Big business taking climate change more seriously

This post is brought to you by ? Curt Rosengren ~ Passion Catalyst TM ? ? “Love your work. Change your world.” A recent report shows that the largest companies are paying increasingly more attention to their energy use and carbon emissions. The world’s biggest companies are making climate change a higher priority, in part through more widespread disclosure of carbon emissions, according to an annual report released Monday by a nonprofit group. The report from Carbon Disclosure Project tracked how companies plan to deal with the risks and opportunities associated with greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. “The big thing this year is the huge increase in the level of seriousness with which climate change is being incorporated into the corporate strategy of companies,” said Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Chief Executive Paul Dickinson. Not so surprisingly, the more they’re addressing the issue, the more they seem to be willing to talk about it… Among the 500 companies ranked by the Financial Times newspaper as the world’s largest by market capitalization, 75 percent responded to this year’s survey, up from 47 percent when the survey started four years ago. The response rate by companies in North America rose in all industry sectors, and nine of 10 sectors had a response rate of more than 50 percent. The increased willingness by companies to disclose their carbon emissions and find ways to reduce them reflects the changing political and regulatory landscape over energy efficiency. Of the companies that responded, 76 percent implemented programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, compared with 48 percent last year. —

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Big business taking climate change more seriously

VC investors clean up with clean energy

This post is brought to you by ? Curt Rosengren ~ Passion Catalyst TM ? ? “Love your work. Change your world.” Here’s a good sign that we’ll be seeing continued interest in the clean energy industry from the VC community… Venture backers of European clean energy startups reaped a 55 percent annualized return on their investments from 1998 to 2007, the London-based research group New Energy Finance said Tuesday. The analysis, which was commissioned by the European Energy Venture Fair to take place this weekend in Zurich, looked at returns earned by 37 venture capital and private equity investors in 129 early stage companies dealing in low-carbon technologies such as renewable energy, fuel cells, power storage since 1998. —

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VC investors clean up with clean energy

Bill aims to swap out old light bulbs with energy efficient bulbs

This post is brought to you by ? Curt Rosengren ~ Passion Catalyst TM ? ? “Love your work. Change your world.” There’s a bill in the US Senate right now aimed at aiming out old-style incandescent light bulb and replacing them with energy efficient bulbs. It looks like it has a good chance of passing. If the bill passes and Americans gradually switch out bulbs over the next seven years, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee estimated annual energy savings would reach $6 billion. Energy-efficient bulbs could save more than 65 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a year, said Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., a House of Representatives co-sponsor of the bill. That’s the equivalent of 80 coal-fired power plants, Upton said. “This is more than just one light bulb at a time,” he said at a Senate energy committee hearing Wednesday. The legislation requires that light bulbs be 300 percent more efficient by 2020, said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., another House sponsor of the legislation. The bill’s sponsors also would like light-bulb manufacturers to find a way to keep mercury from being released in the manufacture and disposal of the new energy-efficient bulbs. They’re also working on encouraging manufacturers to make the newer bulbs in the United States, Harman said, and would like to see the federal government, the world’s biggest buyer of light bulbs, switch to more efficient lighting. The legislation would require that 40-, 60-, 75- and 100-watt incandescent light bulbs be phased out by 2014. They would be replaced with the “curlicue” compact fluorescent light bulbs and other, more energy-efficient forms of lighting being developed. If it does pass, it will have a significant impact on the sum total of energy consumed by light bulbs worldwide. The article say that the US is the single-largest market for incandescent bulbs and accounts for nearly a third of the global market. —

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Bill aims to swap out old light bulbs with energy efficient bulbs