Posts in 'Climate Corps'

Today, EDF announced the first 20 companies that have signed on to our Climate Corps program for summer 2010.  It’s amazing how far this program has come since we launched it two years ago.

We piloted the program in 2008 with just seven MBA students placed in Bay Area companies. Those students didn’t know what exactly they were in for, and frankly, neither did we.  But together, they found $35 million in savings through energy efficiency.  Even more impressive: the companies actually followed their recommendations. To date, projects that account for 97% of those energy savings have either been achieved or are underway.

Last summer we nearly quadrupled the program, placing 26 fellows in organizations throughout the country. Those Climate Corps fellows helped their host companies identify net operating savings of more than $54 million. These projects could also reduce energy use by more than 160 million kWh a year—enough to power 14,000 homes—and avoid more than 100,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year.

As Gwen Ruta (vice president corporate partnerships) says, “The rapid growth of Climate Corps speaks volumes about the value it delivers to companies and the real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions it achieves.”

Consider these results: Read more »

Environmental Defense Fund started this blog in February, just after launching the Innovation Exchange website, as an experiment to help us leverage and multiply the ideas and success of the Corporate Partnerships Program, of EDF and of the many innovators around the world working on business sustainability.  We began with a focus on what we have to offer from our 20 years of working with business and have continued to grow these resources while also finding new ways to support the network of innovators – or "do'ers" – who are ultimately making the difference in companies.

This year, we’ve had 140 posts on a variety of topics, including what our

Climate Corps MBA fellows have learned about energy efficiency, highlights from our work in the Private Equity and fleet vehicle industries, exploring what innovation means and showcasing innovative practices at a variety of companies.

Some of this year’s top posts foreshadowed trends on which we’ll be building in 2010:

• You Set the Agenda: Green Innovation for Business Unconferences introduced the series of events affectionately known as GIBUs through which we brought together some 450 business, government and non-profit professionals to discuss what they are doing and thinking about to improve and accelerate sustainability in business.  In 2010, we’ll be expanding the program and changing the name to better reflect the results that the events are intended to produce: solutions.  Read more »

Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting Kathrin Winkler, chief sustainability officer at EMC Corporation.  EMC had participated in EDF’s Climate Corps last summer and I wanted to get Kathrin’s candid take on how the 10-week internship program – designed to help companies find and implement energy savings – had worked for EMC. We quickly agreed that environmental innovation and leadership is all about organizational change.  Whether from the inside, like Kathrin at EMC, or the outside, like EDF’s partnerships, the key to success is building the environment into the core values of the company.  By that, I don’t mean the words that are on the corporate website but the everyday motivations that really make an organization – and the people in it – tick.

Is it all about the bottom line?  Read more »

By Russell Baruffi, MBA/MS candidate, Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise, University of Michigan, 2009 Climate Corps fellow at Sony Pictures Entertainment, Member of Net Impact.

Entertainment, which seems like a fairly harmless indulgence from your a movie theatre or your couch, turns out to be remarkably wasteful and resource-intensive industry. Working for Sony Pictures this summer, I got to dig in onto the sets. A movie can make millions or it can flop, so the industry spares no incremental expense or resource to create the marginal extra pizzazz that will spellbind an audience. For the climactic scene of an upcoming big-budget tent-pole movie, I saw film-makers build a fake riverbed of wood, steel and foam block stretching five stories tall, which they sculpted into a downward sloping terrain with a realistic skin of trees, bushes, bamboo and boulders, and proceeded to pump 80 thousand gallons of water over it in a continuous loop to create an actual river on the set. In the biz of show biz, millions of extra dollars spent making a two-minute scene really pop can be good economics, so energy, water and resource throughput is big.

This leaves lots of room for improvement. Read more »

I recently returned from the Net Impact Conference held in Ithaca, New York.  While Ithaca might not be the first place people think of visiting in November, nor is it the easiest place to get to, 2,400 business students and professionals made the trek.  It was a powerhouse of an event, including keynotes from GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt and Honest Tea’s President and TeaEO Seth Goldman and addressed a host of business and sustainability issues.

The student attendees represent some of the most high-energy and ambitious MBA candidates. They all don dapper suits and carry overflowing leather binders filled with resumes and business cards. They are eager to put their financial and analytical chops to work effecting positive change in the world. They all want to work for companies that have made a commitment to environmental sustainability. Stories reflecting this desire have been featured in Wall St. Journal, BusinessWeek and even Harvard Business Review.

