine Pass facility in Louisiana. Its first LNG shipment set sail just last month, but the export market might not save the domestic natural gas industry from the doldrums after all.

In January, the Wall Street Journal noted that in addition to weak markets in Asia, increased natural gas production overseas is posing new challenges for U.S. LNG exports.

Natural gas: From clean to unclean

In the meantime, evidence is piling up that natural gas is not a "cleaner" alternative fuel compared to coal and petroleum.

Natural gas has been promoted as a clean-energy source due to its relatively low emissions when burned. However, the natural gas lifecycle is peppered with opportunities to do a great amount of environmental damage, including water and air pollution from drilling sites, pipelines and vehicular transportation, as well as storage facilities.

The gas industry's adoption of fracking (short for hydraulic fracturing) has intensified water resource issues, because the practice involves pumping massive amounts of chemical brine underground. The use of fracking was once limited mainly to relatively unpopulated areas in the Western states, but it flourished after the Bush administration loophole and spread to more populated regions. In addition to the potential for improperly drilled wells to enable methane gas and other pollutants to travel from fracked wells into drinking water wells, disposal of wastewater from fracking operations has been linked to water contamination and earthquakes.

Aside from local impacts, researchers are also becoming concerned about the contribution of methane leakage from natural gas drilling sites to global warming. In January, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced that the Bureau of Land Management would update its 30-year-old regulations, which predate the advent of widespread fracking, with the aim of reducing fugitive emissions and wasteful flaring from oil and gas sites on federal property and on tribal lands:

"... Venting and leaks during oil and gas operations are major sources of harmful methane emissions, a powerful greenhouse gas about 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. U.S. methane emissions are projected to increase substantially without additional steps to lower them. The proposal announced today is consistent with the Obama administration’s goal to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45 percent from 2012 levels by 2025."

Secretary Jewell's announcement makes it clear that the issue is an economic one as well as an environmental one:

"Currently, vast amounts of natural gas from public and Indian lands are lost through venting, flaring and leaks from oil and gas operations. Between 2009 and 2014, enough natural gas was lost through venting, flaring and leaks to power more than five million homes for a year. States, tribes and federal taxpayers also lose royalty revenues when natural gas is wasted – as much as $23 million annually in royalty revenue ..."

As for the Jordan Cove LNG export facility, property owners are not quite off the hook yet. FERC has said it may revisit its decision if the project's backers can provide evidence of public benefit that would counterbalance the objections -- namely, increased demand for natural gas in Asia.

That could be a long way off.

Image (screenshot): via FERC, section 1, page 7.

A new report from GreenTechMedia (GTM) finds that energy storage capacity in the United States grew an astounding 243 percent last year – another sign that the clean-energy revolution is here and now.

According to GTM, 112 megawatts of energy storage were deployed in the fourth quarter 2015. This alone was more than the total of all storage added in 2013 and 2014 combined. We're, quite literally, seeing a revolution in how energy systems work across the country.

What's driving this? Simply, innovation. We all know about the Tesla Powerwall battery, but Tesla is just one of dozens of companies in this field -- developing, testing and producing better, cheaper batteries and creating what will, with time, become a massive market. Some are big names like General Electric, but others are unknown, like Calmac, Greencharge Networks and AES. These firms are unknown now, but they could be household names in the near future.

Energy storage is also more than just batteries. It takes many forms, from dams to distributed grids. Another driver is something we've covered quite often at TriplePundit – growth in renewables. As demand for clean energy grows, energy storage's lower costs are allowing it to work with renewables to help balance supply and meet peak energy needs.

“Energy storage is changing the paradigm on how we generate, distribute and use energy,” said Matt Roberts, executive director of the Energy Storage Association, in a news release.

Energy storage is connected to states such as California passing strong renewable energy standards, but also increased interest among large-scale commercial and industrial power users who want to reduce their base-loan energy demands.

This is just the start. Many analysts expect the future to bring more.

