Posts in 'Partnerships'

Starting today, one of the world’s largest private equity firms – The Carlyle Group – will look for opportunities to improve operations and create value through environmental innovation during the assessment of potential acquisitions.  Carlyle’s new environmental due diligence process – called EcoValuScreen – is the result of a collaboration between Carlyle, EDF, and The Payne Firm and has the potential to transform due diligence practices at Carlyle and across the private equity industry.

Before acquiring any new corporate asset, private equity firms conduct a “due diligence” process – which typically considers only environmental risks and liability (e.g., contaminated groundwater cleanup) – to assess a company’s value.  Using this new approach, Carlyle will now identify opportunities to improve operations, reduce costs, and strengthen the market position of target companies through steps like improving energy efficiency, reducing material inputs and waste generation, and developing environmental products and services before an investment decision is made.  Most importantly, the highest impact opportunities will be incorporated into the management plans for Carlyle’s portfolio companies.

This early-stage approach sets a new standard for the industry and expands the mindset on environmental due diligence from downside risks to upside opportunities.

Moving forward, EDF will work with Carlyle to implement the screen in its U.S. and Europe buyout funds (which represent about $30 billion in assets under management), make refinements as necessary, and share lessons learned with other leading firms at edf.org/duediligence.

As mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, today’s announcement builds on our pioneering work with KKR to develop the firm’s Green Portfolio Program that is currently helping to measure and manage environmental performance at 20% of KKR’s global portfolio companies.  We view these two collaborations as complementary initiatives that combine to help improve business and environmental performance at different stages of the private equity value chain. We look forward to both becoming standard practices for value creation across the industry.

Medium-duty trucks are the workhorses of the American economy. They deliver food and beverages to restaurants and convenience stores, drop off packages at homes and offices, serve as mobile workshops for all types of technicians and perform thousands of other daily tasks. They are also responsible for producing over 80 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

To help fleets reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and harness cost savings, Environmental Defense Fund teamed up with past partner PHH Arval, a leading fleet management company, to identify and showcase a number of effective and replicable strategies to reduce emissions and costs from medium-duty trucks.

Highlights of this new whitepaper, available at http://edf.org/greenfleet, include:

• How Frito-Lay saved 10% on fuel by downsizing its urban grocery store delivery truck model from a 24-foot Class 6 straight truck to a 20-foot Class 5;
• How by reducing speeding and after hours use and deploying a telematics solution, LKQ decreased idling by 62% and saved 16 gallons of fuel per vehicle each month;
• How Staples modified the transmission control unit and installed speed governors to increased the fuel economy of its single-unit trucks by 12-16% and
• How PoolCorp improved fuel economy by 4% by making adjustments to the Engine Control Module (ECM) that limit speed and shorten engine idle intervals.

Recognizing that every fleet is different, the whitepaper showcases 14 strategies and includes options for every duty cycle to improve efficiency and cut emissions.

Look for opportunities to drive medium-duty trucks in your fleet onto the onramp of a lower-carbon future.

This content is cross-posted on Greenbiz.com

Archimedes said "Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the earth," when explaining the principle of levers.

Leverage is the big news about Walmart’s announcement today. The company has committed to reducing 20 million metric tons of carbon pollution from its products’ lifecycle and supply chain over the next five years. That’s equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 3.8 million cars.

So is Walmart moving the earth? No, not yet. But this is precisely the kind of innovative approach to reducing carbon pollution that we need right now. Environmental Defense Fund worked closely with Walmart to craft this goal and project that makes the most of what Walmart can uniquely do to cut carbon pollution across the globe.

This commitment is bold because: Read more »

As many of you know, we have been working with Walmart for the past several years to measurably reduce its environmental impact in the areas of global warming, packaging, plastic bag waste, agriculture, toxic materials while leveraging the power of its supply chain here and in China. Read more »

If you happened to miss my previous post, I recently finished an externship in Environmental Defense Fund's Corporate Partnerships Program, working on the Green Returns team.  After graduating from Wharton last spring, I got the opportunity to work at EDF before beginning my full-time consulting job at Bain & Company.  When I started at EDF, I hoped that the experience would teach me about corporate environmental management and expose me to a new perspective.  After five months, I would say – mission accomplished. Read more »

Capitalizing on the momentum of Environmental Defense Fund’s groundbreaking Green Portfolio partnership with leading private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR), we are taking our Private Equity show on the road to one of the most visible and well-attended conferences, the Dow Jones PE Analyst Outlook 2010 in New York City, January 25^th – 27^th.

