July 2011

Sustainability Reporting Methods 'Outdated'
The current once-yearly model of commercial sustainable development reporting is looking increasingly out of date and will be replaced by myriad forms of reporting, according to research by Acona and SABMiller.

Multiple Messages, a division of Acona, argues that discussions over the nature and practice of sustainable development reporting are taking place in the shadow of a “tidal wave of social and technological change” that is fundamentally transforming the way we communicate. Social media, instant access, handheld devices, syndication, and all-powerful search engines have conditioned users to find the content that they want when they want it, the report says.

At the same time the fast-rising BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India & China) economies are developing their own views on the role of companies in society and affecting the way global corporations think, the report argues. As a result, annual reporting on such issues is behind the times.
Multiple Messages concludes that the future of sustainable development reporting will be “plural, bespoke and continuous”: plural in that the content will be spread through multiple documents and channels; bespoke in that different audiences will require different content; and continuous in that companies will be expected to communicate regularly – and the development of the story will become as important as the facts themselves.

The annual report will be replaced by tailored multi-stranded communications to different audiences, using technology to allow regular updates, Acona and SABMiller argue. This, they say, requires a more nuanced view of verification, breaking the task into pieces dependent on the nature of the content and the requirements of the audience.

“Sustainable development reports may work as a ‘document of record’ but they fail when judged as an exercise in communication,” said Simon Hodgson, managing partner at Acona and one of the report’s authors. “They tend to be long documents full of information in search of an audience. To succeed in the new connected, plural future, they must recognize the audiences in search of the information.”

“Leading global companies are often at the forefront of efforts to tackle environmental and social issues but more and more stakeholders are looking for deep, up to date information on their specific issue, to understand its materiality for the business and to break performance down market by market,” said Andy Wales, global head of sustainable development at SABMiller. “It’s a significant communications challenge, but one which companies cannot shy away from.”  
July 11, 20011 Environmental Leader


Getting Americans to Buy In to Global Warming
I realize the idea of saving money by saving energy is nothing new. Everyone’s heard that tune. The question is, if it didn’t change consumer attitudes in the past, why should we expect it to work now? That’s an easy one. Most of the time, when people talk about preventing climate change, they focus on individual actions. This seems like a smart approach, after all there are over three-hundred million people in America. Getting them to be more energy efficient would pay big dividends.

Here’s the problem –for a typical consumer, the effort required to use less energy may not be justified by the savings. Suppose your monthly electric bill is around $100, excluding taxes and other fees. If you’re able to reduce consumption by 10%, you’ll save $10. That’s about the price of a burger and fries at a premium quick serve restaurant. For a lot of people, it’s just not worth the hassle.

To a large corporation, however, a 10% savings can quickly add up. One of the world’s leading apparel retailers spends over $100 million a year on energy for their stores in the U.S. and Canada. For them, a 10% savings is worth more than $10 million. Now, apply that same 10% target to the hundreds of thousands of commercial buildings in the U.S., a group that happens to be responsible for almost 20% of the nation’s annual energy consumption. Improving the energy efficiency of these buildings by even a small percentage will have a much bigger impact on the environment than arguing ad infinitum with the global warming skeptics.

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Here’s the good news: even if the cost of energy right now isn’t high enough to motivate action, it soon will be. Thanks to new technologies like smart meters, the utility industry has begun rolling out new pricing programs that penalize customers for using too much energy at the wrong time of day. These so called dynamic pricing programs include variable electricity rates that rise and fall in response to changing energy demand. Building owners who don’t invest in energy savings initiatives should expect significantly lower net operating income.

In summary, the threat of global climate change is very real, but continuing to argue about it won’t get us anywhere. If we want to save the earth, we have to change the message. Everyone cares about money, so let’s focus on that. Every commercial organization wants to reduce operating costs and increase profits. Once they grasp the financial consequences of doing nothing, they’ll quickly change their ways and operate more energy efficiently. The end result will be reduced greenhouse gas emissions and a healthier plant.

Corporate avarice may not be pretty, but in the words of Gordon Gekko, when it comes to saving the environment, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.”  
Michael Nark 7/11/11

Bloom Boxes Make Big AT&T Sale, But Sit 10^th in Fuel Cell Rankings

Remember Bloom Energy servers, those low-cost, energy-efficient fuel cells born out of a scrapped NASA project? The company made a splashy debut last year, starting with a spot on 60 Minutes and a long list of early-adopting corporate heavyweights like FedEx, Walmart, Google, Coca-Cola, Staples, and eBay. Since then, we haven't heard much from the company, but today she's back -- AT&T says it will be the first telco to use these refrigerator-sized servers to power its operations. For now, the company's planning on using the technology to run 11 sites in California, a move AT&T says will cut its carbon dioxide emissions in half and virtually eliminate SOx, NOx, and other smog-forming particles. Eleven AT&T sites in California will install 7.5 MW of Bloom Boxes, in one of the biggest deals ever for the fuel cell maker.

