Posts in 'Innovation Review'

This week 2,000+ scientists, policy makers, NGO leaders and corporate representatives convened in Stockholm for World Water Week, where they grappled with water scarcity, access and other thorny water issues.

But what should companies be doing about it—now? Just like with energy efficiency, there is much low-hanging fruit to be picked where water is concerned. Read more »

When it comes to corporate computer networks, it’s smart to be thin — even if that means the machines on your employees’ desks are dumb.

Thin client computers, made by HP, Wyse and others, are designed to be dumb. These stripped-down terminals run programs like internet browsers and word processors but store data on central servers (unlike conventional PCs which have their own processors and memory).

So what? Read more »

In today’s IX blog post “Treasure Hunting for Gigatons,” EDF’s David Witzel and Gwen Ruta urge us to “make money [by] addressing the first 20% or so of the climate change problem. These 4 to 5 gigatons of ‘low hanging emissions’ come from energy inefficiencies that actually cost firms money.”

For one such example of low hanging emissions which chronically cost companies money, we pick a sweet one from the Innovations Review tree.

Our knowledge-based economy depends on data centers to store and process electronic information. Yet data centers also waste enormous amounts of energy. Shockingly (so to speak), a typical data center uses less than 5% of total power for computing operations and loses the other 95% along the way as heat in the servers, as conversion losses in power supplies, powering fans and lights and in cooling systems required to remove all that waste heat.

Not a technical problem, but technically a problem

It’d be tempting to throw up our hands and mourn all that wasted energy and money as casualties to a necessary evil. Read more »

Many big- (and not so big)-box retailers are building new “green prototype” stores as part of the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) for Retail pilot program. The most cutting-edge companies have also seized the corollary opportunity: retrofitting their existing stores. Albeit a much more complicated job, retrofitting offers more massive returns simply because there are so many more old stores than new ones.

Now is the best chance to seize the opportunity. Existing buildings can now gain features that have until recently remained the domain of new construction projects. These retrofits include simple installations like solar hot water heaters, low-water plumbing fixtures, day-lighting, waste water reuse, and fixtures and building features made from post-consumer/post-production waste or rapidly renewable materials. Read more »

No one ever takes a rental car to be washed. And most people don’t think about energy savings when staying in a hotel. Too many blast the air conditioner or heat even when deserting the room for the day. But good luck to the hotel that tries to add it to my bill!

Thankfully, key-card energy management is a simple and effective way to conserve energy that has saved hotels money in Europe and Asia for years.

These systems link the heating, cooling and lighting in a room to an illuminated key-card slot near the entrance. Read more »

Yesterday on the IX blog, Jason Mathers reminded managers that vehicle efficiency can protect profit margins amidst volatile energy prices. He writes, “While gas prices have receded from their highs of last summer, they are back on the rise. Fleets would be wise to hedge against the growing volatility of fuel prices by choosing more efficient vehicles.”

Last summer, tired of pumping four-dollar gallons from their balance sheets, the corporate world directed much attention and ambition to greening their fleets. But while some companies have taken steps in the right direction, such as by purchasing hybrid or alternative fuel vehicles, they have often overlooked their least expensive and most immediate leverage over fleet fuel efficiency (and company carbon footprint): Employee education.

In other words, influencing how your drivers, well, drive. Read more »

Kansas utility Midwest Energy is breaking the mold: making more money by selling less energy (without regulatory incentives).

Business strategy for a utility company often centers on the legislative landscape of its regional market. Conventional wisdom says that robust energy efficiency programs only exist in states that are “de-coupled”—that is, state law has separated utility company profits from how much energy is sold (such as in California).

Until now.

Kansas-based Midwest Energy has proved that efficiency can be profitable regardless of locale or legislation. In short, no other utility company in the country has figured out how to make more money by selling less power without government incentives.

Here’s how this program, How$martSM, works. After conducting a free energy audit at a home or business, Midwest Energy pays the upfront cost of efficiency upgrades such as insulation, air sealing and new heating and cooling systems.

Once pre-screened contractors complete the work, customers begin to repay the utility through a monthly charge on their energy bill. Though technically a low-interest loan, the terms are structured so that monthly payments are less than monthly energy savings. Customers actually see a net reduction on their bills thanks to increased efficiency.

In another key innovation, the How$martSM investment is tied to each property’s meter. Thus if a customer moves, the new occupant takes over repayment—and the lower energy bills—removing the traditional burdens of risk and commitment that often stand in the way of efficiency investments.

Meanwhile, Midwest has shattered another impediment to efficiency upgrades: the thorny landlord-tenant relationship. Instead of tenants footing the monthly energy bill for a poorly insulated apartment, the How$martSM program provides shared benefits: Tenants enjoy a smaller bill while the landlords see immediate improvement to their property.

An Electrifying Business Model

The program appears to be working, albeit on a small scale. So far, about 140 projects (homes, apartments and small businesses) have been completed, and another 275 are on the way. Customers are averaging a 25% reduction in electricity and gas usage per home.

It’s also good business strategy. According to Midwest’s Director of Regulatory and Energy Services Michael Volker, the company has created a new source of revenue through its financing plan, while cultivating a positive new relationship with its customers.

Furthermore, because these efficiency measures relieve peak-demand pressure, Midwest may avoid having to build an additional power plant down the road.

So our only question is, if How$martSM makes so much sense, why isn’t every utility company offering it?

If you’re reading this, you probably own a computer. Your company might own a hundred or a hundred thousand. Aggregating all our humming little buddies, we produce a lot of emissions, and we squander two valuable resources: energy and money.