The event will include perspectives from elite institutional investors, fund managers and advisors about the major PE investing trends for 2010, including a focus on environmental performance.

Environmental Defense Fund will be the first and only NGO to attend the conference, and Tom Murray will speak on a panel about where investors should focus in 2010.  He’ll introduce attendees to our Green Returns program, an innovative and flexible approach designed to create business and environmental value for the private equity sector that was developed as part of EDF’s partnership with KKR.

Tom's panel will also include speakers from top PE funds 3i, THL and Huntsman Gay, all of which take a hands-on approach to investing in their portfolio companies.

I look forward to hearing what role the top representatives of the private equity sector sees for environmental innovation in 2010 and beyond.  Share your ideas and best practices with us here.

This is a guest post from Dominique Browning.  It ran on her blog "Personal Nature" on November 4th.

Because electricity is so readily available, we take it for granted. We forget how quickly we’ve gotten used to turning on the lights. As recently as the 1930s and ’40s—within living memory—Lyndon Johnson was just beginning to electrify rural areas of central Texas, which today include the state’s high-tech corridor. Watching the lights come on across the beautiful Hill Country was one of the proudest moments of Johnson’s life.

So it is fitting that the most exciting new development in the story of electricity is happening in the capitol city of Austin. The city is becoming a clean energy lab, staking out a leadership position in our energy future. The goal of the ambitious Pecan Street Project is to invent and deploy, at a significant scale, the most innovative urban power system possible. EDF has partnered with the city, Austin Energy, the University of Texas and corporate partners like Cisco, Oracle, Gridpoint and Applied Materials to develop the project.

Read the rest of the post on Dominique's blog.

If you listen carefully, you just might hear the quiet hum of over 250 new hybrid trucks coming down the road. States and regions around the country are slowly but surely announcing the winners of grants from EPA’s Diesel Emissions Reduction program and the Department of Energy’s Clean Cities programs, which, together, received $600 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Projects are still being announced, but we expect to see at least 270 new medium- and heavy-duty hybrid trucks hit the road in 2009-2010 because of these funds. Maryland’s Clean Cities program is using $6 million to partially fund the purchase of 150 new hybrid trucks, with 50 going to ARAMARK alone. Maryland anticipates that its program will “displace upwards of 460,000 gallons of petroleum per year, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 262,610 lbs. per year and create a total of 205 fulltime jobs for workers in distressed local economies.” Now that’s what we call stimulus!

These major investments demonstrate that when the price is right, there is a strong demand for hybrid trucks. It’s this kind of demand for cleaner technologies and better practices that the Corporate Partnership model is so effective at creating.

Check out the new video that tells our story through the success of the hybrid truck market. It’s time to sit back, relax, and watch the hybrid truck market drive itself.

Video is worth more than a thousand words, so we'll keep this post short. In a recent blog post, Marc Gunther highlights a new EDF video about our unique approach to working with corporations. The video uses our collaboration with FedEx and other industry leaders to jumpstart the transformation of the hybrid truck market to illustrate how our partnerships galvanize groundbreaking environmental innovation. At EDF, we are laser focused on using market forces to create environmental change that is good for business and the bottom line. Our goal is to work with market leaders to create a green “race to the top” where companies and suppliers compete not only on price and quality but also on the environmental value they can bring to their customers.

Here at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), we look for market based solutions to environmental problems. As the guy in charge of managing our partnership pipeline process, I’m constantly on the lookout for new win-win environmental and business solutions we can pioneer with companies. I’m often asked how we identify the companies that we partner with. And increasingly the word I use is LEVERAGE.

Read more »