 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
How to be a Cool Company
The most remarkable manager I met during my years working with businesses at the Department of Energy was Aaron Feuerstein, CEO of Malden Mills. His Lawrence, Massachusetts textile factory makes the popular Polartec and Polarfleece high-tech fabrics. After the plant burned down in December 1995, Feuerstein received national attention because he pledged to keep paying all 3,000 of his employees while he rebuilt the factory, rather than relocate.
At the time, I was helping to run the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the largest program in the country for developing low-polluting technologies and helping businesses use them. In early 1996, I asked my industrial experts to assist Feuerstein.
Two years later, I attended the groundbreaking for the technology we helped Malden Mills with, a high-efficiency, natural-gas turbine that provides both electricity and steam at low cost-so-called "cogeneration" (see Chapter Six). I was elated to see how well Feuerstein had made use of almost every other strategy discussed in this book to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including flooding his factory with daylight.
I asked him why he had focused on seemingly secondary issues-reducing energy use, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions-even as he was fighting to save the company. Feuerstein answered, "Over the long-term, it is more profitable to do the right thing for the environment than to pollute it."
In this book, you will see again and again just how right Feuerstein was. You will meet the best managers, architects, and engineers that I know, to learn their secrets, to benchmark against their astonishing results.
"Global warming is here to stay as a hot button for policymakers, a wild card for business, and a disturbing prospect for us all."
-- Fortune
Every company can significantly reduce its emissions of gases that contribute to global warming. A "cool" company will cut its emissions by 50 percent or more while reducing its energy bill and increasing productivity, with a return on investment that can exceed 50 percent and in many cases 100 percent. This book explains how.
Most firms today do not qualify as completely "cool," but many have gone a long way, from the largest companies, such as DuPont, 3M, Toyota, Compaq, and Xerox, to the smallest companies, from the service sector to light manufacturing to heavy industry. The result is a surprising number of "cool" buildings and "cool" factories, of which more than 50 are profiled in this book.
Cool Companies is for three kinds of companies: those who have already made a decision to reduce their emissions, those who are considering whether to do so, and those who are indifferent to global warming but are looking for a major source of competitive advantage.
Since the science of global warming has been the subject of dozens of books, I will not discuss it here, other than to make these points. First, the industrialized nations of the world agreed in December 1997 at Kyoto, Japan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012, and, second, the principal greenhouse gas emitted by human activity is carbon dioxide. Each and every company should have a strategy to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions, for one or more of the following reasons:
- You become convinced by the abundance of case studies in this book that you can vastly improve your profits and productivity with this strategy.
- You believe that the price of carbon dioxide will rise because governments will inevitably do it to restrict emissions. Some states have already put a price on carbon dioxide.
- You want to be known as a green company, a cool company, especially in a world where the foreign competition is becoming greener and more efficient.
- You care about the environment you are leaving your children.
You may believe that your carbon dioxide emissions have nothing to do with your company's competitiveness. If so, you have missed recent advances in technology and design that have created high-performance workplaces and factories where the carbon dioxide reductions pay for themselves rapidly, often in under a year. This book allows you to benchmark yourself against the remarkable achievements of the very best companies. You will learn the specifics of how your company can achieve the new standard for excellence.
Corporate carbon dioxide emissions come almost entirely from using energy generated from the burning of fossil fuels. About one-sixth of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions come from energy used in commercial buildings. About one-third comes from energy used in manufacturing. Your company can reduce its emissions in two ways:
1) energy efficiency-achieving the same output of goods and services while reducing total energy consumption, and
2) decarbonization-using energy that has lower emissions of carbon dioxide (what I call "cool" power.
Combining these two approaches will sharply reduce not only your carbon dioxide emissions. It will also drastically cut your emissions of sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and particulates-primary components of urban air pollution, which inflicts serious harm to human health and the environment. These pollutant emissions have a market value (about $100/ton for sulfur, and, in some places, more than $1000/ton for NOx). So, here is another good reason to become a "cool" company: You may be able to make money reducing these harmful air pollutants.
|
|
|
