“Human beings don’t have a pollution problem, they have a design problem. If humans were to devise products, tools, furniture, homes, factories, and cities more intelligently from the start, they wouldn’t even need to think in terms of waste, or contamination, or scarcity. Good design would allow for abundance, endless reuse and pleasure.”

Now, with their new work The Upcycle, McDonough and Braungart attempt to apply cradle-to-cradle principles to larger societal issues. “The goal of the upcycle is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world with clean air, water, soil and power – economically, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed,” they write.

There is a lot to digest in this book. You can do it literally; it’s all carefully printed on non-toxic paper with vegetable inks. Technically, one could shred it, add milk and eat it for breakfast as a source of dietary fibre. That is a point of cradle-to-cradle design – everything is a nutrient, either biological or technically, either compostable or reusable.

It’s an approach that isn’t just good for the planet; it’s also good for business. Furniture manufacturer Herman Miller found that when it designed its Aeron chair according to such principles, the chair not only could be taken apart more easily at the end of its life, but it went together more quickly when it was made in the first place. When toxic chemicals were removed from the production processes, the need for safety measures and ventilation decreased, reducing costs. It’s an approach that makes money for Herman Miller, and that’s the point.

As the authors write, “The most effective transformational foundation of Cradle to Cradle is, to the surprise of some, not environmental. Nor is it ethical. If Cradle to Cradle fails as a business concept and innovation engine, then it fails, period. It succeeds when it celebrates economic growth, which in turn grows ecological and social revenue.”

Perhaps the most important business concept in The Upcycle is that waste is a wasted opportunity. It is what McDonough calls a “materials-in-the-wrong-place problem.” A simple example is human waste: with conventional technology, it is a huge cost and liability, a waste of money as well as materials. Yet if it was treated as a nutrient management system, valuable phosphorus could be recovered. Solids could be turned into compost or biogas. It becomes an asset providing income. And there are some innovative cleantech companies out there doing just that.

In an upcycle world, there is no such thing as garbage. Your waste bin is a nutrient rest stop. However, for these nutrients to be useful and economically viable, they need to be designed with disassembly in mind. Instead, many products are what McDonough calls “monstrous hybrids,” designed almost as if to make life purposefully difficult.

A good example is the plastic spout on the top of a cardboard milk or juice container. We used to know how to open and close a carton of milk simply by unfolding the flaps. Adding the plastic spout is an inconsequential convenience, but it turns it into a monstrous hybrid. Removing the plastic from the cardboard requires extra effort – that is, more energy.

Not to say the cradle-to-cradle philosophy is not without controversy. The certification system has been called opaque and proprietary. It rejects most of what is called recycling as “downcycling,” meaning a material is turned into a lower grade material and loses value each step of the way.

The Upcycle book sometimes seems like Bill McDonough himself: occasionally repetitive and self-absorbed, sometimes treating other people’s ideas as his own, but in an overly simplistic way. The authors often sound more like a Tony Robbins-style motivational speaker than an architect and a chemist.

However, sometimes we all need a little religion. McDonough and Braungart see sustainability as a design problem, something that can be solved. It is a positive and uplifting view of a cleaner and healthier world without waste, made of renewable materials, powered by clean energy, based on plausible economics.

That’s a motivating thought. And if you don’t like the book, you can always eat it.

The post A world without waste appeared first on Corporate Knights.

World-famous for pioneering these systems in the 1970s, the company Netafim recently won the prestigious 2013 Stockholm Industry Water Award, proving that where need is great, entrepreneurs flourish.

Inspired by the global success of homegrown technology – Netafim began in a humble kibbutz – and the Start-up Nation culture, Israel’s entrepreneurs continue to make waves in the international water scene. As part of the lead-up to WATEC Israel 2013 in October, the country’s biannual water technology conference, the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute invited a group of journalists to meet some of these budding businesses.

One up-and-comer is SmarTap, founded five years ago by its young chief executive, Asaf Shaltiel, with the mission of creating the next generation of electronic faucets. The company’s e-cartridge technology allows building and home owners to program flow rate and temperature for shower taps and sink faucets, saving both water and energy. “You can set a profile to save money,” says Shaltiel, who adds that large multi-unit buildings such as hotels can see a one- to three-year return on investment. He has high hopes for the technology, setting his sights on entry into European, Asian and North American markets.

Water-Gen’s CEO, Arye Kohavi, has similar goals. During his days as a commander in Israel’s Special Forces, he saw that transporting heavy truckloads of water over long distances to thirsty troops was inefficient, costly and conspicuous. Not only was a better solution necessary, it was a matter of security.

You can think of Water-Gen’s solution as a high-performance dehumidifier. With a power source, these units can convert moisture from plain air into as much as 365 litres of potable water per day. They require few consumables (a replacement filter here and there) and have a minimal footprint. Most importantly, they’re difficult to sabotage – the fear of drinking poisoned water is not uncommon – because they produce water at the point of use.

Kohavi sees the potential for civilian applications, too, especially in dry and developing countries. He lists a number of current customers – Mexico, India, the U.S. Department of Defense – but adds a caveat: Water-Gen’s Arab customers won’t allow him to include their names in that list.

Israel and its neighbours might experience political and religious tension, but that doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes work together. To ease some of the strain of drought conditions, for instance, water-scarce Israel exports somewhere close to 150 million and 100 million cubic metres of water per year to Jordan and Palestine, respectively. “Beyond that, it’s cheaper to teach our neighbours to be independent,” says Abraham Tenne, chair of Israel’s Water Desalination Administration.

While Israel is indeed a hotbed for viable, efficient and affordable solutions that promote water independence, hostile Middle Eastern political dynamics complicate doing business with neighbours in need. According to some sources, if Israel and a neighbouring country don’t have an official trade agreement, businesses have to take the indirect route. Usually, that means selling technology to nearby customers through a Europe-based sister company or subsidiary.

“A lot of compelling technology coming out of Israel is being private-labelled or rebranded,” says Rick Stover, executive vice-president of Desalitech. Founded in Israel, the desalination technology company chose a different solution – to headquarter its business in Boston. Why? “Politics might be one reason, but it’s not the main one,” says Stover. “By establishing the company in the United States, we’re significantly expanding our market opportunities. There are great resources for executing our projects here.”

