Via Docuticker.

State Green Economy Profiles
Source: National Governors Association, Center for Best Practices

As governors across the country look at ways they can help build a green economy in their state, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) has commissioned Collaborative Economics Inc. (CEI) to prepare a profile of each state’s green economy. State profiles can be found by clicking on the map above. This data is designed to provide a detailed, empirical account of each state’s existing assets across multiple green sectors and serve as a foundation for identifying future growth areas and related needs. The profile is based on a methodology presented by CEI (PDF; 2 MB) at the NGA Center’s Green Economy State Roundtable in April.

Via RFF Library Blog.

Via RFF Library Blog.

Via RFF Library Blog.

Brookings Institution / by Craig Pirrong
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/09_cap_and_trade_market_oversight_pirrong.aspx

[From introduction] The original concept of cap-and-trade envisioned that the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would be capped and rights to emit would be traded. But it is inevitable that there will be demand to trade instruments other than emissions rights themselves. Specifically, there will be a demand to trade derivatives on emissions rights…

the current regulatory environment is extraordinarily hostile to derivatives generally, and to carbon derivatives particularly. Indeed, several proposals have been introduced to constrain or eliminate various types of derivatives trading, including proposals to:

• Impose limits (e.g., speculative limits) on the uses of these products, or on the amount of trading certain kinds of entities can undertake;
• Restrict where and how derivatives are traded, with a decided preference for trading on organized exchanges;
• Constrain arrangements for the allocation of performance risk, with a decided preference for “clearing” derivatives transactions through central counterparties (“CCPs”);
• Ban certain derivatives altogether.

The American Clean Energy and Securities Act (ACESA), passed by the US House of Representatives in June, includes provisions mandating many of these restrictions.

All of these proposals are misguided, some extremely so. They are predicated on a widespread misunderstanding of what derivatives are, how they work, and the reasons that firms trade them…In this chapter I will support them by going back to basics, describing what derivatives are, why they are used, how they are traded, the abuses they are subject to, and the most efficient ways to constrain those abuses.

Via Docuticker.

Global Climate Change Policy Tracker: An Investor’s Assessment
Source: DB Climate Change Advisors (Deutsche Bank Group) and Columbia Climate Center at the Earth Institute, Columbia University

This report, “Global Climate Change Policy Tracker: An Investor’s Assessment” (Climate Tracker), provides investors with an analysis of climate change policies and assigns a risk rating to 109 countries, states and regions based on key government mandates and supporting policy frameworks. The report was produced by DBCCA, working with the Columbia Climate Center at the Earth Institute, Columbia University.

The “Climate Tracker” is the first publicly-available analysis of its kind. It incorporates results of a model prepared by Columbia Climate Center researchers that estimates the impacts on carbon emissions of each of 270 major climate policies, and aggregates them at country, regional and global levels. The “Climate Tracker” provides a risk rating of countries and regions based on their relative attractiveness to investors. It is designed to help investors identify the best risk-adjusted returns in climate change investment opportunities around the world.

+ Executive Summary [PDF; 382 KB]
+ Detailed Summary of Targets by Region & Country [PDF; 474 KB]
+ Detailed Analysis of Targets by Region & Country [PDF; 1.74 MB]

Via Docuticker.

Maker of Rayon Clothes Barred from Deceptive “Bamboo” Claims
Source: Federal Trade Commission

Just because bamboo is green does not mean that companies who purport to make clothing and other textiles from processed bamboo can make unsupported “green” claims. The Federal Trade Commission today announced a settlement with a company that allegedly falsely claimed its rayon products are made of bamboo fiber, retain bamboo’s antimicrobial properties, and are biodegradable.

Under the settlement, the company has agreed that it will not make any future bamboo claims unless they are true and backed by reliable evidence, and that it will no longer claim that the clothing and bath products it sells are made of bamboo fiber – when they actually are made of rayon processed from bamboo plants.

+ In the Matter of The M Group, Inc., also doing business as Bamboosa…
+ Have You Been Bamboozled by Bamboo Fabrics?
+ How to Avoid Bamboozling Your Customers

Paved parking lots and driveways make our lives easier, but they often create an easy pathway for pollutants to reach underground water sources and alter the natural flow of water back into the ground. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today announced a study that will investigate ways to reduce pollution that can run off paved surfaces and improve how water filters back into the ground. EPA is testing a variety of different permeable pavement materials and rain gardens in the parking lot at the agency’s Edison, N.J. facility, which houses offices and its laboratory. Most major sources of pollution going into our waterways are well-controlled, but pollution runoff from hard surfaces remains a complicated problem.

