Corporate Sustainability – What Do Business Leaders Really Need?
I had lunch last week with Pete May, publisher of GreenBiz and many other related websites. He’s a magnificently smart fellow, and quite well dialed-in to the corporate sustainability movement — attending numerous conferences, and doing everything necessary to keep his finger on the pulse of what’s happening in this space.
I asked him about some of the themes that resonate most with directors of corporate sustainability, and threw out some suggestions. He said, “That’s good, but it’s essentially ‘Sustainability 101.’ These people have consultants coming at them from 15 different directions at the same time. You have to make sure you’re telling them something they don’t already know.”
I have to say that this does strike me as an interesting challenge. I read a whitepaper yesterday that drew the distinction between the thinking of the mid-20th Century from Milton Friedman and Peter Drucker (essentially that corporations exist for the financial benefit of their shareholders) and today’s thinking — that corporations should maximize profit without compromising the quality of life for future generations. Twenty-one pages later, that was pretty much it. It certainly left me thinking about my lunch with Peter. If this whitepaper wasn’t Sustainability 101, I wouldn’t know what to call it.
I’m not an expert in this space, but I’m making a concerted effort to learn more about it. And in this process, I’m betting that the brass ring in corporate sustainability resides in helping businesses actually improve their profitability — not through greenwashing — but by legimitately aligning themselves with nature — developing a meaningful and effective way for strategic planners to learn from natural systems and processes.
Business leaders are looking for a process by which they can extract themselves from old-line thinking, and begin to think like the planet. They want a set of paradigm breaking exercises that stimulate new visions for business products, services, and processes — each inspired by 3.7 billion years of evolution.
We at 2GreenEnergy are teaming up with a wonderful organization called Ethical Impact to provide a series of webinars on this exact subject; we’re very excited about the potentials. Please write me for more details if you’re interested.
I also remind readers: you’ll struggle mightily to invest 23 minutes of your life any more productively than by watching this incredible presentation on the subject by sustainability/biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus.
OK I know this is a renewable energy time and I know people hate Hydrogen Fuel Cells but it is the cleanest.Infrastructure is the cost.In order to get away from oil all different Alternatives are needed.I still don’t believe in clean coal.I never have.
HYDROGEN? I keep hearing the B.S. about Hydrogen… Well the problem with Hydrogen is not using it. HOWEVER, there is a BIG problem. Hydrogen does not occur in it’s pure form as H2 gas naturally anywhere on or in the planet Earth. We have to make it! From water, a tremendous amount of electricity is required, and Human machinery being what it is the process is not 100 % efficient. Or we can make it from Petroleum or natural gas but using the “Fossil fuel” directly is more efficient than converting it to Hydrogen and then using the hydrogen. And those technologies are the ones you do not like. Instead, Solar, Wind Turbines, Geological heat, Algi conversion to alcohol, or Hydro. from rivers or tides in coastal areas make better solutions for electricity production, any electricity is the most universal and easily transported energy source without adding pollution problems (Let us not go back to Gasoline Please.)
Right now, hydrogen does not look promising. Those who dismiss it have very good arguments. However, attempts to predict the future usually fail.
It could be that future developments in technology will make hydrogen practical and cause it to become the energy carrier of choice for powering vehicles. Thus, research aimed at solving the problems associated with producing and using hydrogen should continue.
I agree that it is usually less than fruitful to predict the future, let alone scientific breakthrough. I also agree with the earlier comment that one must engage in hedging strategies, i.e. continue to investigate hydrogen as an energy carrier. The least expensive, currently known process to make hydrogen is SMR. The fuel is natural gas. The energy source is electricity. The byproducts, among others, are CO and CO2. For comparison purposes, electrolysis of water is about 6 times more energy intensive. One might do this if it becomes impractical to have 300-400 mile range electric vehicles. For myself, the jury is still out on that assessment. Given the TCO of such a strategy (huge infrastructure burden), range extending electrics are the optimum combination of ecofriendly and economic practicality. I don’t particularly like that answer, but its the math of the moment.