“With exponential growth predicted over the next couple of years, energy storage solutions will deliver smarter, more dynamic energy services, address peak demand challenges and enable the expanded use of renewable generation like wind and solar,” Roberts said.

One thing that cannot be overstated is how huge this is for wind and solar in particular. Because wind and solar resources are not consistent – the sun only shines half the day, and wind can vary greatly depending on location, geography and weather -- energy storage can, ideally, store renewable energy and distribute it when there is higher demand. The report expects storage to surpass 1 GW in 2019, and hit 1.7 GW the following year, which will greatly increase the reach of clean energy and reduce the need for so-called baseload power plants.

The United States is not the only place moving forward on energy storage. South Korea is currently building a massive, 56 MW facility that, when fully operational, will be the largest in the world. Japan will soon have the world's largest grid storage system. All signs are showing that clean energy is the future. No wonder that the future of dirty coal and gas looks dim.

Photo Credit: BPSMS via Wikimedia

In February 2016, users of Benevity‘s SaaS tool gathered in San Diego to discuss the future of corporate philanthropy. TriplePundit was a media partner of the event. You can follow our coverage here.

"We are living in a borderless world," Janelle Saunders, director of employee engagement solutions for Benevity, said at the company's Goodness Matters user conference, which took place Feb. 24-26 in San Diego. "More and more folks want to be able to get engaged in the ways that mean something to them."

For employees of multinational companies, this often means international volunteer opportunities or cross-border giving, Saunders continued, and Benevity is seeing "internationalization really growing" in the corporate volunteering and giving space. But expanding corporate philanthropy programs like giving and volunteering to employees in every country in which a company does business is complex and requires sophisticated solutions.

On Thursday, a panel of experts from the international giving and volunteering space detailed the growing global demands of companies as they relate to ‘Goodness’ when launching and expanding such programs -- and solutions that are being used to make it work.

Make Goodness programs available to all global employees

"Once you've offered something that's perceived as a benefit to your people, you need to offer it to all of them," Dave Sciuk, VP of business development for Benevity, said of the trend of company-wide expansion of giving and volunteer programs. "So, we're seeing more and more interest in truly global programs. It is vital for these programs to not only reach employees in all corners of the world, but also to provide the same culturally relevant experience for every employee,” Sciuk said.

Diane Solinger, global lead for Google's GooglersGive program, echoed Sciuk's sentiment. The tech giant employs 60,000 people at 100 offices in 50 countries around the world, so all of its philanthropy programs began with the global perspective in mind, Solinger explained, and the company is ambitious in its goals to boost engagement globally.

"Some key steps that we're thinking about as we try to further the global programs is lowering barriers, making it frictionless," Solinger said. "This has to be seamless and easy. Every user should have the same experience. That is not yet always the case, but we're working toward that ... because it's what our employees expect."

With international giving on the rise, it makes sense to invest in a technology like Benevity’s Spark solution. The SaaS tool allows employees to choose from charities in 218 countries to give to and supports 15 languages, making a global experience more accessible than its ever been.

Streamline the nomination process

Once your company expands its giving and volunteer programs worldwide, your employees will expect to be able to engage right out of the gate. This is especially important when it comes to nominating nonprofits to be added to the company's giving network, Sciuk said.

But in the international context, this can become much more complicated than it sounds: Nonprofits often must be vetted in accordance with U.S. tax law to enable cross-border giving, and your company must also be able to communicate with nonprofits and earn their trust so they'll even be willing to join up with your giving programs.

"If we're offering that benefit to employees, they're going to want to nominate their favorite local charities," Sciuk explained. "All of this has to be invisible to the user. They have to be able to nominate and bring forward a charity that we can quickly communicate with ... If we can't reach or speak to those charities quickly and in their language, it's much more likely that they won't onboard."

Quickly reaching a charity, vetting them, communicating with them in their language and establishing trust can be nearly impossible for any one company to do on its own -- let alone in a timely fashion. The Spark tool can help bridge the gap with its extensive database of vetted nonprofits worldwide.

