For as long as companies have manufactured goods, they have looked for ways to reduce costs. Corporations are beginning to realize that developments in technology are making it easier for green choices to lead to increased profits.
Paul Nastu is publisher and managing editor of Environmental Leader, an online publication that describes itself as the “executive’s daily green briefing.”
Energy efficiency was about increasing profits before it was about saving the planet. Today, it takes less than half the energy to produce a dollar of economic output as it did in 1970, according to recent research from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. Over the past 20 years, steel manufacturing has seen an energy-efficiency improvement of 167 percent. The energy efficiency of computer systems has improved an incredible 2.8 million percent.
In other words, for as long as companies have manufactured goods, they have looked for ways to lower costs.
Of course, times have changed. There is new impetus for U.S. companies to make energy-efficient, or green, choices. The global scientific community has declared that global warming is very likely man-made and that the Earth’s climate and ecosystems are already being affected by greenhouse gases.
What’s more, public opinion seems to have turned, and people are calling for corporations to make changes. Some consumers have stated that they’re even willing to pay more for corporations to produce greener products. According to Forrester Research, 12 percent of U.S. adults — some 25 million Americans — are willing to pay extra for consumer electronics that use less energy or come from a company that is environmentally friendly.
Green Building
Companies are taking green building — and the subsequent savings in energy, natural resources, and money — seriously. New technologies and the increasing importance of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification program, as well as new efficiency codes, are helping to drive corporate adoption.
The savings to companies can be large. Financial conglomerate Citigroup, with a real estate portfolio equaling 8.5 million square meters worldwide, has adopted such power-saving measures as turning off escalators in the lobbies of buildings and redesigning bank branches to include more natural lighting and recycled materials. The company says it can save as much as $1 per 0.09 square meter a year, or nearly $100 million annually, by making its offices use less energy.
That kind of potential savings is driving retailers such as Wal-Mart, Target, Starbucks, Best Buy, Lowe’s, and REI to build prototype green-building stores. Best Buy claims that in the future, it will build only eco-friendly stores, certified by the USGBC through LEED.
Office equipment retailer Office Depot says that it has reached a 10 percent absolute reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from natural gas and electricity consumed in its North American retail stores, warehouses, and offices by installing more energy-efficient technology.
Green Energy
Technology advances are also leading U.S. corporations to increase the amount of alternative energy they use. And government incentives are making alternative energy, such as solar and wind power, economically feasible.
Google expects to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable energy projects. The goal of the Internet search giant’s RE
Companies are also finding less expensive ways to incorporate green energy. Potato chip and snack-food maker Kettle Foods has installed 18 wind turbines on the roof of its new Beloit, Wisconsin, manufacturing facility. The turbines are projected to generate approximately 28,000 kilowatt-hours of power each year — enough to produce 56,000 bags of potato chips.
The nano-manufacturing technology firm Applied Materials is installing more than 1.9 megawatts of solar power generation capability on the open roof space and parking areas of its research campus in Sunnyvale, California. Once completed in 2008, Applied Materials’ system will generate more than 2,330 megawatt-hours annually — enough to power 1,400 homes.
West Virginia Alloys, the largest silicon producer in the United States, has contracted with Recycled Energy Development to build an electricity-generation system that captures hot gases coming from silicon furnaces to make steam and run generators.
And at its plant in Casa Grande, Arizona, snack-food producer Frito-Lay will use methane gas to run the plant’s boiler. In addition, the company will build at least 20 hectares of solar concentrators and a biomass generator.
Green Operations
To understand just how serious businesses are about reducing the amount of energy they use to run their operations, you need look no further than General Electric Company. GE has pledged to invest $1.5 billion annually on ecomagination research and development by 2010. One of four GE ecomagination commitments originally made in 2005, R&D investment has reached more than $2.5 billion since the program’s inception. In May 2007, GE announced that it had doubled sales from environmentally friendly products to $12 billion over the previous two years.
Wal-Mart is measuring the amount of energy used to create products throughout its supply chain, including the procurement, manufacturing, and distribution process. The retailer is initiating a pilot with a group of suppliers to look for new ways to make its entire supply chain more energy efficient.
SC Johnson, a leading cleaning products manufacturer, recently completed a transportation-logistics project that eliminated 1,882 tons of greenhouse gases over a 12-month period, used 2,098 fewer trucks, reduced fuel usage by 168,000 gallons, and saved approximately $1.6 million.
What’s Ahead
Corporations are beginning to realize that green choices can mean increased profits. Some industry insiders believe that a sudden decrease in energy costs will not necessarily mean the end of the adoption of green technology, as was the case in the 1970s when U.S. companies dabbled in green. What’s more, as the United States moves closer to some form of cap and trade (a system that provides economic incentives for pollution reduction), the adoption of green technologies by corporations is bound to increase.
No comments:
Post a Comment