I’ve noticed that a lot of the interviews I’m asked to do around “Renewable Energy – Facts and Fantasies” have very little to do with the subject matter of the book directly. I’m headed back to New York City in a couple of weeks to tape a TV show called “Getting Your Money’s Worth,” which, as the name suggests, helps viewers make better purchasing decisions.

Of course, there’s a tie-in here. Are consumers willing to shell out a few extra cents a kilowatt-hour for green electricity? That’s an interesting question. And here’s what Dr. Jason Scorse, behavioral economist, told me on the subject:

There is a phenomenon known as “status quo bias,” which means that people tend to keep doing what they’ve been doing. The inertia of change is very strong and hard to break, even if it’s a rational interest to do so.

So you ask people, “If green power were offered to you, full renewable power, that was say a ten percent premium on your electricity bill, would you sign up?” It has all these benefits, you help climate change, etc. You get rates in the realm of 80 percent of people say “Yeah, if it were a small fee, I would.” Between two-thirds and 80 percent. You then offer renewable power to people and you then send them a notice and say, “Here, we’re offering a green power, would you like to sign up? It’s only this much more a month.” You get rates of uptake five to ten percent max.

So you have this huge disconnect. Two-thirds or 80 percent said they’d do it, you offer it to them, most of them do not accept it — why is that? It’s because of default bias, or inertia.

You could change it so that when you get a new account with PG&E in California or whatever it is and other states, the default was you’re automatically enrolled in the green power, but you then had to be ask to be taken out. You say, “If you want to save money and go to the dirty power, your bill will be ten percent less; just let us know.” You’re going to get that 80 percent. Why? Because it was the default. People, when they get the thing in the mail, they’ll say “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it,” but they never get to it, they procrastinate. If you’re automatically enrolled, people do it. The second though, is to see how the psychology changed it. It goes from, “Should I do something that I’ll feel good about?” to “Do I really want to change to something bad?” The psychology changes. “I’m automatically enrolled in this. I kind of feel bad, switching to dirty power. Just to save a few bucks, do I want to pollute the earth and poison people?”

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As I reflect on my past three years at CBSR, I am struck by how far the Corporate Social Responsibility and sustainability movement has come. As we work in the trenches, it is sometimes hard to appreciate just how much transformation has taken place both in our personal lives and across the corporate sector. It is worth taking a minute to congratulate each other on our progress.

Like many of you, my life straddles a couple of worlds – most specifically, my roles of mother and business consultant.

As parents, we care deeply about the social, environmental and health impacts of products that we purchase and lifestyle choices we make. I am lucky to be able to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak, and make an earnest effort to do the right thing. We were early subscribers to green power, make organic choices at our supermarket, and support community initiatives. My kids have even been known to use ‘water savings’ as a way to avoid a bath! The thing is, most of my friends are doing this as well – and have been for several years. We’ve moved past the ‘business case conversation’ of why it is worth it, to the how. And we are doing this by sharing tips, making informed choices, and integrating sustainability into our daily lives.

Business feels like it is catching up but following a similar path. I was with a group of CSR practitioners recently and we talked about our ‘Two Solitudes’: those who get sustainability, and those who don’t. At times, our work still feels almost missionary – educating colleagues, sharing success stories, evangelizing the benefits – anything to make it easier and less heroic to be sustainable. Sometimes that gets tedious and we forget to recognize just how far the movement has come.

Summer is a good time for socializing and inevitably my business conversations turn to CSR. I am struck by how the discussion has changed over the last couple of years. The conversations usually start tentatively with me trying to figure out their ‘solitude’ so to speak. For those ‘in the know’, we forgo the business case conversation on ‘why’ and focus on the ‘how’. What is working for you in your industry, what are the best sources of information and guidance, what needs to happen at the system level to make substantive and sustained change… In other words, how do we move this complex issue forward and work together to do so most efficiently? The discussion is business focused, practical and refreshing.

For those not yet in the know, the conversation has shifted from indulgence to genuine interest, from skepticism to curiosity about what it means to their business. Yes, the business case of “why” is still at the forefront, but now, with a willingness to be convinced. That is progress for the movement and an open door for more conversation. Let’s recognize it as an opportunity and seize it.