He makes a good point. When it comes to Israel’s water technology exports, the Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute says the lion’s share, about 35 per cent, is going to North America. Europe comes second at 30 per cent, while eastern Asia and Latin America each account for 15 per cent. The remaining 5 per cent includes, but is not limited to, the Middle East.

Stover says the Israel and Middle East markets for his solutions are fairly substantial, and Desalitech still has several projects shipping out of its Tel Aviv office. But for the most part, the company is choosing to serve the U.S. and Canadian industrial water markets with local contractors to save time and shipping costs.

In the end, however, it seems politics might not actually be an issue. “It’s hard to find a product that doesn’t include some element of Israeli innovation,” Stover says. Where there is need, there are entrepreneurs – but there are also customers.

The post An oasis in the desert appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The financial windfall is expected to be enormous. According to Point Carbon, a carbon consultancy owned by Thomson Reuters, the carbon derivatives market is estimated to reach $3 trillion by 2020. That would make the carbon market larger than the subprime mortgage market and hedge fund industry combined – before the 2008 financial crisis.

Already, carbon rights are issued and traded in more than 30 markets, without common quality standards, effective regulatory oversight, almost no transparency and varying degrees of verification.

The perils of carbon derivatives have led to comparisons with subprime mortgage derivatives that were at the root of the financial crisis. But carbon derivatives are even riskier because carbon is not a tangible asset. Unlike holders of mortgages who can claim physical homes, carbon investors acquire rights to … well, air. Tracing air back to a specific issuer or a country of origin is a huge challenge. And since carbon rights are not printed on paper, but registered electronically, there’s a real risk that registries can be hacked and carbon stolen.

Reports of fraud and malfeasance tarnished European carbon markets that remain the world’s largest. The European Commission does little to police it: a Belgian court denied an Italian manufacturer’s request to enjoin the commission to identify the entities that had stolen its carbon permits from the registry.

Wall Street anticipated that President Barack Obama’s election would boost the carbon market. New players and leading financial firms invested and acquired businesses to issue, register, audit, certify and trade carbon rights. But the immediate turmoil of the 2008 financial crisis supplanted the long-term need to reduce carbon emissions.

Meanwhile, the continued economic, social and political ramifications of uncurbed carbon emissions are rekindling countries’ interest to act, with Australia playing a key role. Already, in 2012 Australia and Europe agreed to develop a two-way linked carbon emissions trading system.

A joint Chinese-Australian press release on March 27 announced the development of carbon trading markets “as a first step towards a broader Asia-Pacific carbon market.” Government authorities confirmed that New Zealand, parts of Canada and California would join the regional initiative. Only weeks after this watershed announcement, South Korea announced that it too would adopt a national carbon cap and trade scheme, adding momentum to the initiative.

China’s carbon trading pilot program will occur in two provinces (Hunan and Guangdong) and five of China’s largest cities (Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Tianjin). The seven pilot cities and provinces have a total population of 250 million people. That’s 10 times Australia’s population and amounts to twice the carbon emissions covered by Australia’s trading system.

Any regional carbon market without China, the world’s largest net carbon emitter, was doomed to flounder. With China’s announcement, Australia now becomes the carbon kingpin that offers traders a pathway to accessing and flooding European, American and Asian markets. Faced with a difficult re-election, Australia’s former prime minister Kevin Rudd dropped the country’s unpopular carbon tax and doubled down on efforts to boost cap and trade. (Ed note: due to the subsequent election of cap and trade opponent Tony Abbott after this article was published, the future of Australian climate policy has grown cloudier.)

All of this activity around cap and trade in the Asia-Pacific region has renewed efforts in North America.

California, the only American state with a mandatory cap and trade scheme, announced on April 19 that it would link its carbon markets with Quebec and expand joint investments in low carbon technologies. Later, during an official visit on July 10, Chinese and American government officials announced that the two countries would jointly develop carbon-capture technologies and take other steps to combat climate change.

That announcement came only days after Obama’s historic speech on climate change at Georgetown University on June 26. And on July 31, officials in California and Australia announced they would work to link their respective carbon markets.

Business is ready to reap the rewards of this new financial frontier. Firms such as Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters have acquired carbon businesses and developed carbon products and services for traders. Financial institutions and hedge funds will trade to see profits grow.

But few will immediately profit more than Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange (ICE). Founded in 2000 by the who’s who of oil, gas, and commodities trading, ICE rapidly became a leading owner and operator of exchanges trading energy commodity derivatives.

Benefiting from a loophole that virtually eliminated all regulatory oversight, ICE morphed into a multi-billion-dollar cash machine and went on a global buying spree, recently acquiring the New York Stock Exchange Euronext. ICE is now positioned to become the trading platform of preference as the momentum for cap and trade grows.

While governments have their eyes set on the next United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015 with a potential global agreement, they must be mindful of the recent economic and social havoc caused by poor regulatory oversight.

Wall Street will not wait to flood the market and our portfolios with unregulated carbon derivatives that could easily turn toxic. If we don’t want to pay for others’ financial recklessness, the industry’s opaque veil needs be lifted: a new body of rules to oversee carbon derivatives and the industry is needed. Otherwise, we risk having a bitter replay of the subprime mortgage crisis, but on a much larger global scale.

The post Capping carbon-trading risk appeared first on Corporate Knights.

To help cut cement’s supersized carbon footprint, Halifax, Nova Scotia-based startup CarbonCure Technologies is tinkering with the age-old recipe for how cement cures into concrete, its final rock-like form. The company’s answer: carbonated cement.

“Every day millions of tonnes of concrete is produced globally,” says Robert Niven, chief executive and founder. “Every tonne is a lost opportunity to sequester carbon dioxide.”

Devising greener concrete is no easy task, in part because the recipe is deceptively simple and has proven to be such a remarkably good building material for so long.

