How climate change is shaping company decisions

How climate change is shaping company decisions

A range of investors and companies gathered at a day of events recently organized by Trucost and The Crowd to discuss latest developments in efforts to incorporate environmental considerations into decision making.

Environmental Leader

Sustainability and profit can go hand-in-hand

Investing in companies that practice sustainability doesn’t mean settling for weaker returns. In fact, a senior portfolio manager at UBS said companies that employ measures ranging from reducing environmental impacts to improving working conditions tend to deliver better returns in the long run than those that don’t.

San Diego Union Tribune

Nova Scotia fourth globally in tidal power

The National Energy Board of Canada has ranked leaders in tidal energy capacity by country, citing Ocean Energy Systems’ 2015 Annual Report, placing South Korea far in the lead at 511MW, followed by France at 246MW and the U.K. at 139MW.

Cantech Letter

Corporate climate change disclosure inconsistent

Corporate America has a split personality when it comes to climate change. When issuing marketing materials and press releases, U.S. companies frequently warn that rising global temperatures could cost them money. They tout specific green projects, like solar roofs and increased efficiency. But when it comes time to report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the same companies stick to broad terminology and sanded-down statements.

Scientific American

How companies are involving employees in sustainable goals

Unilever—along with other companies such as IBM, Marks & Spencer, and BASF—is integrating sustainability into every employee’s job and turning a sustainable business model into business as usual.

Stanford Social Innovation Review

Sustainability considerations vital for initial public offerings

Going public is often one of the biggest events in a company’s history. It can be the making – or the breaking – of a company’s financial fortunes. It can also catapult a firm into a new era of intense public scrutiny. The process of issuing an initial public offering (IPO) can take years, and in the frantic period leading up to it sustainability considerations are often pushed to the back of a very long queue of priorities.

Business Green

New trends shape retail sustainability

The retail industry has been slow to embrace the environmental, social and financial benefits of sustainable practices, though momentum is building globally and locally. Ahead of a new project by The Fifth Estate to focus on the sustainability of the retail sector, and how it can navigate the future sustainably and profitably, we’ll be sharing some of the major trends in the industry.

Eco-Business

	Canada, U.S. acts to block water diversion
	A group of mayors from Canada and the U.S. is trying to challenge a recent decision allowing an American city to draw water from the Great Lakes. The mayors have asked for a hearing with the eight states knowns as the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Council. CBC News, August 22, 2016

 

B.C. climate plan update short on clean energy initiatives

British Columbia’s recently released climate action plan update implies that the policies that once made this province a climate leader are outdated. There’s no doubt some truth in that, and such language is often a sign that a government is showing that it wants to remain ahead of the curve. But this provincial government’s new plan is partial, hesitant and more heel-dragging than a move forward.

Globe and Mail

Manufacturing critical in developing clean tech

From solar panels a decade ago to energy storage today, the history of clean tech is littered with capital-intensive concepts poised to radically alter the relationship between industrialized society and the environment. But why do these widely heralded breakthroughs always seem to limp along so slowly when it comes to actually hitting the market?

GreenBiz

Mid-tier manufacturers not engaged in sustainable efforts

A recent study by G&A Institute suggests that 81 percent of all S&P 500 companies are publishing sustainability reports. To get to this point has taken roughly 20 years, mostly promoted by the community that evolved around the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), founded in 1997.

GreenBiz

New sustainable purchasing standard on the way

Purchasing represents a significant piece of a company’s budget. In the public sector alone, procurement accounts for around 12 percent of GDP and 29 percent of government expenditure in OECD member countries. So it makes sense that when considering sustainability initiatives, executives should take purchasing decisions into account.

Environmental Leader

Could “wind trees” be the next big source of power?

Picture a steady breeze blowing through the leaves of a tree. Now imagine these leaves could do more than simply churn in the current of air—what if they could capture the wind and transform it into renewable energy?

