But examining the top proposed fixes shows how difficult any transformation would be. Improvements must be substantial, or dramatic increases in the number of cars and in oil sands output will overwhelm any gains in carbon reduction.

Most discussion about greener cars focuses on engine improvements. But advances are happening in other areas. Weight loss through materials such as aluminum and carbon fibre; aerodynamic designs; accessories powered by electronics instead of belts and pulleys; and continuously variable transmissions are available now and are relatively inexpensive.

These developments and modifications to conventional engines—such as direct injection and variable valve timing—each produce small fuel-economy gains that add up and are the main route for carmakers to reach the tougher emission standards taking effect in 2016.

A new technology may be a bigger leap. Homogeneous charge compression ignition, or hcci, might come through with up to 15 per cent less fuel consumption. It’s a cleaner, more complete burn that doesn’t use spark plugs. As with conventional engines, hcci mixes gasoline and air before injecting the mixture into the combustion chamber. The difference with hcci is that that the piston compresses the fuel as it rises up the cylinder, raising the fuel’s temperature until it’s hot enough to ignite.

As a result, hcci is much harder to control than spark ignition, and requires extremely precise valve timing and control of the air/gasoline mix and its temperature— not yet accomplished.

It also functions poorly at low speeds and under heavy load. Some suggest a dual system, with spark ignition part of the time, but that would add complexity and cost.

With the number of cars soaring worldwide, these changes, or even widespread adoption of conventional hybrids, won’t solve the greenhouse gas problem.

Plug-in hybrids could be better. Various manufacturers are unveiling models said to go 15 to 60 kilometres after an overnight recharge—enough mileage for most routine driving on battery power alone. Actual fuel consumption and emissions, though, will depend on how many trips stay within that range.

All-electric cars could be game-changers. Cost is a major impediment, as are current lithium ion batteries, since most are limited to less than 200 kilometres between charges.

Researchers are exploring lithium air, which employs air instead of a heavy metal to create the reaction that generates electricity. Theoretically, the result is a much lighter, more efficient battery with a range of up to 800 kilometres. Again, cost and degree of technical difficulty remain high— particularly since lithium can explode when exposed to air—and it’s at least a decade or two from commercial use.

Battery-powered cars will only reduce climate change if their electricity comes from renewable sources. On the other hand, computer-controlled systems are being devised to let utilities use plugged-in cars as electricity storage facilities, drawing power from them at times of peak demand. However, that process is slow and shortens battery life, so it’s likely “to be the exception rather than the rule,” says Dan Guatto of Burlington Hydro, which is testing a battery-powered Ford Escape converted by Vancouver-based Rapid Electric Vehicles.

Although the oil sands projects have environmental impacts beyond greenhouse gas emissions, shrinking their carbon footprint is crucial.

Most of tar sands’ heavy primary oil, or bitumen, now originates in open-pit mines, but an increasing proportion is extracted in situ—forced up through wells from underground. A report from the Calgarybased Canadian Energy Research Institute (ceri), to be published this fall, concludes each mining process requires a different solution.

Per barrel of oil recovered, mining emits much less greenhouse gas than in situ, but its vast scale makes the total amount huge. As with cars, a series of small improvements has reduced its impact, but major change is required.

That change, says the ceri report Green Bitumen 2010 to 2060, is carbon capture and storage (CCS), which is receiving billions of dollars from the federal and Alberta governments. CCS would grab carbon emissions from smokestacks and pipe them to underground sites where, in theory, they’d be locked away forever.

While it’s still at the experimental stage, with only a couple of pilot projects based at coal-fired power plants elsewhere in North America, “the technology is there,” says ceri’s research director, David McColl. The main trick is convincing all the oil sands miners to contribute to a pipeline to northwestern Alberta, where there’s plenty of storage capacity.

The estimated cost of ccs is $70 to $120 per tonne, and there’s no return on investment for the companies involved. ceri says the Alberta government would have to cover some of the cost, but by doing so might kick-start a valuable export business in technology and know-how.

The in situ process requires that the oil be loosened from the sand and made less viscous before it’s brought to the surface. Currently it’s heated with steam, produced by burning natural gas to boil water.

Some advocate shifting the heat source to nuclear power. But putting aside environment and health concerns, the ceri report says that while it may be technically feasible, it’s too costly, especially when alternatives are available.