Using Spark, employees can find their favorite charities in two clicks and give any amount they like via payroll deduction, credit card, PayPal or the tool’s Giving Account. Corporate gift-matching is completely automated through the system.

Work with the tools you have

Expanding giving and volunteering networks around the world can be a daunting task.

Solinger of GooglersGive recommends taking a look at where your programs are right now, and utilizing all the tools at your disposal to expand as much as possible. It may be a while before you can make the experience the same for every employee or be able to onboard every nonprofit your employees nominate, but starting where you are and building on that is the only way to scale, she advised.

With this in mind, Google has now expanded its payroll giving program to 17 countries, with the hope of rolling it out to more countries this year. In countries where the company doesn't offer payroll giving, it does a bit of finagling to provide a similar experience to employees. “In places where we don't necessarily have payroll giving yet, what we find we can do is work with our employees on optimizing the options we currently have," Solinger explained.

"We have a very wonderful engineer who created a way for us to swipe our Google badges, after which donations come out of our paycheck and it's automatically matched. We can't give that same experience to people that don't have payroll giving yet, but what we can do is have them swipe their badge, they get on a list and we email them a way to give afterwards.

"So, it's a similar experience but not yet identical. And we try to do the best with the tools in our toolkit to enable a similar experience as much as possible."

Benevity is continuing to expand its network of nonprofits and further simplify cross-border giving and volunteering, which can go a long way to helping its corporate clients further scale ‘Goodness’ programs around the world. It's not something that will happen overnight, the experts emphasized, but utilizing the tools at your disposal -- whether it's the passion of your own employees or a tool like Benevity Spark – goes a long way to making it happen.

Image credit Edison Miclat for Benevity 

By CC Huang

Last week, China’s State Council and the Communist Party’s Central Committee released a new set of guidelines (English coverage) for strengthening urban planning and development. These guidelines were borne out of recommendations from the Central Urban Work Conference this past December reflecting the nation’s new emphasis on urban sustainability. The last such meeting was held in 1978 when China’s cities were home to less than 20 percent of its population. By contrast, that number today is 57 percent.

This announcement represents a major step forward for urban development in China. For the past few decades, city planning was based on a car-dependent, Soviet model dominated by superblocks, wide roads and single-use districts. By comparison, the new guidelines prioritize walking and public transit options over car use, preserve historical and cultural characteristics, and grow cities only within the means of their natural resources.

In 2008, for the first time in human history, more than half of the global population was living in urban areas, and the United Nations predicts two-thirds of the world’s population, about 6 billion people, will be city-dwellers by 2050. As the world’s most populous nation, China’s urban development will set the tone as urban populations continue to grow worldwide.

The comprehensive principles included in China’s new guidelines range widely in scale, covering a city’s entire geographic boundary down to its streets, blocks and buildings. They also offer guidance on municipal water, waste and energy systems, which are important at all scales. Below, we elaborate on five of the key principles included in the guidelines:

1. “Narrow roads, dense street networks”

This line has become a popular phrase for Chinese media to summarize an important element of the state council’s new guidelines: smaller blocks.

China’s cities are currently dominated by superblocks — enormous expanses of single-use lots (often 500 meters long or more), divided by multi-lane streets with wide, dangerous intersections. This type of environment deters pedestrian activities and strongly caters to the automobile. But the new focus on smaller blocks will significantly improve pedestrian experiences by promoting safer, more pleasant and more efficient routes.

By improving the pedestrian environment, small blocks also reduce car usage and, thus, air pollution.

2. Enforcing urban growth boundaries

Despite their large populations, Chinese cities are often less dense than they should be, promoting inefficient resource use. Urban growth boundaries are necessary in this regard to promote compact development and preserve peripheral land for agriculture.

The new guidelines urge implementing urban growth boundaries based on the ecological “carrying capacity” of the region, prioritizing regeneration and redevelopment in existing urban space. The guidelines emphasize remote sensing technology to ensure growth boundaries are enforced.

