Top Stories
New Report: Largest Companies Fall Short in
Managing, Disclosing Water Scarcity Risks.—reliability high.
A benchmarking study of 100 companies by the Ceres investor coalition,
UBS and Bloomberg finds the vast majority of leading companies in
water-intensive industries have weak management and disclosure of
water-related risks and opportunities. "Using a scoring scale of 0 to
100, the three highest scoring companies were UK beverage company
Diageo, Swiss mining company Xstrata and U.S. electric power company
Pinnacle West . . . ." Among the lowest scorers were Dr. Pepper
Snapple, Florida Power & Light, Peabody Energy and Archer Daniels
Midland & Bunge. From
Ceres site. PDF of report here. [Some of these
companies have been clients or targets in our Competitive
Assessments, so we have seen how their actions and aspirations
compare with the perceptions held by others.]
Cisco's Big Bet on New Songdo: Creating
Cities From Scratch.—reliability high.
Feature about Cisco's participation in new-city projects, especially
Songdo in Korea. "'Everything can be connected and everything can be
green,' promises Elfrink, who calculates that in addition to creating
millions of jobs, smartening up cities could reduce emissions worldwide
by 15% over the next decade, saving a ton of CO2 per person and nearly
a trillion dollars. The smart-grid market alone 'may be bigger than the
whole Internet,' Chambers has said." "the overriding agenda is
sustainability". From
Fast Company. [We
are going to need thousands of new cities. Cities are more energy
efficient than rural or suburban living. Smart communications/grids
will make them even more energy efficient. You can see why Lord Stern
says cleantech industries could "be at least as big as the railways,
electricity, the motor car and ['traditional'] information technology."
The auto gave us the suburbs and grew a great economic engine over the
past century; smart grids will give us new cities and maybe a new
economic engine.]
Companies,
Industries, Markets and Supply Chains
M&S: Plan A is 'profit positive'.—reliability
high.
Marks and Spencer’s CEO Sir Stuart Rose "said that over the past two
years he had seen a massive change in how investors view the company’s
Plan A green initiative and said it was 'profit positive' for the
business as a whole. . . . Sir Stuart Rose admitted that the financial
community was sceptical when Plan A was first launched back in 2007,
'but now they can see what value it has built into the [M&S]
brand,' he said. 'A massive change in attitude has occurred over the
last few years [on sustainability]. Retailers and brands now realise
they need to make these changes. For example Wal-Mart was also
sceptical 5 years ago, but it is now making great strides with its
sustainability index. It realises that this [sustainability] is the way
to go.'" From
EcoTextile News. [One would assume
"profit positive" means "we are more profitable with it than we would
have been without it". The EIU survey mentioned in Wednesday's
Brief found that few non-cleantech companies are claiming this yet.]
Chicago 2010: Bridgestone's new tires can
improve fuel economy by four percent.—reliability high.
"At the Chicago Auto Show this week, Bridgestone unveiled two new
tires - called the Ecopia EP422 and the Dueler H/L 422 Ecopia - that
bring the company's fuel efficient tires to a new class of vehicles." From
Autoblog Green. [These new tires
are for SUVs, which need all the green they can get. Maybe buying such
tires assuages guilt, like buying offsets for air travel. What is the
guilt market? Or is it about saving gas/money?]
Duke University Extends Global Learning With
Cisco TelePresence Lecture Hall.—reliability high.
"Duke University and Cisco today unveiled a first-of-its-kind virtual
lecture hall for students enrolled in Duke’s Fuqua School of Business
in Durham, N.C. Custom-built using Cisco TelePresence™ technology, the
new lecture facility provides business school students with access to
professors, business leaders and guest lecturers located around the
globe, extending the in-person classroom environment across campuses
and into the business world." In
Nearshore Journal from Marketwire.
HaraBara
Comment.—reliability (modesty prevents us . . .)
[One hears a lot
of argument about whether global warming is real, and if so what if
anything governments should do about it. (We are amused at how
shocked, Shocked! some people profess to be at the nerdy, and
ultimately insignificant, emails of a few scientists--what do they
think the private discussions of legislators would look like by
comparison?) But the stories above, and hundreds of others cataloged in
HaraBara GreenBase™, amply illustrate that businesses are putting
a lot of money into responding to sustainability concerns.
Sustainability is a competitive weapon whatever happens to the planet.]
[Crossposted from HaraBara.com courtesy of HaraBara, Inc. Copyright © 2010 HaraBara, Inc.]