Most promising, the report concludes, is injecting solvents into the sand to loosen the oil. Every major company with an in situ project is experimenting with the technique, says McColl, each with its own chemicals and capacity to replace natural gas. Cenovus, a spin-off of Calgary’s Encana Corp., is farthest ahead, with a technique that would cut greenhouse emissions in half. At that rate, he says, it would have a smaller carbon footprint than conventional oil.

It’s not guaranteed to work, says McColl. “No one has done a large-scale process,” but solvents have the best chance of being an environmental game-changer for in situ production.

Others suggest moving to geothermal energy, which involves tapping into the natural heat several kilometres deep under Earth’s surface. Water would be pumped down into the hot rocks through one well and, after warming, would be brought up through another. But that idea is in its infancy and faces difficult technical impediments. Some industry people doubt it can produce sufficient energy.

Suncor was leading the way on this technology, but a spokesperson from the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association says interest among oil sands companies has diminished.

Calgary’s ATCO Ltd. is investigating using microwaves to heat the sands. But this is decades away, and only likely if hydroelectric generation is installed on the Slave River and other Northern Alberta waterways.

As with cars, the only sure thing we know about reducing carbon in the tar sands is that the solutions will be complex and very expensive.

Cost shouldn’t be an issue. Whatever it takes to protect the environment should be included in oil sands’ prices, says Simon Dyer, with the Calgary-based Pembina Institute.

The bottom line, though, is that it’s too soon to count anything. We’re still a long way from understanding how green either industry can become.

The post The science of carbon busting appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Otherwise known as waste from electrical and electronic equipment, e-waste contains hazardous materials and heavy metals such as fire retardants, polychlorinated biphenyl, lead, mercury, cadmium, and the list goes on. Often the waste is shipped overseas to undeveloped countries where the toxins inside pollute the people, and the environment.

BAN first brought e-waste to the world’s attention in a 2002 report titled Exporting Harm: The High-tech Trashing of Asia, where it asserted an estimated 80 per cent of all e-waste collected in North America for recycling is shipped offshore and 90 per cent of that goes to China.

China is not alone. Ghana and Nigeria have become e-waste dumpsites as well.

Despite the establishment of e-waste recycling programs and landfill bans across North America, the amount of e-waste shipped overseas remains “about the same,” says Jim Puckett, founder of BAN and a toxics policy advocate.

The Environment Protection Agency estimates the U.S. generated over 3 million tones of e-waste in 2007, but only 13.6 per cent of that was collected for recycling.

The lack of harmonized legislation has allowed many unregulated or “grey” recyclers to profit from this relatively new industry and Canada is not exempt.

“If you asked Environment Canada how much is going out through the ports illegally in containers they don’t know,” says Frances Edmonds, Director of Environmental Programs for Hewlett-Packard Canada.

Environment Minister Jim Prentice made no comment in reply.

Global Electric Electronic Processing (GEEP) is one of Canada’s largest e-waste processors and with facilities in Europe and the U.S., GEEP Vice President Wallace MacKay notes they are constantly being audited. “You have to prove that you’re doing it the right way or you’re going to get all kinds of charlatans out there shoveling this stuff into a sea container and shipping it off to China. And believe me it’s happening,” says MacKay.

Despite tighter Canadian regulations, there are a number of grey recyclers that continue to ship to developing countries.

Companies like GEEP and Sims Recycling Solutions Canada pride themselves on how responsibly they recycle and reclaim the commodity materials contained in e-waste. “We follow [everything] to its final resting place where it’s re-consumed into a new product,” explains Cindy Coutts, President of Sims.

While some processors go the extra mile to further separate the mixed plastics contained in a lot of e-waste, many companies simply send mixed plastics to a smelter, where the plastic is burned off creating dioxins that pollute the air.

“Plastic is the holy grail of recycling because it’s mixed and very expensive to separate,” says Edmonds.

This is one thing all e-waste recyclers and processors agree on.

And, because some companies are researching and developing new ways to deal with mixed plastics in e-waste, when contracts are awarded to processors based on their plant’s proximity to the collection site rather than on the merits of its practices, it’s a frustrating challenge.

It’s the lack of commitment to these details by some companies approved by various provincial programs that makes it difficult for enterprising companies to compete.

This is just one of many issues that has sparked controversy in Ontario over the poor performance of the Ontario Electronics Stewardship (OES) program— an industry-funded program created to implement the government’s diversion plans. OES promised to divert 45,000 tonnes of e-waste in its first year and was only able to divert 17,000 tonnes—just 1.3 kilograms per capita.

