Recently in Leadership for Sustainable Community Category

Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate. Regions of Focus: North America, Hawaii, Caribbean, and U.S. Pacific Islands. The U.S. Climate Change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research today released a scientific assessment ("Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate") that provides the first comprehensive analysis of observed and projected changes in weather and climate extremes in North America and U.S. territories. Among the findings reported in this assessment are that droughts, heavy downpours, excessive heat, and intense hurricanes are likely to become more commonplace as humans continue to increase the atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases, according to the report. Many types of extreme weather and climate event changes have been observed during this time period and continued changes are projected for this century. Specific future projections include: Abnormally hot days and nights, along with heat waves, are very likely to become more common. Cold nights are very likely to become less common. Sea ice extent is expected to continue to decrease and may even disappear in the Arctic Ocean in summer in coming decades. Precipitation, on average, is likely to be less frequent but more intense. Droughts are likely to become more frequent and severe in some regions. Hurricanes will likely have increased precipitation and wind. The strongest cold-season storms in the Atlantic and Pacific are likely to produce stronger winds and higher extreme wave heights.

Real education is about HOW we learn as much as it is WHAT we learn.  And we can now add WHERE we learn to that equation.

The Donald BREN  School of Environmental Science & Management at the U. of California, Santa Barbara is making where students learn and explore a very green environment.

Greening Bren Hall                                                                                         

Bren Hall, which earned recognition as the "greenest" laboratory building in the United States shortly after it was completed, is a physical manifestation of the School's mission and provides a world-class arena for scientific and academic initiative, leadership, invention, and research.  By combining cutting-edge technology with environmentally sound principles, products, and services, Bren Hall has set a new standard for sustainable design. 

Opened in April 2002, Bren Hall is the only laboratory building in the United States to have received the U.S. Green Building Council's Platinum LEEDTM accreditation - the highest level possible - since the USGBC established its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program.  Bren Hall sets the highest standard for sustainable buildings of the future, and is being used as a model for other facilities and operations, particularly throughout the campuses and institutions in the state of California. In July 2003, the UC Regents adopted a Green Building Policy for all ten of its campuses, and in November of that year UCSB committed to constructing all new buildings to the level of LEEDTM silver. This represents an extraordinary benchmark and demonstrates a serious commitment to sustainability. UCSB's new Marine Science Institute (also designed by Bren Hall's architects, Zimmer Gunsul Fransca) has obtained a silver LEEDTM rating. 

The total cost of the building was $26 million. Building in a sustainable manner with sustainable materials added only 2% to the overall costs, which will easily be recovered through energy savings over time. Bren Hall is proof that cost is not a significant deterrent to green construction.

For descriptions and images of individual building spaces in Bren Hall, please visit our Rooms & Halls, Teaching Labs, and Research Labs web pages.

Awards & Honors

Flex Your Power Energy Efficiency Award (February 2004)

International Interior Design Association Environmental Award (May 2003)

Parade of Green Buildings featured site (April 2003)

Goleta Valley Beautiful Award (November 2002)

LEEDTM Platinum Award, USGBC(April 2002) Commendation from former California Governor Gray Davis (2002)

Commendation from the County of Santa Barbara (2002)

Case Study for the California Energy Commission

Case Study for the California State and Consumer Services Agency

LEED Rating

The USGBC's LEEDTM program is a credit system. The pilot program in effect when Bren Hall was being built (version 1.0) specified a total of 44 available credits, 6 bonus credits, and 10 prerequisites, arranged in the following five categories describing major areas of sustainable design: sustainable site planning, improving energy efficiency, conserving materials and resources, enhancing indoor air quality, and safeguarding water. Click here to view or print the Acrobat pdf document that itemizes Bren Hall's sustainable features in these areas.

Bren Hall achieved a score of 37 points to receive a Platinum rating, the highest available. It surpasses the new Title 24 requirements for energy efficiency standards by more than 31%.

