2Sustain

Last week, President Obama visited the Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) manufacturing facility in Mount Holly, North Carolina, where he announced a new $1 billion National Community Deployment Challenge to spur deployment of clean, advanced vehicles in communities around the country.

DTNA is a partner in the Energy Department’s SuperTruck initiative, which is focused on increasing the fuel efficiency of long haul trucks (aka, 18-wheelers) by 50 percent by 2015.

While these particular trucks represent only 4 percent of the on-road vehicles in America, they are responsible for almost 20 percent of the country’s on-road fuel consumption, and this class of vehicle currently consumes more than 30 billion gallons of gasoline each year.

In order to achieve the SuperTruck imitative goal, companies like Daimler are developing and improving a number of vehicle technologies, including engine efficiency, aerodynamics waste heat recovery and hybridization.  Through these types of improvements, the Energy Department estimates fuel economy increases could save long-haul truckers more than $15,000 per truck per year in fuel costs. (In an earlier post, I reported that MIT researchers also have identified significant cost savings for businesses that use electric vehicles to make deliveries on an everyday basis in big cities.) (more…)

Researchers at the Centre for Low Carbon Futures have concluded that cities could cut their energy bills by billions –if they exploited commercially attractive opportunities in energy and carbon management.

The study, which focused on cities in the UK, found that about 10 percent of city scale GDP leaves the local economy every year through payment of the energy bill . . . and, as you would expect,  that percentage is forecast to grow considerably over the next decade.

However, by investing 1 percent of GDP for 10 years, cities could see savings in their energy bills worth 1.6 percent of GDP every year. In addition, taking advantage of low carbon development would create jobs, mitigate energy risks and reduce environmental impacts. (more…)

Asda, which operates more than 500 retail stores across the UK, announced earlier this month that it is on track to deliver customer savings adding up to £800 million (about $ 1.2 billion) by 2020, thanks to its commitment to sustainability initiatives.

The company has been working towards a variety of sustainability targets since 2005, when global parent Walmart announced its commitments to sustainable sourcing and reductions in energy use and waste.

Asda has already made considerable progress. The company has:

• saved more than £70m in 2010 alone by reducing waste and energy usage in its operations.
• reduced absolute carbon emissions by an industry leading 11.9 percent  –exceeding its target to achieve a 10 percent reduction by 2015.
• eliminated 149,000 tonnes of carbon from operations since 2007. (That’s the equivalent of taking 60,000 cars off the road for a year.)
• eliminated 900 jumbo jets worth of packaging from its products.
• reduced energy use in stores equivalent to that used by over 55,000 homes every year.
• eliminated 17 million miles from its supply chain. (The company says that’s the same as going to the moon and back 38 times.)
• redirected all food waste and 96 percent operational waste from landfill through recycling programs, including diverting waste for energy.

In addition, over the past nine months, Asda has asked customers about their views on sustainability issues and what matters to them. Based on this research, the company concluded that: (more…)

A new report confirms what many businesses already know: corporate sustainability contributes directly to business value.

The study, titled Sustainability performance management: How CFOs can unlock value, was released by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), and it concludes that sustainability can drive value across several dimensions, including:

• Revenue generation
• Cost control
• Building trust
• Risk management

However, the research also found that for many organizations, current efforts to manage sustainability performance are more tactical than strategic. That means many companies are failing to realize the full business benefit of their sustainability efforts.

CFOs can help bridge this gap. Since the finance team has visibility into all aspects of the business, it can help determine the role sustainability initiatives play in efficiency, cost control, compliance, risk management and competitive advantage.

From the report: (more…)

According to a survey released last week by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), cloud computing can both save American businesses billions of dollars in energy costs by 2020 and help their information technology (IT) operations run more efficiently.

The study, Cloud Computing–The IT Solution for the 21st Century, polled 11 global firms that have used cloud computing services for at least the past two years. This new research, conducted by Verdantix and sponsored by AT&T, includes analyses that demonstrate how business can use cloud solutions to decrease carbon emissions while simultaneously improving the bottom line.

For example, the data shows that: (more…)