In 2008, the wind energy industry added so many new jobs that it now employs more people than coal mining. That and other compelling numbers were released this week by the American Wind Energy Association.

This is a great example of how clean energy investment creates jobs. Unfortunately, with investment of all kinds down, experts don’t expect 2009 to be quite as rosy for the wind industry. But the long-term outlook is good for people seeking jobs in this sector — once Congress puts a cap on carbon pollution, the investment dollars will start flowing again, and the hiring will kick back into high gear.

(Hat tip to Green Wombat.)

Nearly 7 million passenger vehicles on the road today are in commercial operations. These vehicles are driven hard, averaging nearly double the mileage, fuel consumption and emissions of personal vehicles. As a result, fleets are not only expensive to operate, but are also a major source of global warming pollution.

Environmental Defense Fund has been working with some of the largest commercial fleets – including Fortune 500 titans Abbott, DuPont and Owens Corning – to identify ways to reduce fuel consumption, costs, and greenhouse gas emissions. Our efforts have delivered results. Fleets that fully implemented the program outlined below reduced their emissions by an average of 14 percent, and reduced lifecycle operating costs by 4 percent.

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You know how Peace Corps volunteers travel to developing countries offering help where it’s needed? Imagine a corps of interns working at U.S. corporations to help them reduce their environmental footprint, save energy, and save money, and you have the Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps.

Our Corporate Partnerships team placed MBA students from top business schools at five California companies: Intuit, NVIDIA, Cisco, Yahoo! and Salesforce.com, and at Crescent Real Estate in Houston, Texas. The interns spent the summer making the business case for increasing energy efficiency in company facilities. One intern found that Cisco could reduce its carbon footprint by nearly 300 million pounds and save $24 million over five years by installing smart power distribution units in their labs. For more, check out our "What We Did This Summer" page.

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

The June 2008 issue of Treasury and Risk lists Gwen Ruta, vice president for Corporate Partnerships at Environmental Defense Fund, as one of the year’s 100 most influential people in finance, along with movers and shakers like Al Gore and Carl Icahn:

Gwen Ruta, Director of Corporate Partnerships, Environmental Defense Fund
Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts put the nonprofit group on the corporate map when it asked EDF to assess the environmental performance of its U.S. companies. It’s Ruta’s job to help business partners create best practices when it comes to protecting the earth.

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This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

Ideas for businesses, and hope for everyone concerned about global warming – that’s what you get with our just-published, first annual Innovations Review. This new report highlights innovative processes, products, and technologies in a range of different industries.

Green business practices can drive cost savings and create new markets, giving companies a competitive advantage. But what’s next after the basics, like switching to energy-saving light bulbs and printing double-sided?

Here’s one example that caught my eye – a southern California Web hosting company powered entirely by the Sun.

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This post is by Mark Brownstein, Managing Director of Business Partnerships at Environmental Defense.

A little over a year ago, Environmental Defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Ceres sent a letter to the three lead banks financing the TXU deal we helped broker. We said the banks no longer could ignore CO₂ in their investment decisions.

Today we are seeing the culmination of this effort. The three banks – Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley – have announced that they will require utilities seeking financing to prove the new plants would be economically viable under an expected federal cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

This will make it much harder for utilities to build conventional coal plants.

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This post is by Elizabeth Thompson, Legislative Director at Environmental Defense.

Climate Vote 2007

Part of a series on the work of the Environmental Defense Action Fund to enact an effective climate law. You can help by writing to Congress.

The US Climate Action Partnership (US-CAP) ran its first newspaper ad [PDF] last week in the widely read Capitol Hill newspapers Roll Call and the Politico. The ad urges Congress to “take prompt action” to reduce America’s global warming pollution and recommends a “cap-and-trade program that achieves emission reductions at the lowest possible cost.”

The ad is a clear signal that the partnership of 27 major corporations and 6 leading environmental organizations is eager to assert itself in the political debate and to push the global warming solutions agenda forward.

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The author of today’s post, Sheryl Canter, is an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense.

Why should your company take action to fight global warming? Shareholders want progress, investors are calling for transparency, national policy is coming, and waiting to act will be costly.

To help you get started, Environmental Defense has developed a hierarchy of effective actions called the "Four Cs" – conserve energy, convert to lower carbon energy, choose quality offsets, and call for action.

Here are the details.

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The author of today’s post, Martha Roberts, is an economist at Environmental Defense. She contributed to the coalition’s petition to the SEC.

Climate change can have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line – just ask any insurance company. But as the Washington Post points out, it’s not only insurance companies that are affected. Climate change can cause physical damage to facilities, increase costs of regulatory compliance, and (on the plus side) create new markets for climate-friendly products – to give just a few examples.

So today, Environmental Defense and a broad coalition of investors, state treasurers, and other environmental groups petitioned the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to clarify that existing regulations require publicly traded companies to assess and disclose their financial risk from climate change. Altogether, the 22 petitioners manage more than $1.5 trillion in assets. You can find full documentation, including the petition, on our Web site.

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David Yarnold, today’s guest blogger, is Executive Vice President of Environmental Defense, and co-chair of the USCAP Communications committee.

Today the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) announced it has doubled its membership. This was no small feat for a coalition comprised of busy corporate CEOs.

USCAP is a coalition of businesses and environmental organizations advocating national legislation for mandatory reduction of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. New members such as General Motors (the coalition’s first automaker) and The Nature Conversancy speak to how mainstream the issue of global warming has become.

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