Click here to view the document that itemizes each LEEDTM category and credit, and how it was achieved.

 

Waste is our nemesis -- and solid waste is filling our cities not only with trashy debris, but it also causes water pollution, air pollution and land contamination.  Prevention would be nice!  But in a consumables society, that's not a robust answer to the problem of excess packaging, throw-away product design and planned obsolescence. How we handle solid waste is a critical issue for our decade.  Here's an overview of how Minnesota and The Netherlands differ...and are finding solutions to this community quality of life issue.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) recently (Feb 2008) issued a "2007 Solid Waste Policy Report"
(DOWNLOAD HERE: www.pca.state.mn.us/publications/reports/lrw-sw-1sy08.pdf )

Some points:

• Incineration is unhealthy and makes global warming worse;
• Incineration is not a source of "green" or "renewable" energy;
• incineration is very expensive and diverts investment from better options such as "zero waste;"

The MPCA agrees that it cannot be silent on such a high-profile issue, particularly following the Supreme Court's decision in Oneida and following landmark legislation in 2007 on the urgency of building up renewable energy sources and cutting down greenhouse gases. In fact, MPCA believes that Minnesotans can no longer afford to discard the energy embodied in solid waste.

Impact on recycling and organics recovery: The MPCA looked into concerns about WTE plants interfering with Minnesota's recycling and organics potential. The stated concern was that such plants usually require some form of "put or pay" commitments that guarantee a given daily tonnage of garbage to the WTE plants, before investors will commit capital; and that the locked-in tonnages will discourage materials that are burnable from going to recycling or composting. While the concern is reasonable and must be addressed, it is not inevitable that WTE hinders the recycling effort. Rather, residential recycling rates have typically been higher in communities with contractual commitments to WTE facilities than those without WTE. It is worthy of note that the highest waste-diversion achiever in the European Union is the Netherlands, which recycles and composts 65 percent of its waste but also sends 30 percent of its waste to combustion.

One reason for this counter-intuitive state of affairs may be that committing to WTE plants has persuaded those communities to pay attention to their waste rather than relying on distant landfills that are "out of sight, and out of mind." For example, those that operate WTE plants look for ways to keep metal and glass out of combustion chambers, because metals, such as aluminum that melts to slag steal heat from the furnace, interfere with furnace equipment and then add to the tonnage of ash that must be managed at considerable expense. One proven way to divert that metal and glass is source-separated recycling, which keeps the materials out of mixed municipal solid waste, maintaining its value as a marketable commodity.

The MPCA has benchmarked with the world's best achievers in solid waste management and does not find an inherent conflict between WTE and recycling, even at the highest rates of recycling achieved by states and nations.

Minnesota has included WTE in its waste-management mix since the 1980s and its recycling performance is well above average for the United States and is on par with Germany.

The Netherlands is the Pace Setter in Solid Waste  Solutions

The pace-setter is the Netherlands, which landfills only 5 percent of its waste, compared to Minnesota, which landfills 36 percent.

If the Netherlands is taken as one example of how a region with both rural and urban populations allocated efforts within its waste management hierarchy, Minnesota still has good opportunities to move waste up from landfilling. (The Netherlands adopted its hierarchy in 1979, called Lansink's Ladder.)

Lansink's Ladder has these rungs, in order of decreasing preference:

1. Prevention
2. Design for prevention and design for beneficial use
3. Product recycling (reuse)
4. Material recycling
5. Recovery for use as fuel
6. Disposal by incineration

SAS, the leader in business intelligence, is helping organizations accurately measure and manage their environmental impact. Today's announcement of SAS® for Sustainability Management introduces the first decision-support software platform for proactively identifying innovative strategies that effectively address complex environmental, social, and economic situations while achieving stakeholder objectives.