Speaking of money, venture capitalists are opening their minds (and checkbooks) to the opportunities presented by energy efficiency. The New York Times reported last week, “Venture capital is starting to move away from its infatuation with alternative energy… [towards] applying information technology to improve the efficiency of energy consumption.”

Where your computer is concerned, the early birds are already in flight. Companies like 1E, Verdiem and, yes, the U.S. EPA are offering you, me and the world’s biggest institutions easy access to these energy savings. Their PC power management software can conveniently control entire networks, so routine power-downs take less effort – because who’s feeling energetic at the end of the day anyway? Another software feature sidesteps pesky patching problems by enabling remote access to turned-off machines.

According to an independent report commissioned by 1E, powering down PCs at night and during weekends could save $2.8 billion a year in the U.S., about £300 million in the U.K. and about €920million in Germany. Verizon found that installing this type of software on 63,000 of its computers saved the company 7,700 tons of carbon, or in a more plausible metric, about $1.3 million. Supplementing global public access to such technology, the EPA offers two open-source programs: EZ Wizard and EX GPO.

PC power management software is one of 15 green business innovations highlighted in EDF’s Innovations Review 2009. These represent some of the most promising practices and technologies for driving efficiency and creating new business opportunities – while protecting the planet.

With the help of the global Just Means community, we will be hosting a dialogue on one innovation per week over the next 15 weeks. We thank you in advance for granting life to these ideas by exploring them here and exporting them to work. Who knows? If your boss is smart, you’ll get a promotion.

Just returned from the Fortune Brainstorm: GREEN conference and thought this might be the perfect reason for me to write my first blog post: For the second year in a row, it was the best conference I’ve ever been to. What made it so great? The biggest single reason was the interesting and candid conversations that took place about sustainability. It was the business guys (and it was the guys. By my calculation only 21% of attendees, and 12% of panelists, were female) talking very frankly about the coolest ideas and the biggest challenges in a fast-paced and open way.

It’s truly uplifting hearing about the revolutionary things going on out there that together could save the planet and have business opportunity written all over them. Some of the best were the ones that EDF worked hard to unearth in the Innovations Review 2009 that we released at the conference. Some fall into the category of extremely creative with far-reaching impact, such as Patagonia’s Footprint Chronicles that lets consumers track the impact of specific Patagonia products. Patagonia gets why this is important. More companies should get it. It reminds me of something someone said at Fortune Brainstorm: GREEN — Your supply chain is your company.

Some of the environmental innovations in our report fall under the “No Brainer” category in my mind: Things like hotels using a system that links all heating, cooling and power to the keycard that guests insert upon entering their rooms. That simple change can save 25 to 45% of the energy used by hotel rooms, yet few hotels in U.S. have taken advantage of these systems. I again think of the Fortune conference. I overheard a senior executive from Marriott talking to Bill Clinton about the funds they were committing to the rainforest and thought “Great, but what about your hotels?” Right there at the conference I had seen water glasses filled up automatically before people arrived and bluefin tuna served at dinner (a health and overfishing double-whammy). Perhaps the small things they could do right here at the Ritz Carlton (owned by Marriott) would add up to a big environmental impact.

It’s clear that companies that “make sustainability part of their DNA” (in the words of Cisco’s Laura Ipsen) will reap the benefits. They will survive (Ford was at the conference) and thrive (Wal-Mart was too). They are saving money, reducing risk, gaining customers. It’s not always an easy choice. Fisk Johnson, CEO of SC Johnson, talked about changing Saran Wrap from a chlorine-based polymer which cost them customers who didn’t like how the change affected the product’s feel and performance. Fortune’s Marc Gunther half jokingly said, “We only like the positive stories here.” But I think that this, no doubt, is a positive story. Products that harm our health and our earth should go away and companies like SC Johnson that have the courage to act on their green principles are most certainly doing the right thing for their business in the long term.

Here at Environmental Defense Fund Corporate Partnerships Program we work with business because we think that it’s one of the most effective ways to create big, meaningful environmental change. I’m more hopeful than ever after the Fortune Brainstorm: GREEN conference.

What a whirlwind this conference has been – some new information, some of the same old stories – but many opportunities for interesting discussions.

One interesting discussion I followed was the Innovations Review 2009: Green Advances for a New Economy panel hosted by Gwen Ruta and Fortune’s Julie Schlosser with guests from Bon Appetit, REI and Verizon (several other companies with innovations featured in the Review were in the room).

Check out my first attempt at “live tweeting” a play-by-play for highlights.    

The CEO of Bon Appetit took the prize for most illustrative quote, “We just aren’t flying fish around any more,” in reference to the company’s sourcing of local food, per its Low Carbon Diet.

Gwen asked the panelists how innovation could spread throughout a sector, the consensus was that the people doing the work know how best to find innovations and save energy, so it’s necessary to engage employees at all levels. 

That sounded a lot like the point Gwen made a few months ago in a podcast with Marc Gunther after we announced results from the companies piloting the Green Portfolio Project tools: “The drivers know what’s going on in the fleet and the guys in the production line know what’s going on there. It’s a matter of being able to capture those ideas and systematize them. We see over and over again that that’s what’s behind a lot of this environmental innovation – it’s unleashing the workforce.”

Unfortunately, time ran out just as the discussion was heating up, but we hope that the discussion will continue here in the Innovation Exchange.

I’m headed back to DC tomorrow and with the time change probably won’t get a chance to do another post from here, but you can follow all the EDF_InnovEx tweets from the conference – including highlights of the breakfast roundtable Gwen Ruta is hosting tomorrow on The New Lean Green here.