It is, quite literally, the stuff from which civilization has been built. Today’s cement traces back to formulations first used 7,000 years ago. Some Roman-era structures, such as the domed Pantheon, are as sturdy today as when they were erected two millennia ago.

Today’s megastructures are likewise possible only because of concrete’s peculiar mix of performance and affordability, from the biggest dams to our tallest towers.

The problem? The manufacturing of cement emits 5 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases, on par with about half of all emissions from car, truck and other road transport. Among industrial sources of CO2, the industry trails only the much larger petrochemicals sector.

Making cement emits roughly equal shares of CO2 at two stages: first, from the fuel used to heat a mix of limestone and traces of other minerals to 1,450 degrees Celsius; and second, from the resulting chemical reaction, where limestone breaks down into lime, giving up nearly half its mass as CO2.

Unless better recipes are devised, emissions will keep growing. A building binge across the developing world is expected to more than double global cement production this decade, according to the Carbon War Room, a London-based think tank.

CarbonCure is tackling that problem by focusing on how cement cures into concrete. The company’s proprietary process injects anthropogenic CO2 – captured from big industrial sources such as natural gas reformers – into the mix as concrete is being formed into an array of masonry products, including blocks and pavers.

As the CO2 percolates through the mix, it triggers a chemical reaction, remaking microscopic bits of limestone in the concrete matrix, permanently locking the gas into a rock-like structure. The resulting concrete block is not only greener; it turns out stronger than the standard stuff.

The carbon savings can stack up quickly. As a rule of thumb, every standard concrete block made using CarbonCure’s recipe sequesters around 30 grams of CO2. Thus, some 3,000 of them can lock up as much CO2 as a mature tree does in a single year.

The first U.S. structure to be built with CarbonCure’s green blocks was completed at the University of California, Davis in the spring. Exterior walls of the Jess S. Jackson Sustainable Winery Building, a one-storey, 8,500-square-foot research facility, were built with more than 2,500 specially manufactured blocks made by Basalite Concrete Products, based in Dixon, California. The result, says Niven, is the lowest-carbon concrete-block wall ever built in the U.S.

CarbonCure is currently working with four partners in North America that are producing its low-carbon blocks, pavers and other masonry products. Atlas Block, a major Canadian concrete manufacturer, is in negotiation to supply the low-carbon blocks for several sports complexes being built for the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto. “This is easily the most exciting technological improvement I’ve seen in years,” says Atlas chief executive Don Gordon.

Another dozen partners are in the pipeline, says Niven. In time, he hopes to expand the company’s reach to China – where more than half of the world’s concrete is currently being produced – and other global markets.

He also hopes to see CarbonCure move beyond masonry to apply its process to larger precast structures and ready-mix, the wet slurry of concrete and aggregate delivered in big mixing trucks.

Given that roughly 12 billion tonnes of concrete is produced every year around the world, if CarbonCure can adapt its technology to all concrete types, “the potential to reduce carbon is huge,” Niven says.

Indeed, green efforts are advancing in other aspects of concrete production. Industrial waste, such as fly ash or slag, offers a low-carbon alternative to cement. And major manufacturers such as Lafarge and Holcim are using more low-carbon or carbon-neutral fuels, such as biomass, to replace fossil fuels used in cement kilns.

Taken together, these green steps suggest that concrete could someday be “carbon neutral, or even carbon negative,” says Niven.

Click here to view our complete Tech Savvy series.

The post Tech Savvy: CarbonCure appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Sorry about that, Bob.

Inglis is busy these days, forcing him to multitask when and where he can. A congressman for 12 of the last 20 years, he was dumped from office in 2010 because of his support for meaningful action on climate change – a death wish for any Republican trying to get elected during tough economic times, let alone in a southern state where anti-science views seem to help politicians win votes. But instead of being silenced, Inglis decided to pump up the volume on his climate message.

In July 2012 he founded and launched the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, a grassroots organization that believes America faces big risks in a changing climate and that conservative energy policy – based on the principles of free enterprise and limited government, both proposed and supported by Republicans – is what’s needed to mitigate those risks.

Is the message being heard? There are signs. Coral Davenport, a correspondent for the weekly newsmagazine National Journal, which is targeted at Washington insiders, wrote in May that a “deep internal conflict” within the GOP is brewing. “A concerted push has begun within the party – in conservative think tanks and grassroots groups, and even in backroom, off-the-record conversations on Capital Hill – to persuade Republicans to acknowledge and address climate change in their own terms.”

With global atmospheric carbon concentrations now above the 400 parts-per-million mark – an unfortunate milestone reached in May – it’s about time. Traditionally conservative international bodies are beginning to worry. The International Energy Agency, World Bank and European Investment Bank have all issued stern warnings, and the latter two have committed to stop investments in coal power. There’s a mass movement growing to get cities, universities and churches to divest from fossil fuels. U.S. President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has been forced to place strict emissions on existing coal-fired power plants in the face of Republican resistance to carbon pricing.

Yet the Republican-controlled House of Representatives continues efforts to gut funding for the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy spending on initiatives that support clean energy, including the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy.

Inglis, while still congressman, took a risk in May 2009 by tabling his Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act, which would have required carbon polluters to pay a rising carbon tax over 30 years while payroll taxes were lowered. It fell with a thud.

Timing is everything.

Below are excerpts from Inglis’ drive-by interview with Corporate Knights. On the topic of timing, Inglis assured us that he did make it for his student talk. “After a stop to buy bubbles for my negative externality illustration, I walked into the auditorium as the clock was striking 10 a.m. – my speaking time!”

CK: When did it occur to you that climate change was a serious problem that has to be tackled with some urgency?

INGLIS: When I was in Congress for my first six years – between 1993 and 1999 – I thought this was all in Al Gore’s imagination. Total nonsense. And this was ignorance on my part. I didn’t know anything about it. All I knew is Al Gore was for it so I was against it.

CK: So what caused the shift in thinking?