"While most executives agree that a green strategy is a good idea, few know how to value or prioritize their initiatives," said Kimberly Knickle, Practice Director, Emerging Agenda, Manufacturing Insights, an IDC company. "They struggle with the business case, waiting to implement strategies until outcomes can be predicted more reliably."

According to a McKinsey survey [1] , environmental issues including climate change top the agenda in executive suites worldwide. But measuring and managing environmental impact is difficult, intricate work that stretches across an organization's operations.

Causal relationships connecting issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, use of scarce resources, ethical sourcing and regulatory compliance make it extremely complex to invest in green technology and expand sales of products and services with measurably better environmental performance.

"Lessening our impact on the environment and mitigating the future risk of depleting our planet's natural resources is becoming a priority in shaping every organization's strategy," said Jim Goodnight, CEO of SAS. "With SAS, organizations can optimize business strategies for minimizing risks and costs, developing new lines of business, and improving resource use, environmental or otherwise."

Cisco is using SAS to support its sustainability efforts. "Cisco believes that new innovative technologies and the power of collaboration are keys to achieving our sustainability goals and minimizing our impact on the environment," said Laura Ipsen, Co-chair of Cisco's EcoBoard and Senior Vice President of Cisco Global Policy and Government Affairs. "By partnering with SAS and utilizing SAS for Sustainability Management, Cisco can better prioritize projects and resources that create a positive return for the environment, shareholders, and our employees. The SAS solution will enable us to simulate the impact on carbon footprint, waste reduction targets, greenhouse gas emissions and other goals so we can more effectively predict and manage the impact of our operations on the environment."

SAS for Sustainability Management, based on the SAS Enterprise Intelligence Platform, uses the Global Reporting Initiative framework to report on Triple Bottom Line indicators. These indicators relate to the three spheres of sustainability – environmental, social, and economic, using SAS' predictive abilities to validate strategies, identify causal relationships, forecast improvement scenarios and drive innovation. The SAS Corporate Social Responsibility Report (PDF) conforms to the Sustainability Reporting Guidelines developed by the Global Reporting Initiative.

Jason McCormick with Conscientious Innovation, wrote the following in response to a recent blog story:

We’ve done the research (including a super recent 5,000 people study of what people think of this thing called ’sustainability’ - April, 2008), we know that people rate Global Warming and Pollution as important sustainability issues. But it didn’t top the list. Personal and social sustainability issues such as connecting with community and leading balanced life leapfrog environmental issues.

As one of the respondent from an early round of focus groups said’ How can i look after the environment, if i can’t look after myself??’.

His company focuses on brand development for a wider range of issues than "green" or "environment."

What we’re seeing right now is a lot of what we call “knee-jerk green marketing” and it’s a big mistake. Companies are jumping on the green bandwagon because they think that’s the only way to get on the sustainability wave. What’s dangerous is that it’s leading to a lack of authenticity because it’s often done indiscriminately and without rigor. When brands make vague, philosophical claims about their pro-environment values, but don’t support them with specific, observable actions, it diminishes the eco story for everyone and begins to spark a backlash.

He's right...what we're seeing is a lot of concerned parents who are also business people getting concerned and seeing both the opportunity for healthier community for themselves and their families...and the greening of their bottom line to keep up with the highly publicized shift toward greener products and processes.

Many people think "green" is simple.  The consumer media makes it look that way.  "Just change your lightbulbs and convert to biodiesel."  And all will be better.  "Don't get overwhelmed.  Keep it simple. Think green."  But business greening is more complicated and like Jason says, it must be a metamorphosis of core competency  -- much like the caterpillar turns into a butterfly.

Greening a business involves training the employees; changing the products from gas-guzzlers and energy-hogs to ever greater efficiency in design and production; optimizing operations; optimizing the fleet of transportation used both by the company and the employees...and more.  Saving water.  Saving the air.  Saving natural resources.  We rely on nature's bounty for the source of everything that keeps us alive and busy at work -- and greening is that integrated into how we do business.