It is an exciting time to be a CSR professional. Take a moment to celebrate how far the movement has come. And then get ready for the next wave of opportunity… things are getting exciting!

Article by Andrea Baldwin, Vice President of Membership and Advisory Services, CBSR, appearing courtesy 3BL Media.

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There’s one big reason why making your home more efficient should be at the top of your spring cleaning list: your home is addicted to coal. Did you know the average home produces twice as many emissions as the average car?

Just because your home doesn’t have a tailpipe, doesn’t mean that all the electricity you use for lights, TV, phones and computers is carbon-neutral. In fact, nearly 50 percent of our nation’s electricity comes from burning coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. If you’ve heard the word “fracking” then you know the natural gas you use for cooking and home heating also carries an environmental price tag. Likewise the water in our homes has to be treated and pumped — often hundreds of miles — and once it goes down the drain it has to be pumped back and treated again — all of which takes more coal-fired energy.

In fact, the average American home burns nearly three tons of coal a year. However, just by doing the easy stuff, you can improve your home’s efficiency by 20 percent or more. If everybody did it, America would save $40 billion a year, while creating jobs, improving health and reducing pollution.

So when you start your spring cleaning this year, do more than just clear out the dust and clutter. Take a few steps to kick out the coal too.

The good news is there are simple, easy, cost-saving ways to make your home more efficient. Focus on these four areas for making your home more efficient:

Lighting: Improved CFL bulbs, and new full-size LED bulbs are giving those 100-year old Edison light bulbs stiff competition. You can now replace a 60watt Edison bulb with a 20watt CFL or a 7watt LED that will screw into the same fixture and provide the same amount of light. Those dramatic energy savings mean cost-savings to you.

Put it this way: if you could buy a $100 bill for 20 bucks you would, right? Well that’s what you’re doing when you buy an LED light bulb. Even though the price of each bulb is higher, the cost to use them is much lower. Because the newer bulbs are both more efficient, and much longer lasting, they can save you anywhere from 50 to a 100 dollars over the life of the bulb. Which is why McKinsey calls LEDs the most cost-effective technology for fighting climate change. So swap those light bulbs and start saving money!

Electricity: The New York Times reports that the average American home today has about 25 consumer electronic products, compared with just three in 1980. Electronics now represent up to 15 percent of American power bills — the fastest rising slice of home electricity use. All that demand will require building hundreds of new coal-fired or nuclear power plants in coming years. Unless we can be more efficient with electricity.

Using smart strips to shut down devices you’re not using is one effective way to cut down your home’s coal habit. Buying EnergyStar appliances and TVs is another. Signing up for Green Power is a great way to get your home off coal, and send a clear signal you want a cleaner economy. Nearly 900 utilities across the country offer optional programs that allow you to pay a little bit extra to support investments in local clean energy. Find a Green Power program near you, and kick the coal habit today!

Water: Taking shorter showers is conservation. Taking your usual shower while using 50 percent less water is efficiency. Simple faucet aerators and low-flow showerheads can cut your water use from 2 to 5 gallons per minute down to 1 or 1.5 gallons per minute. These are dramatic savings that you won’t even notice while taking a shower or washing the dishes. And these simple devices will save you thousands of gallons of water, and hundreds of dollars in water bills. Because it takes energy to treat and transport water, every gallon you don’t use means less coal burned on your behalf.

Temperature: Half the energy in your home is likely used for heating and cooling, so anything you can do to stop air leaks will save energy. Even if you don’t have the money to replace windows or add insulation, there are simple things you can do to weatherize your home. Sealing cracks and drafts around doors and windows with caulking or weatherstripping is a good start. Sealing outlets and light switches with inexpensive foam gaskets is another way to block tiny holes that leak air. Regularly replacing the air filters on your heater and air-conditioner can keep these systems working properly and efficiently. As the weather heats up, opening windows for ventilation instead of using the AC can save energy and cut your home’s coal emissions as well.

Take the EnergyStar virtual home tour to find more ways to save in every room of your home.

