Climate Technology

The Altima Sacrifice

Nissan CEO not happy about making new hybrid Altima Automaker Nissan is releasing its first hybrid model, a version of its Altima sedan, next year, but it doesn’t have to like it. In a speech at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in New Orleans, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said hybrids aren’t profitable enough to […]

100 sustainable companies

As usual, I'm getting to this late.  Here are the 100 most sustainable corporations in the world, as announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The comically fuzzy definition: " A Corporation that produces an overall positive impact on society and the environment."

Joel Makower rightly criticizes the opacity of the ranking process and Alex Steffen rightly emphasizes that these types of rankings aren't about seeking perfection so much as moving the debate in the right direction.

Smokestack Lightening

ConocoPhillips will pay half a billion to clean up refineries The largest refinery settlement in U.S. history was announced yesterday, as ConocoPhillips, the nation’s largest oil refiner, agreed to spend more than $525 million to clean up nine refineries, a deal that will remove 47,000 tons of harmful pollutants from the air each year. This […]

Design of the Times

Electronics manufacturers hop on the cradle-to-cradle bandwagon Mindful of the growing impact of consumer electronics on the waste stream — and of the likelihood that government regulations could one day require them to recycle their own wares — electronics manufacturers like Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Panasonic are beginning to design products with their full lifecycle in […]

The answer, my friend, is basking in the sun

Joel Makower does a quick review of the growing momentum of solar power on the world market, with high-profile moves being made by Sanyo, Sharp, Kyocera, and Mitsubishi. Then he turns to the U.S. solar market, which is lagging:

Reclaiming leadership in the global solar marketplace will be no mean feat. As recently as 1997, U.S. solar companies controlled 100% of the U.S. market and 40% of the global market, according to SEIA. Today, U.S. firms control only 73% and 14%, respectively. In 2003, following several years of growth, shipments from U.S. solar manufacturers actually decreased by 10%, while shipments from Europe grew by 41% and from Japan by 45%.

It is vitally important for enviros to make the point that solar is not some kind of hippie preoccupation -- it's a major world market that is rapidly reaching a tipping point. The U.S. risks being left behind.

This is an industry that offers the possibility of thousands of jobs -- jobs that cannot be offshored, jobs that could potentially revive dying rural areas -- in a market that's only going to grow for the foreseeable future. Yet a combination of corporate clout and political myopia is hobbling our efforts. Tell me again how environmentalists are against economic growth?

Terra Cognita

New company offers guilty motorists a way to offset emissions In what is likely to be a growing trend, a private company is stepping in to make money by offering people a concrete way to take positive action against global warming. Benven LLC runs a program called TerraPass, which emerged from a classroom project at […]

Don’t Mess With Texas — Unless You’re Buying the Hot Dogs

Texas chemical plants cause problems for nearby residents The Houston Chronicle is running an investigative series on chemical plants and their effects on nearby residents, and it ain’t pretty. There’s a fair bit of evidence suggesting that companies dramatically underreport their annual emissions. On top of that, accidental leaks — or what the industry calls […]

Dirty Pretty Things

Two major cosmetic companies will omit harmful chemicals from products Revlon Inc. and L’Oreal USA have pledged to follow the European Union’s relatively strict new anti-toxics rule in formulating their perfumes, hair dyes, makeup, and other products for sale in the U.S. The two companies were convinced to take the step by San Francisco’s Breast […]

Uncritical Mass

Anti-nuke opposition muted even as U.S. nuclear industry expands Opponents of nuclear power in the U.S. have been having a rough time of late attracting attention to their cause, even as the nuclear-power industry gears up to build five new reactors by 2015 and as many as 50 by 2050, with enthusiastic backing from the […]

Buy the Balls

Inauguration funded by industry; cynics jump to conclusions Yesterday we reported on an interview in which President Bush said that nuclear energy answers the “environmental issue” and the “dependency issue.” Turns out it also partially answers the “incredibly expensive inauguration issue.” The Nuclear Energy Institute, a lobbying group, is coughing up $100,000 for the lavish […]