While Ontario is the only province that set a target and collected the most tonnes in its first year, at least one province is exceeding the European Union’s benchmark of 4 kilograms per capita for e-waste collected and recycled. As of 2009, Alberta’s e-waste recycling plan reported recycling 4.74 kg/capita. Ontario’s rate is second last amongst the seven provinces operating an e-waste recycling program.

Waste Diversion Ontario would not confirm the final numbers and Ontario’s Minister of the Environment John Gerretsen could not be reached.

“You have to take these numbers with a large grain of salt,” states Mario D’Alfonso, owner of ADL Process Inc., an e-waste recycler in Toronto.

At ADL, their corporate contracts bring in 60 tonnes of e-waste and between 160-180 tonnes from the provincial program.

Many e-waste processors have private contracts and collections and the tonnage from these contracts is not taken into account by provincial programs.

For example, GEEP recycles 25,000 tonnes a year at its Barrie facility alone and Sims processes 36,000 tonnes a year at its Brampton site. Their numbers add up to 16,000 tonnes more than OES hoped to collect. And these are just two of eight recyclers listed on the OES website.

Each provincial program had difficulties in their first year.

No provincial program collected more than 17,000 in the last year, much less its first year. Likewise, Quebec, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut are all without e-waste recycling programs.

In the U.S., 17 states do not have e-waste programs and because shipping e-waste overseas is unregulated and highly profitable many U.S. recyclers are grey and therefore ship the waste to places like China. “That’s our biggest problem in the U.S.,” comments Dr. Greg McWatt of GEEP.

By comparison, Canada’s legislation has been tougher and our programs more inclusive in terms of the various types of e-waste collected. Alberta was the first e-waste recycling program to accept printers—even ahead of California.

While Canada is lagging behind the European Union, “Canada’s way ahead of the U.S. in terms of legislation,” says MacKay. “We should be proud of that.”

For more information go to dowhatyoucan.ca, epsc.ca and ban.org. You can find a list of companies ranked according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change here.

The post Waste not, want not appeared first on Corporate Knights.

This amusing yet sobering socialist protest mantra illustrates the misguided view our markets take of the invisible economy—the environmental goods and services like clean air and water that quietly sustain us every day, for “free.”

Slowly, the world is starting to wake up to the reality that if we don’t protect our ecosystem services, we’ll lose them forever and have a huge bill on our hands. As a result, companies are starting to take environmental and social information into account, linking their executive pay to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. Global financial news powerhouse Thomson Reuters has acquired ESG information provider ASSET4—who provided data for this ranking—to integrate its data into mainstream financial analysis. Similarly, Bloomberg’s 250,000-plus data terminals provide access to all the publicly available ESG data of over 3,000 companies, including Carbon Disclosure Project data and renewable energy use.

Retail behemoth Wal-Mart, despite—or perhaps because of—its less-than-stellar labour relations and reputation for “big-boxifying” small communities, is constantly surprising environmentalists with its green announcements, such as its move into organic and local produce, and its purchases of renewable energy. It’s currently working to develop a sustainability index for its products that will include life-cycle analysis.

And, SC Johnson, maker of eponymous products like Saran Wrap and Windex, launched its “What’s Inside” website in March 2009, which has a comprehensive ingredient list. By January 2012, it will list all ingredients on product labels and will reveal fragrance and preservative ingredient information. This required the company to demand comprehensive ingredient lists from its suppliers.

What do these things have to do with the death of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility (CSR)? Everything.

“I define CSR as the discretionary things that companies do to try to engage their communities. Philanthropy, volunteering, falls under CSR—what we used to call t-shirts and balloons,” says Sandra Waddock, the Galligan Chair of Strategy at Boston College and author of Total Responsibility Management. “But corporate responsibility or corporate citizenship is much more about the business model. If a company is just looking at CSR then it’s a second-stage company, and that’s simply not going to be enough in the future.”

CSR is built merely on appeasing various aspects of the “real” economy—reputation improvement, better public relations, tax rebates for charitable donations. But the invisible economy guides decisions around true corporate citizenship, and as we’ve seen, the two economies are beginning to merge thanks to the age of information. So building a CSR veneer isn’t going to last.

“If you’ve got a fundamental problem with your business model, in today’s world, someone’s going to find out,” says Waddock. “Very little that companies do is invisible anymore.”