Quartz

How water markets aid in conservation

Australia is one of the driest inhabited places on Earth. Yet nearly two-thirds of the country’s land area is devoted to agriculture, generating 93 percent of the domestic food supply. The country is only able to sustain this level of food production through irrigation and an active water market—a system in which water-use entitlements can be bought and sold and water can be transferred from one user to another.

National Geographic

Strong water management practices key for businesses

Two key events took place in in Singapore last month. First was the Water Leaders’ Summit within the context of the Singapore International Water Week, and the second was a CNBC discussion on Future of World’s Water: A Business Perspective. Both events explored in depth the role that business can play in managing global water resources. Senior officers from the world’s largest corporations and leading academic figures also discussed interlinkages between business and water.

Eco-Business

Chinese firm leads in waste-to-energy sector

China has a massive garbage problem. Now one former central banker is hoping to find a treasure where others see trash. The world’s second-largest economy currently produces around 250 million tonnes of waste every year. The World Bank projects that this figure will double by 2025 as population surges in metropolitan areas and cities that are disproportionately responsible in generating waste.

CNBC

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Government policy

Do cities offer the only sustainable future?

In spite of their enormous requirements for materials and energy, and their enormous generation of wastes, many see urban living as the sustainable future for most of humankind in the twenty-first century. But there are serious issues for urban areas, especially very large ones in both the developed and developing world, given the interrelated problems of climate change, and energy and resource scarcity, and the importance of natural systems for society.

Scientific American

Brexit leads financial forecaster to cut carbon price

Uncertainty over Britain’s future participation in the European Union carbon market led Bloomberg New Energy Finance to cut its outlook for pollution prices by 14 percent following the decision by U.K. voters to leave the EU.

Bloomberg Markets

Sustainability professionals

Singapore opens sustainability academy

The city-state of Singapore is making a pioneering move towards meeting its climate mitigation goals. A joint effort by City Developments Limited (CDL) and the Sustainable Energy Association of Singapore (SEAS), the Singapore Sustainability Academy (SSA) is described as “the first major People, Public and Private (3P) ground-up initiative” to help the small country meet its goals laid out in the Sustainable Singapore Blueprint and the recently-released Climate Action Plan.

Just Means

Clean technology

U.S. steadily increasing wind power capacity

Wind power is making steady gains in the U.S., according to the annual Wind Technologies Market Report just released by the US Department of Energy and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL).

Vox

Wind turbine collapse investigated

Enercon has launched an investigation into the collapse of a turbine at the 23.3MW Point Tupper wind farm located close to Port Hawkesbury in Nova Scotia, Canada.

Renews

New tech could slash carbon emissions in chemicals

Exxon Mobil and Georgia Tech researchers published findings of a breakthrough in the journal Science on Thursday, saying they had devised a way to slash carbon emissions from chemicals manufacturing by using reverse osmosis instead of heat to separate molecules.

Reuters

Smart thermostat company secures major funding

The clean technology startup that brought WiFi thermostats to life is hoping to reach more homes across North America after securing $35-million in funding led by Toronto’s Thomvest Asset Management Inc., with participation from Amazon’s Alexa Fund and Toronto’s Relay Ventures.

Globe and Mail

Green buildings

Building sustainable design into the architecture

Stick a solar panel on it. Too often that’s the result when Canadian builders strive for “green” buildings: ordinary architecture with some tweaks.

Globe and Mail

Wildlife and business

Yellowstone Park river ban hard on businesses

It may be the height of fishing season in Yellowstone but local businesses are no longer booming. On Friday, local wildlife services closed down several areas along a 183-mile stretch of the Yellowstone River while biologists try to prevent the spread of a parasite believed to have killed tens of thousands of whitefish.

Fox News

Biz Buzz

IHG hotel chain takes going green seriously

One global hotel chain is working hard to ensure that its franchises maintain good environmental practices: the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG),  a global network of more than 5,000 hotels spanning 100 different countries.

TriplePundit

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