So if you want to do the green thing...think green, educate yourself, and take it a step at a time.  But get started because the future will leave you in a dusty barren wasteland if you don't.  That's the growing future for much of the earth.  (That's not meant to be an exaggeration.  Desertification of arable lands is a growing problem for many nations...)

Managing green investments are entertwined with innovation because change is at the heart of "green" and sustainable change.

Marketing Green provided an interesting evaluation of innovation financing that can also be applied to green innovation and green technology.

In many ways, the imposition of carbon caps will reset the current competitive landscape.  Those businesses able or willing to adapt more quickly to this changing landscape will likely secure a competitive advantage by differentiating their brand or products, or by improving their cost basis.

How aggressive will carbon reduction targets be?  A recent Human Development Report by the United Nations Development Programme concluded that developed nations needed to reduce carbon emissions by greater than 80% from 1990 levels by mid-century in order to advert the worst impact of climate change.  Under any implementation scenario, carbon caps will likely be imposed over many years, if not decades, providing a window of opportunity for companies to adapt to and compete in this new world order.

Marketers must understand and compensate for bias that leads to underinvestment in green.  Formulate a strategic vision for green, properly balance the risks and rewards and invest for the long haul.  Your shareholders will thank you.

Clayton Christensen, Stephen Kaufman and Willy Shih, “Innovation Killers: How Financial Tools Destroy Your Capacity to Do New Things”, Leadership & Strategy for the Twenty-First Century, Harvard Business Review, January 2008 point out the following three financial straegies that can hinder innovation ... and green investments:

Cash flow modeling: Companies often do not fairly compare the projected discounted cash flow from a new investment

Asset lifetime: Financial managers may mistakenly assume that that an asset’s usable lifetime should be based simply by its depreciation period, rather than its “competitive lifetime”.

Quarterly earnings: Companies that focus on quarterly earnings may systematically under invest in innovation as they are not rewarded by the market for doing so. 

Read the full article at MarketingGreen.wordpress.com

What do you plan to do -- or not do -- for Earth Day?

Remember how your own mother just wanted you to be healthy and happy?  You didn't need to make a fuss over her, just be good kids! 

Okay, a fuss was okay...and appreciated -- but making a fuss wasn't enough if she caught you being naughty at the same time! 

That's kind of how I look at Earth Day.  Mother Nature just wants us to be healthy and happy.  And stay out of trouble.  So what can we do to be healthier and happier...and just get along?  And what can we NOT do that will make us healthier, happier and kinder to our mother?  Kinder so she doesn't have to clean up after us?

Here are just a few ideas of things to do that would make your Mama proud:

Eat your organic veggies.
Clean your room with nontoxic cleansers.
Use water sparingly.
Tell someone something kind and loving about your Mom!

And here are a few things NOT to do that will make your Mama equally proud:

Don't drive if you don't have to -- and drive a little slower! :-)
Don't throw all that great paper into the trash -- recycle it!
Don't use toxics.  Remember, everything goes into our water supply...and you wouldn't want to drink that junk, would you?
Don't leave the screen door open!  Or the refrigerator door!

Isn't it amazing that so  many of your mother's lessons apply on the global scale?  Hmmmm, maybe there's something to this living within our means, caring for others like we care for ourselves...and being responsible for our own mess!

Thank you, Mama!
Carolyn

New York's Renewable Energy Task Force recently announced 16 recommendations as part of a roadmap to significantly increase renewable energy generation in New York. These recommendations include more solar energy production, funding the state's program to get 25 percent of New York's electricity from renewable energy by 2013, and new business incentives targeted to attract renewable energy producers and expand the state's "green collar" workforce.

The Renewable Energy Task Force was charged with identifying barriers to increased production of renewable energy, recommending policies and financial incentives to overcome those barriers, and identifying future market areas where additional research and development investment is necessary.