INGLIS: Our eldest, our son Robert, was voting for the first time when I ran again in 2004. He came to me and said, “Dad, I’ll vote for you, but you’ve got to clean up your act on the environment.” A lot of folks, particularly on radio, told me that listening to my kids was my first mistake. They should be listening to you; not you listening to them, I was told. But I’m the father trying to be like my son. He’s good looking. Smart. Funny. I’m trying to grow up to be like Robert. So that had an impact on me. Also, when I got back to Congress I got on the science committee. I went to Antarctica (in 2006) and saw the evidence in the ice core drillings – CO2 levels that coincide with the industrial revolution. That made sense to me. On another trip to Antarctica, in a stopover at the Great Barrier Reef, I saw the effects of coral bleaching. Those events made it so that I decided to act on energy and climate.

CK: In 2009 you introduced the Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act, but it didn’t get any traction with Congress, or voters for that matter. Why not?

INGLIS: Note to self – it’s probably not a good idea to talk about that (a carbon tax) in a great recession. What happened is my constituents said to me, “We’re worried about this month’s paycheck. It sounds like you’re worried about something decades away.” So they said get out of here. They booted me out. I knew we were running a great risk the whole time, but I guess I was hoping the moment would come when people would realize the value of solutions over scapegoats. That moment did not come during the 2010 race, but I think it’s going to come. Eventually, our country will return to looking for people who have solutions, rather than people who hunt for scapegoats.

CK: Forced to generalize, how would you describe the Republican position on the issue of climate change?

INGLIS: There are a lot of Republicans – elected Republicans – who reflect the majority of Republicans in the electorate who want a solution to climate change. But the most animated voices are the ones that are able to say “It’s not so,” because they don’t want it to be so. George Mason University had a recent poll with some interesting results. Only 35 per cent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents agree with the party platform on climate change. Some would say, rightly, that there’s no way anyone would know what the Republican platform says about anything. But do you think those people surveyed might have confused this (platform) for Al Gore? Not likely.

CK: Do you see that position shifting or does it remain firmly entrenched?

INGLIS: I think it is. I hope so. I don’t know so. As the great recession wears off, we will look back and say of this popular rejectionism that it was the vibe of the times. We’re disappointed. We’re upset. We’re angry. It’s rejectionist. It rejects the science; the idea we can come together and take action together. It comes down to not having trust. Eventually that will wear off, and it correlates directly with the pain from the great recession. As the pain subsides that populist rejection will subside, and we’ll get back to solutions.

CK: What in your mind is the solution?

INGLIS: It’s a true cost comparison between competing fuels, where all subsidies are removed and all costs are in. That combination of things would enable the free enterprise system to deliver solutions – innovations that would change the energy mix and clean up the air and improve national security. I’m talking an upstream application of a carbon tax. We would pay out that tax with a dollar-for-dollar reduction in existing taxes. So it’s revenue-neutral, but it would also be government-shrinking. It would give rise to appealing some cumbersome regulations. That’s our plan.

CK: What’s your view of the regulatory path that President Obama is taking?

INGLIS: We think the regulatory approach is precisely the worst way to act. Because, what will happen there is they’ll issue the regulations and they’ll immediately be sued. There will be a slog through domestic courts. Then, at the end of it, if they’re successful, we will impose a cost on carbon in America but nowhere else. We’ll be double losers. We’ll lose employment because production lines will move to places that don’t price carbon, and we will increase global emissions. The movement will be to more energy-intensive locations – China and India, for example. I’d say it would be a triple loser because of the complexity of (complying with) those regulations. It’s the least desirable path. The alternative path, which is completely game changing, is to price carbon here by a tax that is border-adjustable. That is, it’s removed on exports and applied on imports. We think that can be done in a WTO (World Trade Organization)-compliant kind of way. It would be protested by China and India. But if we can get through it, at the end of it China and India would enact a similar price on carbon in their own economies. The result is that you don’t get an increase in global emissions or have the exporting of manufacturing capacity out of the United States. But it has to be revenue-neutral.

CK: What are your thoughts on China moving to price carbon, starting with cap-and-trade?

INGLIS: That, I think, is a very positive sign. I want to trust them, to trust that they have the same self need because even repressive communist dictators have a child that wants to go out and play soccer and not choke on pollution.

CK: Why is it important for conservatives to step up to the challenge of carbon pricing?

INGLIS: The only thing keeping us from a disastrous regulatory approach here is the creativity of conservatives who would come forward with something that would be the alternative that works. That’s what we must deliver. The country is waiting for us. The world is waiting for us conservatives to deliver this thing. We have failed to do that this far on energy and climate. We just want to stick with climate denial.

The post Green elephants appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Now, the school is employing its $33 million endowment fund to send a message on climate change, approving an investment policy that shuns fossil fuel producers and aims instead at supporting the growing clean energy sector.

Hampshire is among a growing number of colleges, municipalities and religious institutions in the United States that are backing a “fossil free” campaign mounted by 350.org, the American environmental organization that has targeted Canada’s oil sands as a particularly carbon-intensive source of fossil fuel and organized rallies against the planned Keystone XL pipeline which would deliver Canadian bitumen to the Gulf Coast.

But the fossil-free movement is about more than oil sands, or even coal. Activists are targeting the top 200 oil, natural gas and coal producers in the world, including industry giants like ExxonMobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell. The list includes Alberta-based producers like Suncor Energy and Canadian Natural Resources.

The movement now has activists working on campuses and in cities, hoping to replicate the South Africa divestment effort that was seen as an important contributor in the anti-apartheid campaign, ultimately helping drive that country to majority rule.

Jonathan Lash is president at Hampshire College and a former president at World Resources Institute, a non-governmental organization in Washington, D.C., that focuses on sustainable development. He says Hampshire’s decision to amend its investment policy pre-dates the 350.org effort, but the college has since signed on to the campaign.

“We’re not going to bring Exxon to its knees,” Lash said in an interview. “But we try to act based on the values that are important to us and then make case by case determinations as we are investing.” The approach is about embracing as much as rejecting. “We try pretty hard not to just make it a negative screen but to affirmatively look for positive opportunities [in clean energy],” he added.

Lash said the college is pursuing divestment as a complement to actions it is taking on campus to lower its greenhouse gas emissions, including increasing reliance on solar and ensuring new buildings have zero-emissions designs. And he said the divestment is as much symbolic and political as it is financially motivated.