“Runoff from parking lots and driveways is a significant source of water pollution in the United States and puts undo stress on our water infrastructure, especially in densely-populated urban areas,” said EPA Acting Regional Administrator George Pavlou. “By evaluating different designs and materials, this study will help us develop strategies to lessen the environmental impacts of parking lots across the country and make our communities more sustainable.”

This summer, EPA replaced a 43,000-square-foot section of the parking lot at its Edison facility with three different types of permeable pavement and planted several rain gardens with varying vegetation for the study. Over the next decade, EPA will evaluate the effectiveness of each pavement type and the rain gardens in removing pollutants from stormwater, and how they help water filter back into the ground. The parking lot will be functional during the study to accurately evaluate how the different types of pavement handle traffic and vehicle-related pollution like leaking oil.

Stormwater runoff is generated when precipitation from rain and snow flows over land or impervious surfaces, like parking lots or rooftops, and does not readily flow back into the ground. As the runoff flows over the land or impervious surfaces, it accumulates debris, chemicals, sediment or other pollutants that could adversely affect water quality if the runoff discharged is not properly treated.

This study is part of an effort by EPA’s National Risk Management Research Laboratory to evaluate permeable pavement as it relates to stormwater management practices on a national scale. While the installation of permeable pavement systems has become more prevalent, there is a lack of full-scale, outdoor, real-world permeable pavement research projects.

EPA also recognizes the potential of rain gardens as a green infrastructure management tool to lessen the effects of peak flows on aquatic resources. While local governments and homeowners are building many of these systems, relatively few studies have quantified the ability of rain gardens to allow the ground to better absorb and filter stormwater, which reduces peak flows.

For more information on how EPA manages and regulates stormwater, visit http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/home.cfm?program_id=6.

Read the full story at Mother Nature Network.

Ever wonder what happens to a billboard after it’s been taken down? Assumed they just wound up in a landfill?

At CNN, the vinyl promotional campaigns are escaping the dump and finding new life as fashion accessories. The vinyl used for CNN’s outdoor billboards is being recycled into tote bags as the company transitions to digital boards. The idea came about as CNN developed its outdoor marketing campaign for Planet in Peril; the company did not want to just discard the vinyl once the campaign was finished. An intern (who later landed a full-time staff position) suggested the idea to reuse the boards.

Read the full story in the Green Guide.

You recycle, ride a bike to work, and buy organic food. You pay extra for “green” electricity and have an eco-friendly car. So can you rest easy, with a clean conscience that your life is as sustainable as it can reasonably be?

Well … although many of us try our best to minimize environmental impacts, our actions don’t always achieve as much as we believe.

Expensive products that are marketed as eco-friendly may help us to assuage our guilt while drawing our attention away from the more pressing issues.

Meanwhile, other actions and products can be useful, but only when used as part of a wider environmentally aware lifestyle. Most worrying of all, some things marketed as sustainable can have negative side effects for the environment—that’s called greenwashing.

The Green Guide talked to several sustainability experts who highlighted five eco-strategies and products that may not be all they are hyped up to be.

Read the full post at Lifehacker.

The Printliminator bookmarklet lets you selectively remove any element from a web page to make it printer friendly in just a few simple clicks.

It (almost) goes without saying that such a tool minimizes paper use. :-)

Read the full story at New American Media.

When supermarket janitors in Local 1877 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) rallied last month at Safeway and Lucky stores in San Jose, Calif., they weren’t only demanding improved wages and health benefits. They were calling for the adoption of green cleaning standards to make their jobs safer.

Earlier this year, SEIU janitors in Southern California made similar demands. Union members even dressed up as fruits and vegetables and picketed outside the 2009 National Grocers Association Convention in Las Vegas. They were calling attention to the safety of chemicals used to clean supermarkets.

Putting green cleaning standards on the agenda with wages and benefits is evidence that one of the country’s largest unions is broadening its idea of a safe and healthy workplace.