3. Expanding mixed-use development

The new guidelines specify all residents have improved access to public amenities, particularly public green space. Ideally, all residents will have access to public green space, entailing construction of new public squares, parks, pedestrian paths, and other public spaces encouraging cultural and physical activities while fostering a greater sense of community. Under this effort, any illegally-occupied public space would be reallocated back to public use.

In an effort to expand public space, China’s new guidelines also urge opening up existing gated communities, sparking a fierce debate between gated community dwellers and the government. In recent years, China’s gated communities have gained in popularity due to their perceived safety (though there is no conclusive evidence gated communities are safer than open neighborhoods) and privacy, at the expense of their contribution to traffic congestion and inefficient land consumption. China’s Supreme Court is currently challenging this policy to open up gated communities, based on the country’s property laws.

4. Increasing use of public transit

While China has built a slew of new subway lines in the past decade, these new guidelines emphasize a diverse mix of public transit options.

Public transit, when done right, offers the cheapest, cleanest, most convenient mode of transportation for distances beyond walking or biking range. The new guidelines call for megacities to have a public transit mode share of 40 percent, big cities to have a public transit mode share of 30 percent, and small- and medium-sized cities to have a public transit mode share of 20 percent or more, all by 2020.

5. Focusing on historical preservation and city character

Many fear China’s cities, dominated by concrete skyscrapers and colossal commercial centers, are beginning to look and feel like any other generic city. The new guidelines have an entire section devoted to cultivating city character and call for cities to focus on cultural continuity, preserving historic buildings and revitalizing older urban areas.

Part of this cultural and historical preservation involves the rejection of architecture and design styles that blindly replicate large, Western, bland features, in favor of integrating “suitable,” “economical,” “green” and “aesthetic” characteristics.

Advances in urban work: Building on the past

While trailblazing, the central government’s new guidelines resulted from years of work by committed individuals and organizations in China and beyond. China’s National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, and Ministry of Environmental Protection completed extensive research on eco-cities, low-carbon cities and garden cities.

Peter Calthorpe’s idea of transit-oriented development has been integrated into previous central government policy, and his book with Yang Baojun, one of the foremost urban thinkers in China, was one of the first combining theory and practice in sustainable urban design principles.

The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy helped establish Guangzhou’s BRT system in 2010. The Paulson Institute’s “Cities of the Future” prize has shaped and defined scalable, bold and successful projects in urban China. C40 has recruited some of the most ambitious cities in China to work alongside international cities, creating a mutually beneficial platform to share best practices on sustainable urbanization. The Natural Resources Defense Council had gained traction by creating China’s first Walkability Index and World Resources Institute has created a wonderful set of tools and research to advance sustainability.

Recently, Energy Innovation teamed up with the Energy Foundation China and China Development Bank Capital (CDBC), the largest sovereign financier of urbanization projects in China, to develop the Green and Smart Urban Development Guidelines to help steer the CDBC’s urbanization investments. These guidelines are highly aligned with the principles put forth in the State Council’s new urban guidelines. Each of the guidelines contains a quantified benchmark to ensure that the results of new urban projects can be measured, preventing greenwashing. The guidelines were released as a draft for comment in November 2015.

While China has accomplished a great deal on sustainable urban design, much more work remains. It is now up to local governments and developers to implement these policies. Doing this well will take new management structures, financial tools, and talent.

In short, as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a robust network of visionary thinkers and doers to change a country’s — and indeed the world’s — mindset on urban sustainability.

Image credit: Flickr/Thomas Depenbusch

CC Huang is a Policy Analyst for Energy Innovation's Urban Sustainability program area. Prior to joining Energy Innovation, she worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on international best practices of energy governance. She has also worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council in their Beijing office. CC received an MPA in Economics and Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University with a certificate in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy. She also graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. from George Washington University in International Affairs with a minor in Philosophy. CC is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, having studied international affairs and philosophy at Peking University and was a recipient of the U.S. State Department's Critical Language Scholarship.