That fact is especially due to the digital age. For example, the environmental, health, and social information of over 70,000 everyday retail products is available at the touch of an iPhone via GoodGuide.com’s product rating app, which includes everything from product safety to human rights controversies to carbon footprint information. ESG data provider KLD Research, owned by Risk- Metrics Group, powers its rating system.

The Internet’s breadth and depth means that consumers can register their reactions to injustices almost immediately. H&M and Wal-Mart felt the wrath of the Twitterverse in January 2010 when a New York Times article revealed that the retailers had been destroying non-saleable clothing that could have been donated during a particularly cold winter. Twitter users voiced their outrage in droves—it was the second-most popular trending topic the day after the article’s release. That day, H&M released a statement denouncing the practice and promising to investigate.

Awareness and outrage over the BP Deep Horizon spill has been largely aided by social networking. @BPGlobalPR, a satirical Twitter account mocking BP’s attempts to mollify the public, has over 121,000 followers. The oil spill and BP have been trending topics ever since the disaster began.

With issues of this magnitude coming to light, simply throwing money at various charities or serving cake at a “community appreciation day” isn’t going to satisfy the increasingly savvy consumer or investor.

Bob Willard, an expert on corporate sustainability strategies, says it would be a “disaster” for companies to simply engage in a cheque-writing exercise to fulfill its societal duties. Chris Jarvis, co-founder and senior consultant of Realized Worth, a company specializing in corporate volunteering, also puts it bluntly.

“Once a company leaves the third stage of corporate citizenship [moving from being innovative to integrative], they no longer do philanthropy. They shouldn’t—it’s regressive,” he says. “It would be like leaving college and using kindergarten tools. Companies leaving stage three don’t use the word philanthropy. They talk about strategic partnerships.”

The charities that vice-president Dr. Cathy Barr deals with at Imagine Canada, a national program focused on promoting public and corporate giving, want to engage with companies on multiple levels so that they can find mutually beneficial goals.

And that way, companies have some skin in the game, according to Jarvis.

“The more self-interested a volunteer or a company is, the more reliable they are, because they’ve tied their well-being to [that of the charity],” he says. “No one wants to be a project. And too often, volunteering and philanthropy objectify the very people we’re trying to help because they become objects to fix or make better. [Instead] we should create some free space so they can understand that they have incredible value.

Jarvis gives the example of IBM, where Willard spent 34 years.

“IBM has forgone all fiscal giving in order to put their talent, networks, and skills at play,” he points out. “They’ve moved past giving computers [with strings attached] to giving computers [without strings] that can be used for making your community better.”

Making things better has become the core mantra of many companies that have come of age in the last decade—partly because of the merging of the invisible and real economies.

“Companies like Google have grown up in this new, highly connected technology era. And they have a new set of values,” points out Waddock. “Google’s [unofficial slogan] is ‘don’t be evil.’ It made the tough decision to pull out of China. It’s created a public good with access to information. You’re going to see many more of these companies that are born with these sets of values in them.”

As a result, CSR as executed by a separate department or committee is no longer relevant for these types of companies. In fact, the term CSR shouldn’t exist at all since it identifies a separate initiative for a business instead of being part of a natural, integrated decision-making process, says Peggie Pelosi, author of Corporate Karma.

Is this just semantics? While there’s nothing wrong with the activities that happen under a CSR mandate, fifth-stage, transformative companies like Seventh Generation and Patagonia—and arguably our top corporate citizen, Mountain Equipment Co-op—won’t do business if they can’t do it right, says Jarvis.

“The expectations of companies being more proactive, not only not doing any harm but actually doing good, have become really hard for companies to duck,” says Willard. “Governments and consumers have started to say that companies’ responsibility is to all stakeholders as opposed to shareholders.”

But how does a company reverse-engineer this stakeholder-oriented, integrated mindset? It’s difficult, since companies are limited by the current economic system— the one that still doesn’t fully take into account the invisible economy.

“BP really tried to transform itself to Beyond Petroleum [and failed]. Changing a huge organization is like trying to turn a tanker,” says Waddock. “Even if companies want to make responsible long-term decisions, they’re still under the quarterly microscope. The problem is more than any given company can deal with. It’s a problem of short-termism and the dominance of finance over productive capital.”

If these tankers can’t be turned, they’ll sink. Hope for the future lies in competition- forced transformation.