“Scientifically, we know what the problem is; technologically, we have the solutions, but politically we haven’t found a way to move forward to adopt the decisions . . . This discussion puts a set of interests that seem to run contrary to society’s interest at centre stage, and that is a good thing.”

Jamie Henn, campaign coordinator with 350.org, acknowledged it will take many more members before the fossil fuel industry feels any impact from the divestment movement, though a commitment from a school like Harvard University – with its $30.7 billion endowment – would be significant.

“Divestment is a strategy that allows us to really go after the fossil fuel industry as a whole and bring a kind of moral clarity to it as it did during the apartheid era,” Henn said. “If it is wrong to wreck the planet [through carbon emissions], then it is also wrong to profit from that wreckage.”

There are now activists working on divestment campaigns at more than 300 campuses across North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It has spread to municipalities – primarily west coast cities and college towns – and the faith community, which has long been involved in ethical investment strategies.

The movement also highlights the risks of remaining invested in fossil fuel companies that may be overstating the value of their oil, gas or coal reserves heading into a carbon-constrained future.

The concept of “unburnable carbon” has spread since the International Energy Agency reported in 2012 that nearly a third of current fossil fuel reserves would have to remain in the ground if the world was to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

“We’ve seen the divestment campaign has been a real vehicle to carry that discussion forward,” Henn said. For student activists, divestment is a concrete measure that they can pursue in their own community on campus.

Chloe Maxmin, a junior majoring in social studies at Harvard, was a co-founder of the divestment committee there a year ago and has already seen progress. Last school year, the student body at Harvard College approved a referendum by 72 per cent, demanding the school’s endowment fund divest from the top 200 fossil fuel companies and reinvest in socially responsible funds. Student government adopted that vote, and Maxmin’s committee is now holding a series of meetings with the university’s administration.

Maxmin acknowledged that Americans have little choice but to continue using fossil fuels. But she said the long-term goal is to redirect capital away from companies that produce GHG-emitting fuels toward renewable energy companies that will facilitate the transition.

She pointed to research that suggests investors can shift from fossil fuel producers without undermining their returns, a key issue for endowment funds and other large investors that have a fiduciary duty to maximize their return on investment. “In general, divestment is not going to majorly impact the endowment,” she said.

Harvard’s massive endowment is invested in a broad range of hedge funds and mutual funds, venture funds, and trustees have told the committee that divestment would create major losses. However, they are willing to discuss an effort that focuses on the direct investments the endowment fund has made in the top 200 fossil fuel producers.

One positive outcome came in late July, when the manager of Harvard’s endowment announced it had created the new position of vice-president of sustainable investing. In that role it hired Jameela Pedicini, who was investment officer for global governance at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS). One component of Pedicini’s job will be to explore partnerships related to environmental, social and governance investing.

Momentum is also gathering on Canadian campuses. The effort was launched by the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, which has now joined forces with 350.org and was expecting to have at least 20 chapters across the country this fall.

At McGill University in Montreal, the divestment committee has won the support of the student government and a number of faculty groups. The social investment committee of the board of governors said climate change does not fit into its criteria of avoiding investments that result in social injury, but the students have vowed to rework their submission and try again.

“The group at McGill is gearing up to really continue to build momentum on campus and turn up the heat this fall,” said Cameron Fenton, national director of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition and organizer of the campus campaign.

One potential downside of the divestment movement is the elimination of shareholder activists from the corporate governance process of the fossil fuel companies, which routinely face resolutions at annual meetings to clean up their practices.

But Fenton said shareholder activism only goes so far when you’re challenging not just the way a business operates, but the nature of the business itself. “It fails to meet the need when we’re talking about divestment around climate change and fossil fuels,” he said. “Divestment is really taking that hard-line, moral stand that the business model of these companies is fundamentally at odds with the interests of society.”

The post Lines in the sands appeared first on Corporate Knights.

These jobs are not only growing — they are also increasingly diverse, with multi-faceted roles that encompass everything from corporate strategy development to natural resource management and regulatory compliance.

Ironically, this recent job proliferation has created a unique challenge for job-seekers. New professionals are now faced with a daunting variety of sustainability careers. They know the jobs are out there, but they lack adequate information on in-demand careers or required skills. Without a clear map that links jobs with relevant education and training, these prospective workers have a tough time effectively planning for careers in sustainability.

Responding to this need, a number of new Canadian and American studies have started to bridge the knowledge gap. These reports explore the demand for sustainability careers, while also delving into required skills, typical salaries and common fields of study.

Most of this market research features strong themes of job growth and variety. In their research of the West Coast’s clean economy, GLOBE Advisors and the Center for Climate Strategies arrived at a conservative estimate of at least 508,000 full-time, direct production jobs. Similarly, Environmental Careers Organization (ECO) Canada found that over 50,650 Canadian professionals spend 50 per cent or more of their time on work activities related to environmental or social sustainability.

While sustainability jobs are widespread, they are especially concentrated in the American and Canadian west, with regions like California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alberta accounting for a high proportion.

Among these jobs, ECO Canada’s study identified seven top career paths: chief sustainability officers (CSOs), sustainability specialists, officers, researchers, educators, consultants and trainers. Sustainability specialists are particularly in high demand, with over 34,450 working in this role in Canada.

Many of these careers also pay decent salaries. In GreenBiz Group’s 2013 “State of the Profession” report, a panel of American sustainability managers earned median salaries of around $112,500, with higher salaries in health care and automotive industries, and lower ones for service providers and real estate firms. Their Canadian counterparts earned similar pay, with average starting salaries over $53,000 for four out of the seven top sustainability careers.

Sustainability careers often pay well because they require considerable education and experience. GreenBiz found a strong correlation between compensation and education in its report: only 12 per cent of sustainability managers with a bachelor’s degree earned more than $100,000 in the United States, compared to 39 per cent of managers who had a master’s degree. Similarly, 68 per cent of Canadian sustainability professionals held at least a bachelor’s degree, while 55 per cent also possessed at least eight years of professional experience.

