Climate Technology

Clean Energy: The New Merger

Renewable power gets ever more hip with corporate America The Man just can’t get enough clean energy. This week, Walgreens and FedEx Kinko’s joined Whole Foods as corporate boosters of renewable power. The drugstore chain will install solar-power systems at 96 stores and two distribution centers in California, along with 16 stores in New Jersey. […]

The Joy PUC Club

California regulators approve landmark solar-power plan With one eco-tastic vote, California is set to become a global clean-energy leader: Yesterday, the state’s energy regulators approved about $3 billion in subsidies to promote solar power. Rebates will be paid to residential and business utility customers to encourage installation of enough rooftop solar-power systems by 2017 to […]

Just because General Motors calls it green doesn’t mean it is.

Joel Makower reports that General Motors will lead a joint demonstration project "to learn more about consumer awareness and acceptance of E85 as a motor vehicle fuel by demonstrating its use in GM's flexible-fuel vehicles."

The California Department of Transportation will use some flex-fuel vehicles and work with Chevron Technology Ventures to make sure there are filling stations that offer E85 (gas w/ 85% ethanol). A company called Pacific Ethanol will provide the liquid fuel. Filling stations that sell E85 will be receiving "a lucrative federal tax credit."

Joel passes rather lightly over the central problem with biofuels, a problem advocates have never satisfactorily resolved. We're always told that biomass for ethanol could come from crop waste, fryer grease, turkeys, or what have you, but what it inevitably will be made from is whatever's cheapest.

Right now it's cheapest to use corn, sugarcane, soybeans, and palm oil -- heavily-subsidized agribusiness products. Joel holds Brazil up as a model, boasting that it just became a net exporter of sugarcane ethanol. But right there in Brazil rainforests are being plowed down to plant crops, making carbon sinks into carbon sieves.

If there were more confident predictions and fewer just-so stories about how genuinely renewable sources of ethanol will become cheaper than biodiversity-destroying, CO2-increasing agricultural crops, I would feel more comfortable biofuel boosting.

I'm not ready to walk blindly into this future, holding General Motors' hand for comfort.

In India, fair trade is changing a centuries-old industry

The cool, misty highlands of the Western Ghats punctuate south India’s steaming tropical plains. Their forests shelter tigers and elephants, and protect the fragile watersheds of the flatlands below. They also harbor pieces of a colonial legacy: the tea industry. Click play or use the arrows to advance through photos. Photos: Gregory Dicum Colonial authorities […]

How green printing can make a good impression

Can’t go paperless? Go green. Photo: iStockphoto. Look around your workplace, and you’ll likely find plenty of printed material, from business cards to brochures to books. Printing words and images on paper may seem like one of the more environmentally benign things your company does, but that isn’t necessarily the case. If you examine the […]

Green advertising

The NYT reports that eco-themed advertising is growing ever-more-ubiquitous from big companies.

I know we're supposed to bitch and moan about greenwashing, but the way I see it, even if 50% of this is hype, a) 50% non-hype is better than nothing, and b) it speaks well to current cultural trends that companies feel the need to brag about their environmental consciousness. Environmentalism is once again coming out in the open as a mainstream value, after years of demonization and caricature.

Is the world ready to waltz with nuclear again?

Most of us know what torture it is to be a wallflower, so it’s hard not to feel at least a slight frisson of sympathy for the nuclear industry. Once considered “most likely to succeed,” this promising power source found itself stumbling in the 1970s. It was bad enough after Three Mile Island in 1979 […]

Making sustainability sexy, from an ad man’s point of view

Sustainability. Sexy. Two words you don’t often see together. Sustainability is a serious word. It’s about saving the world from ecological disaster. Getting humanity on track for survival. Heady stuff best left to academics, unions of concerned scientists, and earnest tree-huggers. Would you buy this? Photo: iStockphoto/Tyler Stalman. Sexy … now that’s a fun word. […]

Tips for greening conferences and events

Surely you’ve attended the Conference from Eco-Hell. Eco-hell, or just plain hell? Photo: iStockphoto/Elerium Studios. You know the one. It begins with an endless paper trail of direct-mail advertisements. It’s held in some remote suburban locale, accessible only by car. At registration, you are issued a conference bag filled with promotional papers and doodads you’ll […]

Terry Kellogg, director of 1% for the Planet, answers questions

Terry Kellogg. What work do you do? I’m the executive director of 1% for the Planet. What does your organization do? What, in a perfect world, would constitute “mission accomplished”? 1% is a rapidly growing network of companies (more than 200 with a few more every week) that commit to giving at least 1 percent […]