A company’s supply chain is one of its top levers for addressing climate change. However, as the Carbon Disclosure Project’s latest supply chain report shows, it is challenging in practice to reduce supplier greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. According to the report, which describes the actions of more than 2,300 suppliers, there remains a significant gap in efforts to reduce GHG
Category:
Energy Efficiency
Marketing is an essential ingredient for the success of energy efficiency finance. But too often, finance and efficiency experts focus on technical and financial issues and underestimate the importance of marketing. Using best practices in marketing is necessary to drive demand to the high levels state goals require.
At a New England Clean Energy Council panel
SWITCH Lighting, a maker of Light Emitting Diodes lights to replace incandescent light bulbs, is now retailing at over 350 participating Batteries Plus stores across the U.S. The company’s LED lights, a more sustainable lighting alternative to incandescent bulbs, save up to 80 percent energy compared with traditional lights.
Another innovation behind SWITCH LED bulbs is that
A quick survey of cleantech advances in Europe shows that it’s easier than ever for individuals and private households to live the cleantech lifestyle without sacrificing comfort or convenience. And while we may not think our individual decisions matter, we all know that when it comes to resources, we’re factoring these choices by 7 billion these days. Even your choice to read this post online has an impact – an in-depth look at the impact of our use of digital information in recent New York Times article states that a single data center can take more power than a medium-size town.
Stay with me; I’m not faulting you for that but instead hope to encourage you to keep an eye out for the latest cleantech innovations that you might find easy, comfortable and cost-saving enough to warrant bringing them into your life.
For example, we all like to take a shower with plenty of hot water rather than tepid, lukewarm water, right? UK-based Viridian Solar would agree, which is why they’ve developed a water heating system powered by rooftop solar panels and made it available to the general public.
This solar water heating can provide 50-70 percent of the annual energy required to heat domestic hot water, reducing the overall energy consumption of a well-insulated house by around 10-12 percent. To date, more than 300 dwellings across the UK have been fitted with Viridian’s panels.
How about laundry – what’s next there? Xeros Ltd—another UK based company—is focused on the development of a “virtually waterless” laundry cleaning system that uses 90 percent less water than conventional laundry systems. To take entire U.S. water use in home laundry as an example, that translates into 1.2 billion tons of water saved per year—the equivalent of 17 million swimming pools.
Xeros debuted its revolutionary, environmentally friendly cleaning process earlier this year on the British TV series Home of the Future, which shows how an ordinary family can use cutting edge technologies and gadgets to tackle challenges such as energy and water use.
It’s getting even easier to power our homes with more sustainable sources of energy too.
For example, in the UK, government subsidy led to a swift rise in requests by householders for solar power. UK company Cleaner Air Solutions stepped in to make photovoltaic systems widely available and easily deployed for private residences. If the customer testimonials on their web site are to be believed, the process really is quite simple and straightforward: “hassle-free from start to finish” in the words of one customer.
Similarly, German company enbreeze designed a small-scale wind turbine that is even viable on low-wind sites, thus expanding the number of potential residences that can tap into this clean energy source.
Since home energy use is responsible for 25 percent of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union, the potential impact of companies like Cleaner Air Solutions and enbreeze is no small matter.
The main point here is that for the most part, these innovations aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams: they’re solutions that are available today, or are right around the corner, made possible by brilliant innovators and design technology. With so many of the elements of a more sustainable lifestyle in place, “doing the right thing” as an individual consumer or private household is less of a burden to bear and indeed a more appealing choice.
Whether driven by a genuine desire to reduce their environmental footprint, or simply to insulate themselves against rising costs, energy efficiency is becoming a significant organizational goal for many companies around the country. In order to achieve these goals, businesses are looking for direction on how they can have their buildings’ designed and/or
Lean concepts popularized the supply chain and took procurement and operations to a new level of supply chain management understanding. Characterized by the efficient movement of materials with minimal work in process and inventory, these integrated process flows were dependent on aligned supplier/customer incentives. But in 2008 when times became tough and
The US consumer wants food to be fresh, local and organic. But that means larger grocery bills in an economy where most people need them to be smaller.
As the New York Times tells it, 20-somethings, just out of college, feel the squeeze the most. They are more intent on Whole Foods-style eating than their predecessors, but less able to afford it. (See “The
You are a good green company. You have dutifully installed a solar array on your facility, and use the energy it produces to power your manufacturing process.
You proudly proclaim on your website, in your SEC filing or on your product packaging that you "use renewable energy." You calculate your
Energy benchmarking can unlock $9 billion in energy savings by 2020, suggests a recent report by the Institute of Market Transformation. Despite our lofty aspirations of energy independence and tackling global climate change, we are only beginning to implement the first step in the multifamily building sector – understanding our energy use. Multifamily
In the wake of the recent economic downturn, many industries have taken a much harder look at their core business functions. Initiated by compliance and/or business sustainability necessity, today’s executives can no longer accept ‘business as usual’. Beginning with reforms and improvements in financial, energy, water, and GHG monitoring and reporting, there are many
The economic premise behind energy efficiency – that it’s cheaper to save a unit of energy than to make one – has caught on in the US. Energy efficiency spending is up, and our energy use is declining, measured both per capita and per dollar of gross domestic product, according to government figures.
So it is not surprising to see the year begin with
Using Fireflies As a Model, Scientists Boost Efficiency of LED Lights
written by Yale Environment 360
Drawing inspiration from the structure of a firefly, scientists say they have improved the efficiency of a light-emitting diode (LED) by 55 percent.
While studying the insects, the researchers noticed that a pattern of sharp, jagged scales on the fireflies’ bodies enhanced the amount of light emitted by the
Fiscal Cliff Bill Extends Home Energy Efficiency Tax Credits for Businesses and Homeowners
written by Walter Wang
On January 1, 2013, the U.S. Congress passed last minute legislation known as the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 to avoid automatic increases in income taxes for millions of Americans, as well as draconian cuts to the budget of the federal government, that many feared would plunge the nation’s economy back into recession.