Source: Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, September 2009
Author: Monica Becker
Full report available at http://www.greenchemistryandcommerce.org/downloads/summaryreport_000.pdf

Consumer product companies need chemical information from their supply chains for many reasons, including the design of products that are safe for human health and the environment, regulatory compliance, participation in green certification programs, disclosure of chemical ingredients in products to retailers and customers, and preparation of Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS). Companies with large, complex, global supply chains face many challenges in getting this information.

The Green Chemistry in Commerce Council (GC3), a project of the Lowell Center for Sustainable Production, at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, commissioned three case studies of leading firms with complex supply chains to explore and share experiences on how companies gather chemical information from their supply chains and how they use this information to develop safer products. The three companies are Nike, S.C. Johnson (SCJ) and Hewlett-Packard (HP). The case studies conducted for this project examined a number of questions:

1. Why is the company seeking chemical information from their supply chain?
2. What types of chemical information is the company seeking?
3. How is the company gathering chemical information from its supply chain? What system is it using?
4. What systems are companies using to manage chemicals in products?
5. What systems are companies using to create safer products using chemical information?
6. What challenges have existed and what has worked well to gather chemical information, manage chemicals and design safer products?

All three firms studied are sizable, consumer product companies with large and complex supply chains. They are diverse with regard to the types of products that they manufacture and the types of raw materials that they procure from their supply chain. The reader should keep this in mind when reading the cases and lessons reported in this document.

Information gathered for the cases came from interviews with personnel at each firm, internal documents provided by the firms, and publicly available information. The companies were given the opportunity to review and comment on case study drafts. This summary report is designed to synthesize the lessons learned and best practices that were distilled from the case studies.

Read the full post at the Renewable Energy Blog.

The corporate world is changing fast. With a carbon cap and trade program on the horizon and consumers demanding more environmentally and socially-responsible products, business leaders in every sector are being forced to integrate sustainable business practices in order to stay competitive.

It’s not all the energy sector, however. Most companies use dirty energy to run their operations, which makes those companies partly responsible for the problem. That means any regulatory changes will impact all kinds of businesses, big and small. Because of this, business leaders are turning to the concept of sustainability to drive business decisions moving forward.

A report just released by the National Research Council for the U.S. congress makes the need to shift business strategy even more urgent. According to the report, the dirty American energy sector creates $120 billion worth of damage to public health and the environment that is not accounted for on the books of the companies creating the problem. That’s the conservative estimate.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

You don’t necessarily need an expensive MBA or a degree in environmental sciences to learn about social and environmental responsibility. In fact, many could learn from school children armed with about $17.

One of my favorite quotes I was lucky enough to hear in person. It was imparted by one of my favorite people — David Attenborough, the famous naturalist and owner of a voice that sends women over 60 weak at the knees (at least true in my mother’s case).

Asked when he first became interested in the natural world, he boldly replied, “I prefer to ask most adults when they stopped being interested … after all, you won’t find many children that aren’t fascinated by nature, it’s just that my adolescent curiosity just never went away.”

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

Levi Strauss & Co. and Goodwill have teamed up on a new initiative to lower the lifecycle impacts of jeans by giving consumers advice on how to care for them and what to do with them when they are no longer wanted.

The initiative, A Care Tag for Our Planet, includes online and in-store messaging, and, starting in January 2010, a new care tag on jeans that encourages consumers to wash clothes less frequently, wash using cold water, line dry items when possible and, when items are no longer wanted, to donate the items to Goodwill.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released its first WaterSense specification for a commercial building product. WaterSense labeled flushing urinals will use 50 percent less water than standard urinals, saving businesses 4,000 gallons of water per year for every model installed.

While current federal standards set the maximum allowable flush volume at one gallon per flush, an estimated 7.8 million urinals in use today are older inefficient models. In addition to using no more than a half gallon per flush, urinals bearing the WaterSense label must meet EPA’s performance requirements, ensuring they work as well or better than standard models.

In addition to businesses, schools can save by switching to WaterSense labeled urinals; a college with 10,000 students that installs WaterSense labeled urinals in its classroom buildings will save each year enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

All WaterSense labeled products are independently tested and certified to meet rigorous criteria for both efficiency and performance. To ensure satisfactory performance, urinals will be tested for flush effectiveness and other measures before they can earn the WaterSense label.

The urinals will be available across in the country in a few months.

