CLEANTECH -
This week, The Dow Chemical Company launched two new partnerships aimed at advancing two of its seven 2025 Sustainability Goals, launched last year.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Recently, we added a competition called the D-Prize to our Idea Accelerator. This prize, whose tagline is “Distribution equals development,” is a terrific idea that is so needed in our world today.
Why?
There is no shortage of excellent, incentivizing prizes in the world — competitions that inspire innovation and ingenuity to make the world a better place. The XPrize is a pioneer in the social innovation competition arena, describing itself as a “catalyst for the benefit of humanity.”
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Unilever’s Sustainable Living brands continue to show superior performance, as the company reports on the fifth year of progress of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan. Consumers expect more of brands and businesses now — and they reward those that deliver a wider social benefit in addition to the traditional product performance at an affordable price.
In 2015, Sustainable Living brands — which have integrated sustainability into both their purpose and products:
CLEANTECH -
Schneider Electric has announced a new Silicon Valley Innovation program designed to scout and develop startups focused on applications related to the intersection of energy and the Internet of Things (IoT). The first phase of the program will identify and develop 10 startup companies by the fourth quarter of 2016, three of which have already been selected.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
On Wednesday, leading apparel and footwear brand Nike released its latest sustainability report and was announced as the newest Global Partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Nike has made impressive progress during a period of continued growth, and recognizes that to continue as such, it must innovate on an unprecedented scale. The company has set “a vision for a low-carbon, closed-loop future as part of the company’s growth strategy.”
CLEANTECH -
The Arandas, Mexico-based Tequila Cazadores distillery has become a shining example of Bacardi’s “Good Spirited” corporate responsibility program. The facility is now 100 percent biomass-fueled thanks to a recently-installed biomass boiler, and about 60 percent of its biofuel comes from spent agave fibers from the distillation process.
LEADERSHIP -
Two airports in London, Heathrow and Gatwick, earned multiple certifications to the Carbon Trust Standard for their exceptional environmental performance. Heathrow has become the first airport in the world (and only the fifth organization in the world) to simultaneously hold four certifications, while Gatwick is now one of only a handful of organizations to hold triple certification.
CLEANTECH -
Danish utility company DONG Energy is offering renewable electricity to business customers in the United Kingdom for “no additional premium” compared to “brown energy” sources. In an announcement late last week, the energy supplier pledged to “cover additional costs associated with 'going green,'” so that UK businesses can access renewable electricity and achieve their sustainability ambitions without commercial disadvantage.”
PRESS RELEASE -
Located on the Rincon Indian Reservation, in Valley Center, Harrah’s Resort Southern California (HRSC) has abundant access to the California sun. Excellent – what a perfect opportunity for solar. Since installing solar across the property in 2009, HRSC has saved more than $300,000 each year as the 1.6 MW of sun-powered energy generated annually does everything from chill the air that helps keep the resort’s 1,065 hotel rooms cool to maintain the perfect swimming temperature in the pools. As property operations manager Brendan O’Kane puts it, the solar system is “free power” – and it doesn’t get much better than that. Learn more about HRSC’s solar solution and Caesars’ CodeGreen program by watching the video above.
WASTE NOT -
Tomatoes are useful for a lot of things — mixing into salads, adding nutritional value to cheeseburgers, lobbing at struggling standup comics, and even making plastic for car parts. But a team of scientists at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology has come up with a powerful new application for the flushed fruit: electricity.
At the recent 251st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the team presented their pilot project, which involves a bio-based fuel cell that uses tomato waste left over from harvests in Florida.
PRESS RELEASE -
A second major technology company has confirmed that it is using Duke Energy’s Green Source Rider to provide clean energy for its North Carolina operations.
PRESS RELEASE -
Earth Day marks the official signing of the Paris Climate Agreement at the United Nations (U.N.) New York headquarters. The Paris deal paves the way for a new era of clean energy growth, providing crucial momentum for the push toward net zero emissions — a goal that requires the near-ubiquitous use of renewables.
The good news: There’s been ample progress to that end. And it appears to be the tipping point for widespread adoption.
Renewable energy has spread across the globe
PRESS RELEASE -
Ford recycles as much as 20 million pounds of aluminum stamping scrap per month using the closed-loop system at Dearborn Truck Plant, which builds F-150. That is the equivalent of more than 30,000 F-150 bodies in the largest configuration – a SuperCrew body including doors, plus hood, tailgate and 6.5-foot cargo box.
THE NEXT ECONOMY -
Ethical Markets Media has revealed a stunning new total for its Green Transition Scoreboard® (GTS), a metric that tracks private investments and commitments in creating more sustainable economies globally, showing the weight investors place on clean technologies driving the future of business and finance. The GTS’ goal is to see $10 trillion privately invested in the clean economy by 2020 to effectively scale innovations and reduce costs in sustainable technologies.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
At BP’s 2015 Annual General Meeting (AGM), 4.12 percent of the company’s investors either ‘abstained’ (2.4 percent) or voted ‘against’ (1.72 percent) a resolution to better disclose carbon risk. The remainder (96 percent) got the publicity for supporting the resolution, as the board (in a move of alignment with resolution filers) recommended. But as we approach the 2016 voting season, we need to understand why 4 percent of investors would take the step of either abstaining over this board-recommended resolution, or voting against it.
CLEANTECH -
The world is picking up on the fight against global warming and more renewable energy capacity is under construction. In this transformation, impressive pieces of cleantech engineering are seeing the light of the day; major wind farms, massive solar panels and intelligent waste-to-energy plants, just to mention a few.
The record-size Hornsea Offshore Wind Farm
In line with these impressive pieces of engineering is the forthcoming Hornsea Project One Offshore Wind Farm, located 120 kilometres off the coast of the UK, built by the market leader within offshore wind construction, DONG Energy.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Nature has inspired all kinds of innovation – from Ford looking at geckos’ sticky toe pads to improve adhesives to Airbus building a stronger, lighter-weight galley partition that mimics cell structure and bone growth. Biomimicry is also influencing building design across industrial, commercial and residential projects.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
Ford Motor Company today announced plans to transform its Dearborn facilities into a modern, sustainable, high-tech campus to foster innovation and help drive the company’s transition beyond mere automaker to a mobility company.
The 10-year transformation of the company’s more than 60-year-old Dearborn facilities will co-locate 30,000 employees from 70 buildings today into primarily two locations — a product campus and a world headquarters campus. More than 7.5 million square feet of workspace will be rebuilt and upgraded into even more technology-enabled and connected facilities.
THE NEXT ECONOMY -
Whether climate stabilization and economic growth can coexist or promote each other is the subject of ongoing debate. Recent analyses by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) add to the evidence that we could indeed have the best of both.
STAKEHOLDER TRENDS AND INSIGHTS -
In a dystopian portrayal of the future, the landscape is rife with fires, rising seas, and thick clouds billowing from power plant smokestacks; humans must wear gas masks for their own survival. This apocalyptic vision is captured in a series of photos featuring 8 popular Vietnamese singers, actors and dancers as part of a new anti-coal campaign.