Making your home more efficient will save you money that you would otherwise be spending on fossil fuels. So if you’re pissed off at the Koch Brothers, Halliburton, BP and the rest of the fossil fuel industry, making your home more efficient is the fastest, easiest way to cut into their profits.

This spring I’m creating a program that empowers young people to become Green Energy Agents and help their communities be more efficient. Together, we can all take a big bite out of coal!

Article by Andy Mannle, appearing courtesy Justmeans.

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In the last 15 years, Munich, the Bavarian capital of Germany, has managed to decrease its total residual waste volume, to 500,000 tons from 1.2 million tons. The goal of the city is to supply all private households with 100 percent renewable energy by the year 2015. Munich has been named Germany’s “Energy Saving Municipality” and the steps that it has taken in clean technologies have definitely showcased this fact. Below are just a few of the highlights of Munich’s cleantech sector.

1) WIP. WIP is one of Munich’s premier organizations that “plans, develops, realizes, and monitors systems and installations in the field of renewable energy technologies and environmental engineering.” They provide solutions in numerous fields, including wind energy, PV solar energy, biomass energy, building-related energy issues, environmental planning and urban energy, and desalination and water provision. It is the belief of WIP that renewable energy will assist towards the commitment of the Millennium Development Goals as it reduces poverty, provides health care access and enables education.

2) Munich Re Report on Growth in Renewable Energy. According to Munich Re’s end of 2010 report, “renewable energies are gaining in significance.” The cleantech sector has not only provided cleaner power generation, but also an influx of new employment opportunities. By the end of 2009, according to the report, over 300,000 individuals were involves in the renewable energy sector. Ludger Arnoldussen, Munich Re Board of Management, member stated, “We are excellently equipped to support the structural transformation of the energy supply sector by offering customized risk transfer products. Our spectrum ranges from traditional coverage for industrial facilities to complex solutions, such as performance guarantee covers enabling capital providers to reduce their investment risks.

3) Insurance4Renewables. Launched by RSA, Munich RE, and CarbonRe, Insurance4Renewables a global renewable energy insurance company that offers tailor-made products for renewable energy projects, as well as “support the development of insurance solutions that meet the requirements of renewable energy projects operating in developing countries where often the lack of data provides a barrier to insurers who aim to underwrite a number of renewable energy risks.”

4) European Solar Prize 2010. In 2010, Qatar was one of the winners of the 2010 European Solar Prize because of its determination and goals. The Munich City Utilities (SWM), made the aim to generate adequate amount of green power that would supply energy to more than 800,000 private households by the year 2015. Not only that but there is a biogas factory located at the Munich Zoo, wind turbines located in the city’s north sector, and numerous photovoltaic installations.

5) Green Electricity from Biowaste. Munich Waste Management Company has found ways to turn garden and kitchen waste into environmentally-friendly energy. The company has used new technologies, namely the method of dry fermentation, “while accounting for the principles of sustainable management and practicing regional recycling management with a high value-adding chair. This is an essential contribution to protecting our climate and conserving resources.” Dry fermentation technology complies with the sustainable, modern waste management. More than 25,000 tons of waste is utilized and it provides 3,780,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, which can feed 1,600 households annually.

6) Bringing Solar innovations to the United States. An international trading group in Munich, BayWa AG, is entering the United States Market. It bought 80 percent of stock from Focused Energy, which is a premium provider of photovoltaic system integration. “This is an important acquisition for us, since it allows BayWa to make a successful entry into the high-growth American PV market. The acquisition represents a further important step towards the consistent implementation of our growth strategy in the renewable energies area,” commented BayWa AG CEO, Klaus Josef Lutz. Lutz also stated that it enabled the company to get closer to the goal of generating one million EUR in revenue in the renewable energy area. “BayWa r.e is expanding its international presence in wholesale PV trading through this acquisition, and is thereby establishing access to one of the most attractive growth markets outside Europe,” emphasized Roland Schuler, BayWa Management Board member and Managing Director of BayWa r.e.