“The Googles and eBays are creatively destroying [the old paradigms]. Can regular companies keep up? I think you’ll see some social enterprises will succeed and grow bigger and begin to displace the big guys as consumers, investors, and employees turn to them,” says Waddock. “In a sense, it’s a free market process that’s constrained by values that say we want to make the world better, not worse.”

The post Philanthropy is dead? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The sun has gone to a lot of trouble to send us its energy, so appreciate it! The heat and light on your face was on the surface of the sun eight minutes and nineteen seconds ago. So at a minimum, use it to dry your clothes. The average electric dryer is a massive energy hog, accounting for two per cent of total energy consumption in the United States. Although new energy consumption guidelines have been introduced in Canada  and the United States, drying your clothes in the sun is still the most energy efficient method. Since the sun is a giant nuclear reactor, you can brag to your friends that you have a nuclear-powered clothes dryer.

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2. To grow your food

Take away the sun, and what can you grow? With just soil and sunlight you can grow tomatoes, peppers, apples, raspberries, salad greens, and more. Building a solar greenhouse allows you to extend your growing season into the winter while protecting your crops in the summer and increasing your crop yields by protecting your plants from soil and water borne disease. The many different types of greenhouses mean that they’re useable in almost any climate, from locations with minimal sunlight like the Yukon to places with hot climates like India.

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3. To heat your water

Over 90 per cent of Israeli households have installed solar water heaters, and more than 600,000 m2 of solar water collectors have been installed in Canada. You can use evacuated tubes  or a flat plate to gather the sun’s heat. For an investment under $10,000, these mechanisms can provide 80 to 50 per cent of your hot water needs. There are grants available to help in many provinces.

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4. To treat your water

If you live in a country where your local water supply is unsafe, you can use the sun to disinfect water by filtering muddy water, filling plastic pop bottles and leaving them out in the sun for at least six hours. The sun’s ultraviolet rays will kill any bacteria or organisms, and can reduce diarrheal diseases from taking hold. If you live by the sea, solar PV can be used to power a desalination plant.

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5. To generate your electricity

It won’t be long before most roofs are covered with solar panels. Thirty years ago, solar photovoltaics (PV) cost $100 a watt; today the average cost of an installed PV system is $3.48 a watt. A five-kilowatt system, generating 5,500 kwh a year, will cost $40,000 across Canada, except in Ontario, where the Green Energy Act provides generous incentives. When the per-watt cost falls to $1, we’ll see solar PV everywhere.

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6. To power your car

Imagine driving, powered only by the sun. Driving the new Nissan Leaf EV 16,000 kilometres a year, for instance, will use 2,000 kWh of electricity. A two-kilowatt PV system on your roof will generate 2,200 kWh a year, and cost you $16,000. On a 20-year mortgage, that’s $25 a week, or $3.50 a day—and once you’ve paid for the solar panel, the energy is free.

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7. To design your home

When an architect designs a passive solar home, they make the most of the sun’s light and heat by using south facing windows, maximizing insulation on the north, and creating a thermal mass to store solar heat. These steps can reduce heating needs by 50 per cent. The architect also works to maximize the sun’s natural light, reducing the need for artificial lighting. And if building your own house isn’t an option, it is possible to retrofit your house to use the sun’s energy more efficiently. This can involve installing more energy efficient windows and shading any south facing windows.

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8. To heat your home

Solar thermal energy heats 52 homes in the Drake Landing Solar Community in Okotoks, Alberta, even in the dark and cold of winter. Eight hundred solar hot water panels gather sunlight on garage roofs and store the excess energy underground. In winter, it is pumped back, meeting over 90 per cent of the community’s heating needs. In Europe, the solar thermal industry aims to heat 50 per cent of all buildings using a similar approach by 2030.

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9. To cook your food

There are various kinds of solar cookers: some use a reflective solar box, others a parabolic disc. In developing nations, solar cooking lifts the burden of walking miles to strip trees for firewood, reduces the amount of work for women and decreases respiratory diseases caused by cooking inside. Solar cookers work in Canada (link) too, even in the winter, as long as the sun is shining. You can also make your own solar dryer to preserve the fruit and veg in your garden.

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10. To power the world

Every day, the sun radiates a thousand times more heat onto the world’s deserts than we use. Solar technology can convert that energy into steam, and then electricity. We could meet the entire world’s energy needs by using just one per cent of total landmass for solar energy.

The post Ten ways to use the sun’s energy appeared first on Corporate Knights.