In addition to this education, sustainability professionals also need extensive work experience. Many of the practitioners in ECO Canada’s report supported multiple departments and led vital company activities related to managing risk, increasing returns on capital, and stimulating business growth. These professionals needed skills in interpreting environmental regulations, implementing sustainable development programs and partnering with stakeholders.

American sustainability professionals have a similar work scenario. In the GreenBiz study, sustainability VPs, directors and managers carried essential responsibilities in strategy development, reporting environmental data, leading cross-functional teams and educating employees. These practitioners relied on solid business acumen, a willingness to learn about a wide range of issues, and an exceptional ability to serve as both sustainability “translators” and collaborators.

Sustainability practitioners clearly need diverse, well-developed skills to succeed, but how do they actually build these competencies?

For both American and Canadian practitioners, the most popular field of study is business or public administration, followed by physical or life sciences, engineering and social sciences. Sustainability consultants are one exception to this general rule – only 4 per cent held a business-related degree in ECO Canada’s report, while 41 per cent had studied biology, chemistry or environmental sciences.

Graduate degrees can also make a difference. According to Net Impact, recent MBA graduates felt this program increased both their employment options and the likelihood of finding a job that aligned with their values.

Armed with vital insights on sustainability careers, new professionals can look at the wealth of job options and feel empowered, not intimidated. Sustainability work will continue to expand into new and exciting areas, so there’s no better time to take the leap.

The post Time to find a job appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund has grown by less than $5 billion since the late 1980s, equivalent to an increase of about 25 per cent. Norway’s “oil fund,” as it’s best known there, is the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world, passing 4,000 billion Norwegian krones earlier this year (over $680 billion) and amounting to a 25 per cent increase since only 2010.

A closer look at the Norwegian fund, however, reveals a bubbling controversy.

From a solely financial perspective, concerns over the fund are anchored in 2025, when interest is projected to hit a peak and begin declining. In 2001, the Norwegian government implemented “the fiscal rule,” which limits use of the fund in the national budget to 4 per cent. The rule was intended to keep fund withdrawals lower than interest – around 4 per cent at the time – ensuring continued growth. Today, Norwegian economists and other experts in the field are speaking out against the rigidness of the fiscal rule and what they argue is an overall inefficient and unsustainable spending strategy.

“It seems to be a plan that is giving this current generation all the benefits and future generations more of the costs,” says Hilde Bjørnland, an economist at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo. In January, Bjørnland gave the keynote address at the annual general meeting of the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO), where she warned against a swelling oil dependency. In 2009, the Norwegian government increased use of the fund in the national budget to about 5.5 per cent to mitigate for the international financial crisis – a move Bjørnland says most economists agreed made sense, and which the fiscal rule allows for during economic downturns.

The issue, Bjørnland told the NHO conference, was that while the percentage of the fund being used has been cut back to around 4 per cent, the absolute amount being used has not. On the contrary, that amount has ballooned as the fund continues to grow. A large portion has gone to boosting public employment, while jobs in the private sector have dwindled. Under the current government, now at the end of its second four-year term, the number of public employees has risen by more than 10 per cent, with soaring salaries to boot.

Hence, once interest on the fund begins to decrease around 2025, Bjørnland explains, something will have to give. That something could mean tax hikes or depleting the oil fund, but it could also mean cuts to public employment and to the famously comprehensive Norwegian welfare system, which has helped put Norway at the top of the United Nations’ Human Development Index every year since the UN began releasing the ranking annually in 2000. Combined with productivity loss and public health and pension expenses from an aging population of baby boomers, a decline of the oil fund hints at austerity for today’s Norwegian youth.

Bjørnland is far from the only one in her field to raise alarm. She is joined by, among others, the head of Norway’s central bank, Øystein Olsen. In his last annual address, Olsen said the limit should be reduced from 4 to 3 per cent.

“[The fiscal rule] is first and foremost a symbol,” says Hans Henrik Ramm, a deputy minister at the ministry of oil and energy during the early 1980s and currently a financial consultant to the energy sector. The rule, he says, “is defended by economists and very many politicians who think it was difficult enough to get it established and to get people to understand that there are limits to how much money can be used.”

Environmentalist criticism of the fund’s use now also frequently includes an economic facet. This summer, the Norwegian wing of the World Wildlife Foundation published a map showing the fund’s investments in 147 of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies. Together, these companies produce over a hundred times as much carbon emissions as Norway itself.

Clearly there is a contradiction. The Norwegian government, on the one hand, leads the world in climate-friendly public policy. On the other hand, it finances its operations in part through investments in the world’s most climate-unfriendly companies – not to mention companies with poor human rights records. WWF and other NGOs also point to the financial risk of heavy dependency on oil.

“It means that you basically have more eggs in the same basket, and the eggs are growing larger, which means a higher possible downturn,” says Lars Erik Mangset, an economist and head of WWF’s oil fund divestment campaign. Mangset says Norway should be looking to other large investment funds at home and abroad, national and public, which are reducing their holdings in companies that rely on high fossil fuel production and price levels to be profitable, while investing more in renewable energy.

WWF proposes that 5 per cent of the fund be invested directly in renewable energy projects and that investments in the most carbon-intensive parts of the energy industry – Canadian oil sand ventures, for example – be withdrawn. They are also calling for Norway, which thanks to the oil fund is the world’s largest state investor, to use its ownership more actively in pushing companies to go green.

In June, Former Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg agreed that the spending limit on the oil fund should be reduced from 4 to 3 per cent. This was a break from years of the political parties in power refusing any notion of tampering with the fiscal rule.

With federal elections having occurred in September, however, none of the biggest parties campaigned for an overhaul of the fund to the extent that experts like Bjørnland, Ramm and Mangset are calling for. Not when less complex, more populist causes, such as road improvements, were competing for voters’ attention.

One thing, though, is clear: Unless Norwegians and their elected officials acquire a sense of urgency about adjusting use of the oil fund soon, what has been a blessing to past and current generations may turn out to be a curse on the next.

