Truman Seman, a principal with GreenOrder, a New York-based consulting firm specializing in sustainability, said the "tremendous investment and innovation" happening in the absence of coherent carbon policy is a sliver of the market's potential. "There would be much, much more if we had clear rules," he said. "The biggest barrier to significant economic advancement is securing clear climate policy in the US."
GreenOrder is helping business leaders to re-engage federal policy makers to get climate legislation in place. Seman said he has seen a rigorous resurgence of interest around a climate energy package in the wake of the tumultuous Copenhagen talks. Several consortiums of industry leaders across sectors - including Partnership for Renewable Energy (which includes Bank of America, Google, General Electric), U.S. Climate Action Partnership, or USCAP (Ford, Duke Energy, Pepsi, Shell, among others) and Climate Energy Network (a collection of small and mid-sized companies in every region of the United States) - are "terrifically energetic and committed to their work with U.S. policymakers," he said.
Despite the stalemate and setbacks in Congress, Seman detects an attitudinal shift in favor of stronger climate policy.
"There (are) enough data and real stories to support the need for investment in a green economy," he said. "Policymakers are waking up to the fact that the U.S. is losing competitive ground not only with Europe but, increasingly, with China.... Even some conservative Republicans recognize that we will put the U.S. in a bad competitive position if we do not adapt quickly around cleantech."
There are signs of change. Sectors such as information technology, packaging, green building all have momentum regardless of uncertainty in Copenhagen or Washington, experts say.
For Cisco Systems, the commitment to green is already a done deal. CEO John Chambers vowed in 2008 to reduce Cisco's carbon footprint by 25% by 2012 without invoking carbon offsets. Today, Cisco's focus extends beyond the company's own footprint: They launched a supply chain innovation program to pressure Cisco suppliers to adhere to similar environmental standards.
As Cisco pushes their customer base and supply chains to adopt new standards, it engenders change throughout information technology ecosystem. It's not the only big company transforming a broad swath of businesses.
Subscription Center
See what we're tweeting about
7 Comments
Add CommentWhy are articles like this, especially from sources like this, being published in SA? Is it just for the purpose of trolling?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo the extent that a "Green Economy" is related to advancements in technology, and it certainly is, it is unstoppable. The "Green Economy" will ultimately be about efficiency and saving $$$, something that nearly everyone agrees to.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould the industrial revolution have been stopped - or, for that matter helped, by political action? Probably not.
Yes - SAVING dollars. Most want to, but there is also the governments' need to look green - it's a vote-winner. This is demonstrated nowhere better than by the way in which they apparently continue to "invest" in "windfarms" - and now "off-shore wind". Neither of these "technologies is anywhere near self-sustaining - for well understood reasons - but does it stop them pouring Our money - Our resources - into their political campaign. And getting a pat on the back for it >? - why the hell should it !? If they were serious, about anything other than PC-ness, ships would be sprouting some kind of sails - that actually worked, that is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut what did we see ten ? years ago ? - some genius level tosser getting a huge grant to stick alluminium-pole sculptures out into "sailspace" on some small ship or other.
The "idea" - at least - seems to have long-since sunk beneath the waves. I wonder why, after all they probably were about as viable as a "modern windfarm"
Maybe the "relationship" isn't quite that direct. A "Green economy" will be directly related only to sensible uses of "advancements in technology",.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBefore our "technology" all was "green".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEff and alt energy is going to grow because it has to to supply what we need at a reasonable price.
The big problem is the subsidies coal, oil get which makes it hard for 'green' to compete. If they had their full, real cost in them instead of in our income taxes, health care costs, infrastrucure maintaining costs in them, RE, eff, 'green' would be the low cost energy source by far without any subsidies at all. And that doesn't even include CO2, GW costs.
Wind, solar, CHP, CSP for homes, buildings are cost effective now but no one will build CHP, CSP units for us. These are all simple machines that last 30-50 yrs
But even without correct policy, fossil fuels are going up making 'green' the way to go.
I've been working with a research group on biomass pyrolysis for twelve years. All our funding came from donations. No private investors were interested until recently, when we went commercial. If we could have obtained state funding we could have gone to market ten years ago! Our business is now earning cash, and removing CO2 from the atmosphere. We have other green projects which could also benefit from state R&D funding, which would remove carbon from hydrocarbons.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWEll nice-one eco-steve ! You don't have to tell me about it. Since the mid to late '80's I have struggled-on with research into the possibility of a self-sustaining wind-energy system. One that returns several times as much energy during its life as is required to build another, that is. It seems that it IS possible !. I estimate around 5% p.a. of cost is available in very many sites, and much m,ore in some others. This is about 40 times that returned by "modern windfarms". The government's response : Like someone cut the phone lines ? bertdotwindonatgmaildotcom for details.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this