7) Munich’s Environmental Vision if they become Host of 2018 Olympics. Munich is vying to be the venue for the 2018 olympics. If they receive the bid, they want to showcase the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of not just the city but all of Germany. According to the official website for Munich’s bid, “Comprehensive environmental projects have been developed in alignment with the sustainability strategies of Munich, Bavaria, and Germany. Among the programs in planning are 18 flagship projects.” These projects include ones to showcase climate protection, natural environment, regional development and sustainable sports, and education and sustainable development.

8 ) SWM and Increase in Green Energy. SWM, a German public company, has the objective of environment protection and green energy. This company has been one of the forerunners of a completely green Munich by 2015. According to one press release for SWM, “The objective is double : supply at first with green electricity the 800 000 homes of Munich by 2015 (that is approximately 2 billion kilowatt‐hours a year) with its own power plants, then the whole city by 2025 (7 billion kWh). To reach this target, SWM will use all the possible sources of green energy: solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and hydraulics. Estimated total investment: 9 billion Euros, with local, national and European helps. “

9) Partnership between Sweden and Germany for Wind Energy. Two of the biggest cleantech players, Germany and Sweden are partnering up – Vattenfall, a Swedish renewable energy company, partnered with SWM to assist in the building of a extremely large offshore wind farm in the German North Sea. The project will cost more than one billion Euros and provide enough energy to feed 500,000 Munich homes. The project will begin in 2012 and will be finished by 2014.

10) InterSolar Expo. Insolar Expo is the largest European international trade fair showcasing solar technology. The main focuses are on solar architecture, photovoltaics, and solar thermal technology. It is the only solar technology fair in Europe that is recognized as an international trade fair by the World Organization for Trade Fairs and Exhibitions and the German Trade Fair Industry Association. Held in Munich every year, visitors include CEOs, engineers and consultants, policy makers, project developers, technical managers, regulatory bodies, research and development personnel, and safety managers. Many exhibits include information on conventional and non-conventional clean, renewable, and green energies, distribution and conservation systems, waste management systems, and environment monitoring.

Article by Shawn Lesser, president and founder of Atlanta-based Sustainable World Capital, which is focused on fund-raising for private equity cleantech/sustainable funds, as well as private cleantech companies and M&A. He is also a co- founder of the GCCA Global Cleantech Cluster Association, and can be reached at shawn.lesser@sworldcap.com

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The owners of the Empire State Building will buy 55 million kilowatt-hours of wind energy certificates annually, enough to cover the landmark tower’s yearly electricity needs, according to a New York Times report. The two-year deal with Green Mountain Energy, a renewable energy and carbon offset retailer recently acquired by NRG Energy, makes the 80-year-old building the biggest commercial purchaser of green power in New York State.

A year ago, the owners of the 102-story building began renovations that will cut energy use in the building by 38 percent by 2013, including a retrofit of its windows, improved insulation, and renovations to the cooling plant located in the basement. Anthony E. Malkin, president of Malkin Holdings, which supervises the building, said the effort to make the building more green “gives us a competitive advantage in attracting the best credit tenants at the best rents.”

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As surely as last year’s Paris fashions make their way west to New York, U.S. utilities are beginning to embrace European-style programs like feed-in tariffs and green power premiums.

State-level decoupling regulations are easing that transition to some extent. But many utilities are still reluctant to embrace the change fully, especially as prices for conventional energy have come back down and utilities are finding that available capacity in voluntary green power is going unsubscribed.

Utilities do not like the financial uncertainty posed by long-term contracting for renewable power to supply the programs if they are not going to be able to move the power. It inevitably puts the utility’s shareholder obligations at odds with its ratepayer obligations and results in one of two solutions: green premiums go up and make the company look bad on green; or, everyone on the system pays to cover the nut, and no one is happy.

Still, there are some utilities that are pushing forward with very aggressive programs, in spite of estimated rate increases from 5 to as much as 20 percent. What kind of utilities, you ask?

Well, there’s the rub. Municipal utilities — including the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power — and cooperatives — like Austin Energy — are choosing to move forward with very progressive, European-style system-wide rate hikes that will go directly to subsidize renewable power.