The post Norway’s dirty secret appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Although her charm goes a long way, Lee-Brewster also has a compelling pitch. Open an account, she tells them, and have a chance to win a big cash prize. The concept is called prize-linked savings, and it’s capturing the attention of more financial institutions.

With prize-linked savings, a lottery layer is added to a savings product. In the case of Lee-Brewster at Michigan’s Communicating Arts Credit Union, that product is an account with the Save to Win program. The minimum monthly deposit is $25.

Members of the program are awarded the equivalent of a lottery ticket for every $25 deposited, including entry into an annual jackpot of $100,000. Members are free to make one withdrawal every year after the first. “That’s my selling point. You’re not losing anything. You can win just by saving,” says Lee-Brewster, the credit union’s top seller of the unique accounts.

Save to Win is a four-year-old program, unique to North America. Yet it builds on a centuries-long, international line of prize-linked savings products. The combined track record of these products and the research indicate they’re an efficient way to encourage personal savings – especially among those least likely to put money away for a rainy day, but who are most in need of doing so. Despite the historical and academic evidence, and the need in North America for savings innovation, regulatory barriers have prevented testing the concept’s full potential in the U.S. and Canada.

Before taking a closer look at prize-linked savings’ past, it’s important to consider two current financial trends. First, both Americans and Canadians are big into lotteries. In fiscal 2010, according to the Rockefeller Institute, the 43 state lotteries in the U.S. were the main source of state gambling revenue, bringing in about $18 billion. Surveys by the Consumer Federation of America and the Financial Planning Association released in 2006 found nearly 40 per cent of Americans with incomes below $25,000, about a fifth of the general population, thought winning the lottery was the most practical way for them to accumulate hundreds of thousands of dollars.

North of the border, the 2010-2011 Gambling Digest published by the Canadian Partnership for Responsible Gambling reported that the four largest provinces – Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta – had all taken in nine-digit net lottery revenues in the previous fiscal year. Ontario led the pack, raking in over $900 million. According to the digest, lotteries were the most popular form of gambling in almost every province.

While money has flowed into lotteries in the U.S. and Canada, savings rates in both countries have dried up. In their Assets & Opportunity Scorecard for 2013, the Corporation for Enterprise Development found nearly a third of American households had no savings account. A survey released in May this year by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) found 40 per cent of respondents would probably or certainly not be able to come up with $2,000 in case of an emergency. Meanwhile, in Canada, at around the time FINRA released its data, Certified General Accountants Association of Canada noted Canadian household savings rates had dropped from a peak of about 20 per cent of disposable income in the early 1980s to less than 4 per cent by the end of 2012.

What more people do have today is ballooning levels of personal debt, and servicing that debt makes it difficult for individuals to save money. Canadian economist Mark Anielski makes the link to sustainability, equating rising debt levels and the “chronic societal stress” it creates to cancer cells that “grow out of control until they finally consume or destroy their host.” Debt can become the antithesis of wellbeing. Personal savings, to stick with Anielski’s analogy, can be viewed as antioxidants that boost household resilience.

Enter prize-linked savings, which turns the consumer’s weakness for lotteries into saving strength. “That’s precisely what appealed to me about these products when I first heard about them, when I studied them in England and South Africa, and ultimately tested them in the U.S.,” says Peter Tufano.

Currently dean of the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, Tufano is a prolific researcher and founder of the Doorways to Dreams (D2D) Fund, a non-profit that supports savings innovations for low-income consumers. In 2009, D2D helped the Michigan Credit Union League launch Save to Win. A year later, 87-year-old Billie June Smith won the first $100,000 grand prize thanks to a $75 deposit.

In order for its credit unions to offer customers such as Smith a Save to Win account, Michigan first had to create a legislative loophole. Without one, the product would have been an illegal lottery. Nebraska and North Carolina followed suit, and this spring Washington became the fourth and latest state to join the Save to Win program after passing its own amendment. Initial results are promising. In April, the D2D Fund reported that the number of credit unions offering Save to Win had increased from eight to 62, serving over 40,000 account holders – mostly with low or moderate incomes – who had saved more than $70 million from 2009 to 2012.

Save to Win’s success comes as no surprise to Tufano. “This is a product that goes back to the 1700s and has succeeded in country after country after country since then,” he says. They include England, South Africa, Sweden, Japan, Indonesia and several countries in South America.

With regards to the U.K., Tufano points to Premium Bonds offered by National Savings and Investments (NS&I), the British government’s savings arm. In 2006, NS&I celebrated 50 years of offering the bonds, which at the time were held by over a third of the population. The first national prize-linked savings program in the U.K. – the Million Adventure – was launched more than 250 years before Premium Bonds as a strategy for coping with debt from the Nine Years’ War.

South Africa is another prize-linked savings success story, albeit one that only lasted three years. Starting in January 2005, the private First National Bank of South Africa (FNB) began offering what was called the Million a Month Account (MaMA). The account included a chance at winning monthly lotteries of up to one million rand, or around $100,000 at today’s rate. Nearly three quarters of South Africans were unbanked at the program’s outset. In mid-March 2008, FNB had opened over a million MaMAs and executives estimated the program stood for just over 7 per cent of all banked South Africans. By the end of that March, however, MaMA was no more. The South African lottery board sued to have the program closed as an illegal lottery, and won.

Unlike the active opposition faced in South Africa, the main obstacle for prize-linked savings in the U.S. has been regulation, or as Tufano puts it, “a history of inertia.” Decades-old legislation intended to protect state lottery franchises and to inhibit banks from taking part in gambling stand in the way. As Tufano has pointed out, these laws were never intended to stop banks and credit unions from offering products such as Save to Win accounts.

The Canadian legal waters for prize-linked savings are largely uncharted. As Toronto-based gaming lawyer Michael Lipton explains, a lottery has three defining legal features: prize, risk and consideration. To not be seen as a lottery in the eyes of the law, at least one of these must be eliminated. In terms of prize-linked savings, this would be consideration, according to Lipton. “If you’re losing nothing by participating in the activity, then that would go a long way to establish there is no consideration,” he says. However, court decisions from opposite ends of Canada suggest a legal battle over prize-linked savings could go either way.