WaterSense is a partnership program sponsored by EPA to protect the future of our nation’s water supply by promoting and enhancing the market for water-efficient products and services.

More information: http://www.epa.gov/watersense

Read the full story at Mother Nature Network.

Citing political deadlock, George Soros takes matters in his own hands with large investment in clean technology.

Read the full story at Green, Inc.

The United States Chamber of Commerce, under fire for its vocal opposition to climate change regulation, says that the vast majority of its members support its position.

Read the full story at GreenerDesign.

Amazon.com has expanded the amount of products that come in what it considers Frustration-Free Packaging, but this time it’s not other companies that are changing their packaging; it’s Amazon itself.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

According to a recent survey of 2,000 people in the U.S., the bulk of the more than 400 green labels on products have failed to make any mark in the minds of shoppers, and that among those that people are familiar with, there is very little trust in those labels.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

Leading sports leagues in North America are striving to meet their environmental challenges as growing attention is focused on climate change issues. Each major sports league is pursing a multitude of green initiatives.

As a follow-up to the market insight article “Take Me Out to the Ball Game — North American Green Stadiums,” published in May 2008, Frost & Sullivan looks at some of the initiatives the major sports leagues in North America.

Read the full story at GreenerDesign.

Canon U.S.A. has announced its first set of products developed with the company’s own life cycle assessment design system, which looked at the lifecycle emissions and environmental impacts of the products and their materials.

The new imageRUNNER ADVANCE series of multifunction office devices are expected to result in 30 percent fewer carbon dioxide emissions than previous product models. Canon designed the new products to be smaller and lighter than previous models and to use less packaging, all leading to fewer materials used, fewer transportation emissions and more efficient shipping.

Read the full post at Green, Inc.

The Department of Energy’s new label for LED lighting products looks a lot like the food nutrition label on your favorite box of cereal. It was created to give a quick summary of performance data – such as light output and color – and, ideally, to help prevent poor quality products from spoiling the nascent LED market.

The trouble is, the label’s use is not always legitimate.

Since the agency launched its “Lighting Facts” program in December 2008, there have been 25 cases of label misuse, according to James Brodrick, the manager of solid state lighting at the Department of Energy.

Read the full post at Green, Inc.

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules on Wednesday that would limit greenhouse gas regulations to large polluters, exempting smaller businesses and farms, as my colleague John Broder reported.

Via Docuticker.

Carbon Disclosure Project Report 2009
Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), to which PwC has been appointed global advisor and report writer, and now in its seventh year, aims to provide investors with a unique analysis of how the worlds largest companies are responding to climate change.

In 2009, CDP received the highest response rate to date, the highest level of disclosed emissions and greater detail than ever before on the activities being undertaken by the largest corporations around climate change mitigation and adaptation. Since the first CDP report in 2003, the quantity and quality of data disclosed has advanced significantly. In parallel, CDP data is increasingly being applied as a catalyst for changing business behaviour and is becoming more integrated into mainstream financial analysis.

This year, CDP (backed by 475 institutional investors representing more than US$55 trillion of funds under management) sent questionnaires to more than 3,700 of the world’s largest corporations requesting information on greenhouse gas emissions, the potential risks and opportunities related to climate change and strategies for managing those risks and opportunities.

+ Global 500
+ S&P 500
+ FTSE 350
+ Specific industry sectors

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

At this point in time, it’s reasonably safe to assume that just about every large and medium company is thinking about the environment*, even if it’s just thinking about how they’re not really doing anything for the environment.

But companies that are motivated to start work on improving their footprint soon face innumerable other hurdles, most prominent of which involves where to begin and how to justify the perceived added costs of any green initiatives.

Kanal Consulting, a management consulting firm based in San Francisco, today released a report outlining the steps any company can take to get on the path toward environmental sustainability. While the report, “12 Steps to Sustainability: How Every Company Can Implement Sustainability to Improve the Bottom Line and the Environment,” is light on the “where to begin” question, it’s a pretty solid roundup of the successes we hear about and report on all the time here at GreenBiz.com.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

We are all consumers.

As we continue to gain a deeper understanding of the impacts of global growth, it has become clear that our consumption-centric lifestyle has challenged our planet’s ability to support us.

Recent market meltdowns, regulatory limitations on off-shore manufacturing, and the social and environmental impacts of a consumption-oriented economic model has given rise to a challenge — does our economy need to be focused solely on spurring consumption in order to survive?