I led a panel at the conference about our cutting-edge Climate Corps program, which recruits top-tier MBA students to identify and analyze energy efficiency opportunities at leading corporations. The panel featured case studies from last year’s outstanding crop of 26 MBA students and included fellows who were placed at EMC, Advanced Micro Devices, Cisco Systems and salesforce.com.

Read more »

So maybe energy efficiency has never captured the imagination in the same way that renewable energy has, but attention to the importance of energy efficiency has surged in recent months.  Why?  Because it saves both money and greenhouse gas emissions.

President Obama’s administration has touted energy efficiency as the cheapest, cleanest, fastest energy source and a July 2009 McKinsey report concluded that, “energy efficiency offers a vast, low-cost energy resource for the U.S. economy – but only if the nation can craft a comprehensive and innovative approach to unlock it.”

EDF has developed an innovative approach to unlock energy efficiency in the commercial building space.  It’s called Climate Corps, and here’s how it works: Climate Corps places talented MBA students from top-ranking business schools in leading companies to make the business case for energy efficiency investments in office buildings and data centers.

We just completed our second year of the program and the outcomes are quite impressive.  Overall, the 2009 class of Climate Corps fellows uncovered efficiencies in lighting, computer equipment and heating and cooling systems that could:

• Save more than $54 million in net operational costs over the lifetime of the projects;
• Cut the equivalent of 160 million kilowatt hours of energy use annually—enough to power 14,000 homes;
• Avoid 100,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year— equivalent to taking more than 12,000 SUVs off the road.

How did our fellows achieve such astounding outcomes?  By keeping an eye toward the “low-hanging fruit:” the no-cost or low-cost solutions that can provide companies with loads of savings.

Here are just a few of this summer’s stories: Read more »

I’m convinced that the principles of environmental sustainability have gained a firm foothold at today’s leading companies. Why? Because even in the grip of the worst recession in 30 years, companies across the Fortune 500 list – from Wal-Mart (1) and GE(6) to Owens Corning (422) and SunGard (435) – are actively pursuing sustainability agendas.

At the same time, legislation to cap greenhouse gas emissions is making its way through Congress and the world community is preparing to hammer out a new climate treaty in Copenhagen this December.

So are we done? Not by a long shot.

While many on the biggest companies “get it,” there remains “the next 50,000” – those companies that make up mainstream corporate America that don’t yet get environmental sustainability or worse, haven’t even heard of it. So where must we go from here to spread environmental sustainability from the Fortune 500 to the next 50,000? Read more »

In my last post, I introduced this graphic* (from a McKinsey report that shows the estimated cost for CO₂ abatement using various technologies).  Today, I’m looking at one of the largest opportunities for “low hanging” emissions reductions: the commercial building sector. Read more »

By Catherine Sweere, a 2009 Climate Corps fellow and a Net Impact member, is pursuing a Master's of Business Administration degree at Carnegie Mellon University.

Efficiency. Renewable Energy. Energy Savings. It seems so easy: Add recycle bins, upgrade light bulbs, buy more efficient desktop monitors, make all your company cars hybrid. Then slap a big green blurb about sustainability efforts on your homepage and you're done. Is becoming sustainable really so easy?

Meaningful change within a corporate setting is clearly not so cut and dry. With all the green press and government support of green energy initiatives, it's easy not to see what might be going on behind the scenes within a corporation that makes sustainability become a lasting value.

I've spent my summer working at salesforce.com, in the heart of San Francisco, working on energy efficiency projects. Green is a big part of this city's culture, LEED is required of all new offices, reusable water bottles are the norm, Styrofoam has been outlawed and composting is mandatory.

When you dig deeper into a corporation, the task of achieving sustainable operations is highly complex. Read more »

By Patricia Kenlon, a 2009 Climate Corps fellow and a Net Impact member, is pursuing a Master's of Business Administration degree at New York University.

I spent my summer with TXU Energy (TXUE) in Dallas, Texas, identifying ways to improve the energy efficiency of the company's two main office buildings.

TXUE is an electricity provider in Texas with over 2 million customers. It plans to invest $100 million to develop innovative energy efficiency products and services to help its customers save energy.

With so much in-house experience and expertise, I originally felt as if I were bringing coals to Newcastle. However, I was able to identify some great opportunities with the help of the TXUE team. Read more »