PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Ahead of the release of a new heavy duty truck fuel-efficiency standard from the Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this spring, a new Union of Concerned Scientists study, released this week, says new fuel efficiency standards for heavy duty trucks should require at least a 40 percent decrease in fuel use, and shows the target is achievable with existing technology and would result in billions of dollars in fuel cost savings.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Single-seat, solar-powered plane, Solar Impulse 2 successfully completed the second leg of its five-month journey around the planet, after touching down in Ahmedabad, India on Tuesday.The journey began successfully after a 13-hour flight from Abu Dhabi to Muscat, Oman. “The flight went really well, everything went as planned,” said a team spokesperson of the first flight. This is but a small step (about 270 miles) on the 20,000-mile journey that will take about 500 hours of flying time. Pilot André Borschberg flew the first leg, while his partner Bertrand Piccard took the second leg.
PRESS RELEASE -
Companies announce first-of-its-kind program at DIRECTV facility, launch special deal for solar customers this weekLONG BEACH, Calif.
CLEANTECH -
Sometimes clean technology doesn't need to be sanitary.Students and staff at the University of the West of England in Bristol now have the opportunity to test out a prototype toilet that uses urine to generate electricity, The Guardian reports.Researchers at the university and the charity Oxfam developed the “pee power” toilet to prove that urine can generate electricity, and show its potential for helping to light cubicles in international refugee camps. The technology uses urine-fed microbial fuel cell (MFC) stacks to generate electricity that can power indoor lighting.
COLLABORATION -
The Climate CoLab has announced twenty-two contests that seek high-impact ideas on how to tackle climate change.A project of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for Collective Intelligence, the Climate CoLab seeks to harness the knowledge and expertise of thousands of experts and non-experts across the world to help solve this massive, complex issue.The Climate CoLab has a rapidly growing community of over 30,000 members from across the world. Anyone is welcome to join the platform to submit their own ideas, or comment on and show support for other proposals on the site.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
At the first of three science symposia hosted by BASF in honor of its 150th anniversary, to be held this week in Ludwigshafen, Germany, more than 600 top ranking scientists from academia and business will discuss “Smart Energy for a Sustainable Future.” Speakers will discuss the latest innovations in the storage and sustainable use of energy and explain approaches to energy-efficient chemical production. Other topics include viable future mobility, new materials for energy technologies and future energy supply. The symposium is part of BASF's worldwide Creator Space™ program.
CLEANTECH -
Researchers at Queen Mary University of London have for the first time successfully created electricity-generating solar cells with chemicals found in the shells of shrimps and other crustaceans.The materials chitin and chitosan found in the shells are abundant and significantly cheaper to produce than the metals currently used in making nanostructured solar-cells, the researchers say.The researchers used a process called hydrothermal carbonization to create the carbon quantum dots (CQDs) from the widely and cheaply available chemicals found in crustacean shells. They then coated standard zinc oxide nanorods with the CQDs to make the solar cells.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
The energy shift in the world is now inevitable. To sustain life and livelihoods for 9 billion people by 2050, even if we didn’t count on living well (which we do, of course), we have 35 years to transform the global economy in order to decouple economic growth from high-emissions energy use. Phasing out emissions, especially those from carbon (CO2) - the primary cause of warming today - has to be a priority for business, as well as governments. There is growing evidence that a pathway to rapidly decarbonising the value chain goes well beyond ESG and reporting – it’s also a pathway to long-term growth, innovation, jobs and value creation.
CLEANTECH -
This week, the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC), a nonprofit coalition of many of the world’s largest leading electronics companies — including Apple, Cisco, Dell, Eastman Kodak, HP, Microsoft and many more — dedicated to supply chain responsibility, and CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) announced a new partnership to help expand greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting and reductions in the electronics supply chain.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Once companies tackle the low-hanging fruit of operational improvement — carbon footprints, energy-efficiency retrofits and waste reduction — they are ready to address deeper sustainability challenges.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
L-R: Mart and Rob Drake-Knight | Image credit: RapanuiAs more and more brands begin to tout their sustainability credentials, increasingly savvy and conscientious shoppers are looking for companies that are walking their talk, with products and practices that reflect an authentic commitment to doing better business.
LEADERSHIP -
Citi announced a commitment to lend, invest and facilitate a total of $100 billion within the next 10 years to finance activities that reduce the impacts of climate change and create environmental solutions that benefit people and communities. Citi's previous $50 billion goal was met three years early in 2013.
CLEANTECH -
In Fall of 2013, Dell launched what it called its Legacy of Good plan — a set of 21 ambitious sustainability goals covering everything from its packaging and production materials to reducing the energy intensity of its entire product portfolio by 80 percent.
THE NEXT ECONOMY -
Environmental justice has been a small, but increasingly vocal, component of civil rights activism. After all, many organizations, including the NAACP, have documented the disproportionate health problems the United States’ 370-plus coal-fired power plants — which often happen to be located near neighborhoods in which the majority of residents are people of color — have had on minority communities.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
It has been almost five years since the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico claimed 11 lives and became the largest oil spill in world history. The crisis unleashed a torrent of criticism against BP, which operated the offshore oil rig. Countless pundits, journalists and political leaders lambasted the company for what the company did — or did not do. Accused of reckless conduct and gross negligence, the company settled with the U.S. Justice Department in 2012, but other litigation is ongoing. A U.S.
CLEANTECH -
General Motors for the first time is procuring wind to power its manufacturing operations, enabling one of its Mexico facilities’ electricity needs to be run mostly on renewable energy. This addition of 34 megawatts of wind power allows GM to achieve its corporate goal of renewable energy use four years early.GM says construction of the wind farm will begin in the second quarter of this year. When complete, more than 12 percent of the company’s North American energy consumption will come from renewable energy sources, up from 9 percent. GM’s current renewable energy use — comprised of solar, landfill gas and waste to energy — totals 104 megawatts against a goal of 125 megawatts by 2020.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
Whether as competitive differentiation, long-term risk management, or hedging against future regulation, internal carbon fees are becoming increasingly popular with companies as varied as Shell, Microsoft and Disney.
NEW METRICS -
Imagine that you arrive to take your first flying lesson. The instructing pilot asks, “How much fuel do you guess we should put in the tank?” You think: “Guess? Come again? Shouldn’t we calculate the distance between where we are and where we are going, and then determine the fuel needed (and add in some extra fuel for peace of mind)?”Yes. And the same is true for sustainability goals.
CLEANTECH -
Procter & Gamble and Constellation — a leading retail supplier of power, natural gas and energy products and services — announced Thursday the development of an up to 50-megawatt biomass plant that will help run one of P&G’s largest U.S. facilities. The plant will significantly increase P&G’s use of renewable energy, helping move the company closer to its 2020 goal of obtaining 30 percent of its total energy from renewable sources.
COLLABORATION -
Tom Catania’s role at Whirlpool Corporation wasn’t specifically to shape the company’s sustainability efforts. But in more than 25 years with the appliance manufacturer, the last 14 as Vice President for Government Affairs, Catania’s job called on him to help identify public policy conflicts and bring together diverse interests to find consensus.His role at the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise is much the same. “My focus had always been on trying to identify public policy issues and turning them into business opportunities, and I think we were pretty successful at doing that,” Catania said.