The answer is a resounding no.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change has launched a new online portal for companies looking for help in developing energy efficiency strategies.

The Corporate Energy Efficiency website is part of a larger Pew Center project focused on sharing corporate energy efficiency best practices related to internal operations, supply chains, products and services.

Read the full commentary in E The Environmental Magazine.

Last year, Earth Day took some heat by online green scorekeepers (particularly the eco-mag Grist, which launched a “Screw Earth Day” campaign), but this year it’s reasserting its prominence. Earth Day turns 40 this year, and while that brings with it some generational divide (Grist, at 10, is still a kid), it has also allowed the Earth Day Network, which promotes green initiatives year ‘round, to leverage its experience into real, on-the-ground activism and creating sustainable schools. Out of that first Earth Day in 1970 — celebrated by 20 million — came the Environmental Protection Agency, established by President Nixon the same year. Now, says Jeani Murray, the Global Director of Earth Day 40, the nonprofit has moved far beyond fighting early concerns like smog and acid rain to push for climate change legislation, to encourage green jobs and to leverage its influence to enact real commitment from world leaders at the upcoming Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December.

Read the full op-ed piece by Paul Krugman in the New York Times.

Saving the planet won’t come free (although the early stages of conservation actually might). But it won’t cost all that much either.

Read the full post at GreenBiz.

Corporate America’s embrace of sustainability has more than doubled in strength in the past three years with 76 percent of the largest U.S. firms reporting efforts and commitments that exceed those required by law, according to a new study from Siemens Building Technologies Inc. and McGraw-Hill Construction.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

Health care company Abbott reduced the amount of plastic in its infant formula containers by 15 percent last year, just one of more than 40 packaging initiatives aimed at cutting Abbott’s overall packaging weight by 5 percent by 2013.

Many of the projects are already in place or in the process of launching, and cover products that come out of Abbott’s nutrition, medical products and pharmaceutical businesses.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

Stakeholder engagement is a critical, yet often overlooked or under-prioritized aspect of many organizations’ sustainability efforts. The Sustainability Stakeholder Engagement (SSE) conference offered insights and practical ways to build effective relations with stakeholders, from customers, employees and investors, to suppliers, NGOs and communities. SSE gave considerable attention to social media, a topic near to our hearts (Beth is putting the final touches on a white paper on this subject to release next week). The panel on engaging consumers offered perhaps the most lively conversation with the audience.

Read the full post at Green, Inc.

As large parts of the American West continue to experience drought, waterless car washes have been catching on. A new company in Austin, Tex., called WaterSmart, for example, washes cars with a coconut-based soap, according to an article in The Austin American Statesman.

Read the full post at Dot Earth.

The Sloan Management Review at M.I.T. and the Boston Consulting Group have surveyed 1,500 corporate leaders and found that pledges of a shift toward sustainable business practices are often not backed up by substantial actions.

Read the full story at GreenerComputing.

Today’s data center is going through a constant state of flux in an attempt to keep up with current demands. The data landscape grows exponentially, and with that growth comes the need to expand current storage and data center infrastructures. This expansion is a fact businesses in every vertical have come to accept, but it comes with a price.

Read the full story at GreenerBuildings.

After last week’s intemperate outburst I thought it was time for a return to our periodic pieces on pathways to New Normal. This week’s leverage point — No. 5 of 12 in Donella Meadows’ Places to Intervene in a System — is Changing the Rules of the System.

Changing the rules — so long as the infrastructure exists to enforce those rules — is the most effective leverage point in the “conventional” toolkit of effecting change. [Foreshadowing: The top four leverage points are a bit more ephemeral -- basically, changing the way we think.]

Read the full story at ClimateBiz.

If The Graduate (1967) were remade today, the famous scene where Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) gets career advice might have to be rewritten this way:

Mr. McGuire: I want to say two words to you. Just two words.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.

Mr. McGuire: Energy efficiency.Energy efficiency is not as sexy as solar power or wind turbines or electric cars. It’s not even as sexy as plastics. In fact, it can be stupefyingly dull. It’s not much of a punchline. But it matters. It matters a lot.

Read the full story at ClimateBiz.

Need to make a business case for building green or undertaking green retrofits? Or maybe you’re a building owner mulling whether it’s worth the effort to make your property more environmentally sound.

Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company provides a list of the benefits of doing so — and the risks associated with doing nothing. The list is a handy reference for experienced players and newcomers to green building.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

Research firms are releasing reports on green consumer trends with increasing frequency, helping businesses align their offerings and messaging to capture the growing market for sustainable goods and services.

Beyond direct marketing implications, such research uncovers a significant opportunity to engage consumers around personal sustainability, low hanging fruit with broad benefits.

Read the full story in Environmental Protection.

The Climate Registry, a standards-setting organization for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reporting in North America, announced the next generation of its online emissions reporting system, supporting both voluntary and mandatory reporting, will be developed through a new technical partnership with Misys Open Source Solutions, a division of Misys plc, an IT solution and services company.

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

What concrete actions are firms taking to tackle climate change in 2009? This week Paul Dickinson, CEO of Carbon Disclosure Project, has addressed this question by offering a daily “sneak peek” at the results of this year’s CDP Global 500 and S&P 500 Reports, ahead of their September 21 launch in New York.

Read the full post at Green, Inc.

Europe has long used a letter-grading system for indicating the efficiency of consumer electronics (above right). The labels runs from the letter G, representing the least efficient electronics products, to A, representing the top tier of efficiency.

But after more than a decade, the authors of a new study note, “the embrace of innovation has led to the development of so many energy-efficient products that for many product categories, the highest class of the scale has already been achieved or even surpassed. The E.U. Energy label has become a victim of its own success with too many appliances crowded in the top of the scale.”

Read the full story at GreenBiz.

An energy management solution that Site Controls crafted for Michaels Stores Inc. has led to a more than 25 percent drop in consumption among the retailer’s nearly 1,000 stores.

Read the full post at Green, Inc.

Corporate sustainability is a “key driver” of innovation that also yields real financial rewards rather than extra cost, a new study in the Harvard Business Review has found (PDF). “By treating sustainability as a goal today, early movers will develop competencies that rivals will be hard-pressed to match.”

Read the full story at GreenerComputing.

A new study by CDW finds that companies could save millions every year by implementing energy efficient procurement policies, power management solutions and virtualization technologies.

Via Docuticker.

New standards will make beverage vending machines energy sippers
Source: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy

The average energy use of the most common new cold beverage vending machines would be cut by about 42% according to new national minimum standards published today by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Today’s move fulfills President Obama’s February 5th pledge to complete five new efficiency standards by August. Energy efficiency and environmental groups lauded the new standards and DOE’s prompt fulfillment of the President’s commitment while lamenting the lack of energy-saving smart controls for vending machines that could have achieved even larger savings.

“With roughly 3 million beverage vending machines in the U.S., or 1 for every 100 Americans, a strong national standard means real savings for all the universities, park districts, hotels, and other institutions and businesses that pay the electric bills for these machines,” said Noah Horowitz, Senior Scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “With these standards, we are assured that all new soda vending machines will be energy sippers and not the energy guzzlers of old.”

These standards build on a series of improvements in vending machine efficiency achieved over the past decade. According to Horowitz, who pioneered research into vending machine energy use, many machines used as much as 3,000 to 5,000 kilowatt-hours per year in the mid-1990s. With the new standards, per unit energy use will be no more than about 1,400 to 1,800 kilowatt-hours per year. Once the new standards take effect in three years, typical new machines will save well over $100 per year, with the savings being much greater for larger machines and those in warm climates.

+ Energy Conservation Program: Energy Conservation Standards for Refrigerated Bottled or Canned Beverage Vending Machines (PDF; 847 KB)

Via Docuticker.

The Use of Offsets to Reduce Greenhouse Gases (PDF; 598 KB)
Source: Congressional Budget Office

The cost savings to the economy generated by offsets could be substantial. CBO estimates that between 2012 and 2050 average annual savings from offsets could be about 70 percent under ACESA. Of course, the intended environmental benefit would be fully realized only if the offsets provided the full reduction in GHGs for which they were credited.

Read the full story in the New York Times.

Companies struggle to look environmentally friendly while keeping their “secret sauces” away from competitors.

Read the full post at Green Inc.

As its license plates proclaim, Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

Now a Minneapolis-area company says it has figured out the secret to the state’s famously crystalline watering holes: moss.