AT&T, which reached nearly 3 million kWh of solar energy production in 2010, is the first telecom company to use Bloom Boxes. They are expected to produce over 62 million kWh of energy annually – enough to power over 5,600 homes – and to reduce carbon emissions by about 50 percent compared to grid-sourced electricity, saving 250 million pounds of CO2. Despite being the best-known maker of fuel cells, Bloom Energy has been heavily outscored by, among others, FuelCell Energy and UTC Power, in a report that ranks the competitiveness of such manufacturers.

The "Pike Pulse Report: Prime Power Fuel Cells" by Pike Research evaluates 15 of the leading prime power station fuel cell developers and rates them on 12 criteria for strategy and execution, including go-to-market strategy, product portfolio, partnerships, innovation, reach, market share, pricing, and staying power.  FuelCell Energy attained the highest overall score in the Pike Pulse report due to a combination of a clear go-to-market strategy, geographic reach and partnerships, coupled with its cost-down systems and mass manufacturing, Pike says.  In this market, where high-quality, high-volume manufacturing is not the norm, FuelCell Energy’s ability to ramp up manufacturing based on market demand gives it a clear edge, according to research director Kerry-Ann Adamson.

UTC Power is the runner-up and is assessed as second in both strategy and execution. The highest-ranking residential prime power fuel cell manufacturer in the study is ClearEdge Power, with Ceramic Fuel Cells only one point behind.  Bloom Energy came in tenth in the ranking. The company, generally considered the market leader, fell into the report’s “challengers” category. FuelCell was the lone company in the “leaders” section. The report terms the companies ranked two to nine “contenders”.

“The prime power fuel cell market is in a fluid, vibrant phase of market growth. In the midst of this critical stage of development, we are seeing some new market trends appearing,” said Adamson. “These include the ‘electrons or hardware’ business model where adopters lease or buy the stationary fuel cell prime power unit. The benefits of both vary depending on the adopter and, interestingly, the country in which the company is operating.

“In terms of geography, we have seen some companies developing a single country-specific product, for example in the Japanese residential market. So although a company may be leading today, in terms of deployment, looking forward it could face significant barriers to entry for its product in other regions,” Adamson adds.

The top 15 vendors according to the report are as follows:

1.              FuelCell Energy

2.              UTC Power

3.              Hydrogenics

4.              POSCO Power

5.              ClearEdge Power

6.              Ceramic Fuel Cells

7.              Fuji Electric

8.              Panasonic; Toshiba Fuel Cell Power; Eneos Celltech

9.              Topsoe Fuel Cell

10.           Bloom Energy

11.           Intelligent Energy

12.           Baxi Innotech

13.           Ceres Power

14.           Hexis

15.          GS Fuel CellsTechnology   
Dana Wollman for Engadget/ EL  7/12/11

Earth's Population Will Hit 7 Billion People This Year

It seems like only yesterday that the planet’s population hit 6 billion, but in fact it was 12 years ago in 1999. This year, the planet will hit the next big milestone – the UN Population Division just announced that the world’s human population will hit 7 billion on Halloween 2011. Unfortunately, 7 Billion Day means that as we continue to dominate the planet, we are stretching natural resources, fresh water and food supplies to their limit while increasing our environmental impact exponentially.

The increase of a billion people in 12 years is worrying, especially since the global population only reached one billion in the early 19th century. In the following 150 years the earth’s population rose by 1.5 billion people, and in just the past 60 years the population has exploded with an increase of 4.5 billion people. This is not a good thing, as we continue to consume more water; food and fuel then we can create. That’s not even considering the increase in carbon and nitrogen we are responsible for and the natural species we have made extinct through our presence.

All in all this means that in the next 20 years, our population growth is predicted to see a ‘perfect storm’ as the population rises to 8 billion people and our demand for food increases by 50 percent, water by 30 percent and energy by 50 percent. It’s enough to make you start building a survival shelter in your garden right now. So what can we do? Adopt a one-child policy like China? Grow more food? Switch to renewable sources of energy? Well, yes to the last two. As each generation is born, we are going to have to adapt our diets, our energy sources and how we live if we are to survive a global humanitarian disaster. After all it is not our numbers that are the problem ( 7 billion people could fit into Los Angeles apparently) — it is the resources we currently crave. Our consumption grossly outweighs our needs and, unless we address that the world is not going to change.

According to UN scientists, our impact is creating an epoch called the Anthropocene. This is: “a break with the geologic past marked by humanity’s long-term alteration of the natural world and its biota.” In short, we are inadvertently bringing on the sixth mass extinction because our desires are too great, our technologies have had too great an impact on the environment, and our use of the land is unsustainable.  

Timon Singh 7/19/11  The Guardian, Images by Arenamontanus