Whereas the legality of prize-linked savings in North America is somewhat untested, the concept’s incentive power has recently reached new empirical heights. Results from the first two lab studies of prize-linked savings accounts were both published in the last year. The independent Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Germany published the first in October 2012, and found the availability of a prize-linked savings account led to a significant savings increase across demographics. The average increase was 12 per cent, with demand coming mainly from reductions in lottery play and general consumption, but also some from traditional saving. The highest rate of increased saving occurred in the low-income bracket. Results from the second lab study, published in the U.S. in June by the National Bureau of Economic Research, were similarly positive.

The high appeal of prize-linked savings to low-income consumers demonstrated by research, as well as Save to Win and other applications of the concept, is an important point. These are the people who stand to benefit the most, dollar for dollar, from saving more and wasting less. Unfortunately, they are also those with the lowest levels of financial literacy and political influence. In other words, they are in no position to demand, say, that the Save to Win program be expanded in the U.S. or an equivalent product be offered in Canada. Rather, this group makes up a disproportionate number of participants in large lotteries, which are informally known as a tax on the poor.

“Savings by low-income families is inherently difficult, receives relatively little government incentives, and is – at best – tolerated by the financial sector,” wrote Tufano and Princeton University professor Daniel Schneider in 2007. They noted that economists often speak of “diminishing marginal returns” and that from the perspective of big banks the poor are beyond the profitable edge of these returns. However, from a wider, societal perspective, Tufano and Schneider wrote, “We may have the margin completely backwards.” Adding $100 or $1,000 in savings to a low-income family, they argued, “will surely have a bigger impact on their lives – and on society – than adding the same amount to a wealthy family’s balance sheet.”

Despite the challenges, prize-linked savings is making headway in the U.S. In June, Connecticut created a legal opening for credit unions to offer Save to Win accounts. Maryland, Rhode Island and Maine had already done the same. “You can’t lose,” Lee-Brewster tells her clients in Michigan. “It’s not as if you’re throwing money away. You will have the money at the end of the day.”

In short, for both consumers and policy makers, giving prize-linked savings a chance is not much of a gamble.

The post The savings jackpot appeared first on Corporate Knights.

General Motors announced in July that it generated over $1 billion from recycling and reuse revenue in 2012. With 90 per cent of waste from its manufacturing facilities currently being recycled, the company has been able to monetize some streams of waste. It now boasts 105 factories that are landfill-free, with a goal of reaching 125 facilities by 2020. Much of the gains were achieved through material substitution. Replacing wood pallets with reusable plastic pallets in several facilities resulted in over 500 tons in waste reduction annually, while the increased use of robotics has slashed paint thinner use by 200 tons. Since 2010, the total waste per vehicle built by GM has declined by 55 pounds, while the average per-ton cost of waste reduced has declined by 92 per cent.

Looking to expand research and development into hydrogen fuel cells, GM also announced a seven-year partnership with Honda in July. “We are convinced this is the best way to develop this important technology, which has the potential to help reduce the dependence on petroleum and establish sustainable mobility,” stated GM chairman and CEO Dan Akerson.

The two companies have ranked first and second in the world in fuel-cell patents over the past 10 years, and are aiming to launch their first joint product by 2020. The U.S. Department of Defense, an enthusiastic proponent of reducing its reliance on fossil fuel, is likely to be a silent partner in this alliance. The U.S. Army launched the world’s largest military vehicle fleet powered by fuel cells last year in partnership with GM in Hawaii, and is currently exploring other ways to expand this nascent industry.

Although much of the company’s sustainability bona fides originate from the Chevy Volt, the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle released in 2010, GM was the first major U.S. auto manufacturer to sign the Climate Declaration earlier this year.

Established by Ceres, an investor-focused environmental advocacy group, it is “a statement calling on U.S. policymakers to capture the American economic opportunities of addressing climate change.” For GM, this is a significant shift away from a petroleum industry once counted as one of its greatest allies.

Zero: Sinovel Wind Group

Chinese company Sinovel Wind Group and two of its senior executives were indicted in June on charges of industrial espionage following a two-year investigation by the FBI. Sinovel, a company that at its peak was the second-largest turbine manufacturer in the world, stands accused of stealing the source code provided by American Superconductor Corporation (AMSC), a Massachusetts-based energy technologies firm. Dejan Karabasevic, a former employee of AMSC, pled guilty in 2011 to downloading the code and transferring it to Sinovel. The suit claims that the stolen code was eventually inserted into more than 1,000 turbines sold around the world. In a particularly brazen move, four Sinovel turbines containing the stolen material were installed in Massachusetts. “We have worked with law enforcement to verify that these Sinovel-manufactured wind turbines contain AMSC’s stolen intellectual property,” said Daniel P. McGahn, AMSC’s president in a statement. The company is seeking $800 million in damages. Litigation is also underway in the Chinese court system, with the Chinese Supreme People’s Court reviewing several civil suits brought forth by AMSC. Other problems facing the company include an ongoing China Securities Regulatory Commission investigation, which is examining a suspected breach in securities laws.

The simmering dispute between the two firms has unfolded as American authorities have grown increasingly alarmed with Chinese industrial espionage efforts. U.S. President Barack Obama expressed his concerns to Chinese President Xi Jinping at a meeting in June, explaining that “large-scale theft” of U.S. property is hindering relations between the two countries.

A report compiled by 14 U.S. intelligence agencies in November unearthed a sophisticated Chinese government-supported industrial espionage campaign. It estimated in May that illegal technology transfers are costing the U.S. economy over $300 billion annually. The authors of Chinese Industrial Espionage, a new book written by industry experts, contend that Chinese authorities began to focus on American private sector intellectual property about five years ago while in the midst of a domestic innovation drive. “Chinese cyber-hacking has been going on for a long time,” author James Mulvenon told PBS in July. “What’s new is that we’re finally fed up and trying to do something about it.”

Click here to view our complete Heroes and Zeros series.

The post Heroes & zeros: vol. 11 appeared first on Corporate Knights.