As noted in a recent Austin Statesman editorial on the proposed program in the Texas capitol, “it’s important to realize just how much weight city leaders have placed on environmental stewardship.”

In other words, the rate hikes and renewable support are a political statement. Indeed, they would have to be. There is little indication that even the most progressively deregulated states, such as California and Massachusetts, have rate structures in place that would allow for investor-owned utilities to take the same kind of risk on green power.

If programs like those proposed by LADWP and Austin Energy are clearly not scalable in the context of the “Edison” model, are media outlets and policymakers irresponsible when they to point to programs like these as potential models or as standard-bearers?

In the past, many of the same commentators pointed to Austin Energy’s GreenChoice program as another example of how a utility can lead in green power programming; but, because Texas is not fully deregulated, that program essentially substitutes for the competition that is offered by third-party suppliers elsewhere, at no cost to other ratepayers.

There is nothing wrong with looking to the innovations being made in public power, as long as we are careful to confine the lessons taken away from those programs to the public power context. Local political will empowers these co-ops to hike rates in the name of green.

But it is clear that the political will for the broad-based regulatory reform that would make these programs scalable is lacking in Washington.

photo: yurisantin

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Anyone watching the health care debate spread from Capitol Hill conference rooms to town halls nationwide knows that everyone agrees we need health care reform. The disagreement comes in determining what kind. Comprehensive tort reform fits under the heading and so would the implementation of a single-payer system, but the two solutions could not be much farther apart on the political spectrum. An apt analogy – as the summer vacation season comes to a close – may be the good old fashioned American road trip: the whole family knows the destination, but getting there is the tough part.

Policymakers, entrepreneurs, and F500 companies around the world are finding the same challenges in energy policy reform. And while the health care debate has taken on all of the melodrama and polemic one might expect from any topic that merits mention on former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s Facebook page, a more measured and thoughtful approach to energy policy reform would pay dividends for business, society and the planet.

The stumbling blocks come when moving from goal setting to implementation. That phase is rife with conflict, as commitment to the common goal meets with entrenchment, and progress becomes victim to compromise. There are philosophical disagreements even within the community of the most hardcore green power boosters (commercial scale renewable versus broad DG). Technology always poses a sort of arms race (i.e, PV, thin-film, wafer) as each step forward in policy progress can have the ancillary impact of threatening to kick off a sort of BetaMax/VHS platform war. That is not to say that there is even agreement on which renewable sources we should be harvesting (Wind or solar? Arizona and North Dakota give very different answers). Finally, resource conflicts also pose a problem (Should desert dwellers have to accommodate solar arrays that capture sun to power far-off Metro areas?)

All of this is to say of nothing of the actual market-based competition that is happening out in the field: between companies and their products for market share (a Vestas blade or GE?); between competing companies for financing (VC and stimulus both); and, between states or different energy producing regions who want to capture the revenue inherent in the shift away from coal and petroleum-based energy production, each in their own way.

Part of the problem is the tone and tenor of policy-making in the US right now… so much for post-partisanship. But, it is not only the two major political parties that are at each other’s throats, the default-to-conflict model is at work all the way down to the community level (click on over to EnergyWorks later to read about our model of working backwards from consensus rather than putting policy through the implementation meat grinder first).

As I wrote last week, in the face of a difficult economy and flagging support for clean energy when placed in an energy versus economy showdown, too many false starts on energy policy could further undermine and delay progress. For example, in an interesting Op-Ed in last week’s Boston Globe, two MIT professors argue that we are leaning far too heavily on electric vehicles as a panacea. Arguing that the technological challenges, integration difficulties, range limitations and even the environmental benefits are not as advertised (yet), they go on to recommend:

“Perhaps more important, the United States needs policies that will incentivize the lowest cost solutions for reducing vehicles’ greenhouse gas emissions and petroleum consumption, instead of targeting the adoption of specific technologies. It is hard to predict what role electric vehicles will ultimately play. Electricity’s potential to displace petroleum and diversify transportation’s source of energy is one of the more promising options. However, realizing the benefits of electric vehicles will depend on relative costs, consumer preferences, and sustained policy commitments. Transforming the current stampede into a more measured and rational approach may be the key to continuing the march toward electricity and greener transportation.”