Recommendations Highlights

Significant recommendations of the task force's first report include:

• Developing eight times more solar photovoltaic energy generation in New York--more than 100 megawatts by 2011;
• Increasing the renewable energy supply in New York State to meet 25 percent of electricity demand by 2013, and fully funding the Renewable Portfolio Standard to make it happen;
• Developing new business incentives to attract renewable energy technology companies to New York in order to build industry clusters in solar, wind, biomass and other technical areas;
• Changing the law to allow and encourage New York companies to produce their own renewable energy "on site" and deliver excess power back to the energy grid known as "net metering;"
• Developing and supporting a "green collar" workforce of skilled labor to support renewable energy technology companies by coordinating training programs, expanding and enhancing those programs as necessary, and making training opportunities available to residents of disadvantaged communities, minority- and women-owned companies, and other small businesses.

Renewables Create Jobs

The task force set forth key data throughout the report demonstrating that investment in renewable energy creates jobs and increases tax revenues. Some examples include:

• Up to 43,000 new jobs in New York could be created by the renewable energy production needed to meet the requirement that 25 percent of New York's electricity come from renewable sources.
• Renewable energy and energy efficiency industries could create up to 40 million jobs and generate up to $4.5 trillion in revenue in the United States by 2030-a four-fold increase over current revenues.
• Over the next 20 years, $1 billion in economic benefits are expected to result from the roughly $500 million that New York has so far committed in renewable energy funding through the Renewable Portfolio Standard-a 100 percent return on investment, not counting economic spillover, multiplier effects, and environmental quality-of-life gains from renewable energy production.

Taking immediate action on the task force's recommendations, Paul Tonko, President and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), indicated that NYSERDA would immediately invest $4 million in green collar workforce initiatives, on top of the $2 million in this year's Executive Budget and would also establish a Wind Energy Research and Testing Center to develop new technologies and provide workforce training.

DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis said: "Clean energy is crucial on so many fronts: energy conservation, pollution reduction, combating climate change, and developing green businesses and jobs, just for starters. The task force's recommendations will continue our leadership on those issues. And, importantly, they will establish a roadmap to stimulate renewable energy development in a way that is real and tangible."

About the Renewable Energy Task Force

Composed of 20 members, the Renewable Energy Task Force represents a diverse array of stakeholders in the renewable energy field, including the renewable energy and alternative fuel industries, environmental and agricultural communities, academia, public utilities, local and state government entities, and experts in energy policy, green building construction and economic development.

In September 2007, the task force held a public meeting in New York City to release its preliminary findings. The findings were based on recommendations developed by numerous task force subcommittees and vetted using the following criteria: what would generate the most renewable energy; what would have the most environmental benefit; and what would least impact ratepayers, taxpayers and consumers financially.

The details of the task force's first report were reached by a consensus of all of its members. Its final report is due in December 2008.

California counts on hundreds of thousands of volunteers to help preserve its environmental legacy. 
 
Statewide, 54% of the counties and 10% of the cities responded to a survey which revealed an annual cost of $34 million for litter and illegal dumping abatement costs. 

Representatives from the federal government, which owns over 50% of the land in California, estimate their illegal dumping and abatement costs match that of local governments. 

Caltrans’ annual costs are over $62 million, not including enforcement costs, nor does that take into account the volunteer efforts by Adopt-A-Highway Volunteers, which are estimated at a value of approximately $15 million. 

A conservative estimate of the cost of litter and illegal dumping to Californians would be $200 million. 

This legislation would allow the continued involvement of volunteers supporting local efforts, saving both state and local government valuable resources.
   

Why is this important?

Senate Bill 1345 will permanently remove the requirement that volunteers on public works projects, such as river cleanups, be paid prevailing wages!

In 2004, the Governor signed legislation to remove this constraint, but without further legislative action this year, this legislation will expire. The Governor is committed to empowering the state's robust volunteer force and will continue to call on the legislature to take action.

SOURCE: April, 2008, Keep California Beautiful