Their point is well-taken. Geography is critical in the clean energy policy debate. Different states have different resource blends, politics, technological capabilities and infrastructure. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for American clean energy reform. In lieu of broad resource-specific or technology-specific grants that will inherently result in the designation of winners and losers, federal policy should drive load-serving entities to integrate renewables, vehicle manufacturers to cut emissions, and building owners to beef up efficiency, but to do so in the way that works best for them. After all, the end goals enjoy near-unanimous support, but like Chevy Chase’s ride in the Holiday Rambler — it is in getting there that you run into problems.

[photo credit: Flickr]

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These are the days for clean tech observers and professionals. Our most innovative companies are finally bringing game-changing technologies to market and into competitive parity on cost. The political will that has been lacking for decades seems to be gaining critical mass. Even corporate America seems to be on board with making a profitable shift to a green economy.

Still, it’s not all rosy in the green tech picture. Getting climate change legislation through the house was a bloodsport and, as previously noted on the CleanTechies Blog, the Senate looks increasingly unlikely to put anything substantial on the President’s desk this year. And that is just the new policy. Around the country, existing policies designed to enable clean energy adoption are floundering, and even with all of the aforementioned momentum, in a down economy policy makers cannot afford too many false starts.

The problems are rearing their head in every arena, even the most well-established and widely-accepted policy areas like the Renewable Portfolio Standard and other green power option programs. Last week, Austin Energy, the Texas utility announced that it still had more than 97% (that is not a typo) of its green power option capacity unsold. They attributed the slow sales to rising prices and the down economy, but the wrinkle is in what happens next. Since the green power option is a regulator-approved program, Austin Energy is entitled to receive full compensation for the green power they had to go out and secure on the forward market, even if premium sales under the program do not cover that cost. That means that every ratepayer is on the hook for the cost.

This is just one example of the unintended consequences that can occur when we are so anxious to adopt green programs that we make policy on the fly. The same sort of problems have been reported by CleanTechies and other leading green media channels in recent weeks with public charging stations for plug-in EVs. On their face, the stations are good for everyone involved: the utilities like the demand, consumers like the convenience,  and manufacturers like that the stations enable even the less passionate consumer to seriously consider a plug-in, and cities like the proactive “green” positioning. But, no one wants to pay for the power. And, who owns the equipment? How will the system integrate with existing utility infrastructure?

This is not dissimilar from the hurdles facing large-scale integration of renewable power in the US. We have innovation and investment lined up around the block for mega-scale wind and solar, so why isn’t the clean power coming online? Transmission capacity is insufficient and we can’t get new lines built.

The US isn’t alone in confronting the transmission hurdle. A Reuters story reprinted in the Boston Globe last week discussed Greece’s problems with bringing renewables online. The problem in Greece? According to government officials quoted in the story, its policy:

“Greece is notorious for its long licensing procedure…estimated at three to four years on average. The government has just passed a zoning law for renewables as well as approved new incentives for individuals to install solar panels on rooftops and sell the electricity, doing away with a licensing process that used to cost thousands of euros. Within the next two months, it plans to submit a law to shorten procedures for wind farms and small hydroelectric plants.”

No telling where that process will go, or what the new policy will really mean for investment and adoption, but until then the country will continue to rely on power from dust and smoke spewing power plants run off of the lignite that is strip-mined from the Greek countryside.

An industry that has always been hamstrung by pie-in-the-sky aspirations is now being crippled by a failure to deliver on the nitty-gritty (which is not to say that pie-in-the-sky is not still pulling too much of the attention and investment).

Here’s hoping that some of clean tech’s brightest minds and greatest innovators of the next generation will put aside the quest for the next killer app and take up the challenge on the public policy side. If the climate change fight is as grave a challenge as advertised then it is not too strained a comparison to say that what clean tech needs now are the kind of understated heroes that emerged in the civil rights fights of the 50’s and 60’s. We have our MLKs and JFKs, what we need now is a Thurgood Marshall. Is she out there?

[photo credit: Flickr]

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