In 1999, fewer than 500 companies issued sustainability reports. That number is now over 3,500. Once only a concern for a few niche companies with sustainability as a core value and brand differentiator, corporate sustainability has moved categorically into the mainstream.

Today, there is a growing demand for companies to demonstrate a responsible, sustainable, long-term approach to business, to produce a statement of their sustainability activities, and to clearly show how this relates to their core business strategy. Corporate sustainability reports now contain detailed performance metrics and reflect the priority companies have given to measuring and managing the impact of their operations.

Several factors have driven the current momentum for sustainable corporate performance:

Stakeholder expectations: Companies understand the many benefits of sustainable operations, especially now that they engage with a wider range of stakeholders – shareholders, employees, business partners, investors, consumers, NGOs, the media – who demand accountability and transparency.

Global standards: The development and acceptance of global standards has played a critical role in sustainability reporting and performance management. Currently, over 1,500 companies across 60 countries have adopted the G3 standards – introduced by the Global Reporting Initiative, which provides a universal framework for disclosure. Additionally, groups such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the World Resources Institute and the World Intellectual Capital Initiative have also developed useful resources for business reporting language.

Investor interest: Institutional investors and stock exchanges have also asked for better sustainability reporting from listed companies. Consequently, environmental, social and corporate governance indices have been established, such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and The Carbon Disclosure Project.

Natural resource constraints: Every company that depends on natural resources is facing increased costs and constraints. Sustainability helps companies improve their operations as natural resource constraints reshape markets.

In November, I had the honor of serving on the Selection Committee of the Zayed Future Energy Prize – a global initiative by the Abu Dhabi government that recognizes and rewards outstanding efforts in the renewable energy and sustainability sectors. I was impressed by the number of companies that had developed approaches, practices and processes to measure their performance as sustainable businesses.

From my experience on the Selection Committee, one thing is clear: corporate sustainability is becoming a boardroom strategy that is driving enormous creativity, efficiency and innovation.

The day may come when understanding the lifecycle of a product or service is so engrained in business that we won’t need to call that “sustainability”. Until then, initiatives such as the Zayed Future Energy Prize help showcase and promote the business value of sustainability, while facilitating sharing and learning between large corporations, NGOs and individuals.

Article by Roberta B. Bowman, Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at Duke Energy, and served as a member of the Selection Committee for the 2012 Zayed Future Energy Prize. Article appearing courtesy Earth & Industry.

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European engineers have completed a 90-foot bridge over the River Tweed in Wales that is made completely from recycled plastic, the first thermoplastic bridge to be built outside the U.S.

The bridge, which consists of 50 tons of recycled high-density polyethylene materials that would have otherwise been buried in landfills, is able to support vehicles as heavy as 44 tons. Because it is made of plastic, it will never rot or rust, and will not require chemical treatment, painting, or regular maintenance, according to Vertech Composites, the UK-based firm that designed and built the bridge.

And with an expected lifespan of about 50 years, that would yield a savings of $300 per-square-foot during its lifecycle compared with bridges made of standard building materials, the firm says.

In completing the project, Vertech engineers worked with several groups, including the Cardiff University School of Engineering and Rutgers University’s Advanced Polymer Center, that also helped construct a thermoplastic composite bridge at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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E-waste is the largest growing waste stream in the country. Americans generate 2.5 million tons of e-waste a year— more than enough to fill a line of dump trucks from our Nation's capital to Disney World. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates 140 million cell phones – 65,000 tons – are discarded in the U.S. each year. Some are shoved into drawers, others end up in landfills. Today, only about 10 percent are collected for reuse or recycling.
 
On July 20 the EPA invited Sprint, along with Dell and Sony, to Austin, Texas to be among the first corporations to publicly commit to follow a new national e-waste strategy. We were honored to join EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, General Services Administrator Martha Johnson, and White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley as they issued the National Strategy for Electronic Stewardship.
 
The collaborative work of the EPA, General Services Administration (GSA), Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the dozen additional agencies represented on the e-waste task force that developed the National Strategy over the past eight months is an example to all who manufacture and distribute electronic products. Sprint commends the Federal Government's commitment to ensure that all electronics it uses are reused or recycled at a certified recycler. An e-waste solution will require on-going collaboration, shared commitment, accountability and meaningful action from companies in all sectors. I am proud that Sprint – along with Dell and Sony – has implemented sustainable business practices early on.

Sprint's Electronics Stewardship Policy sets aggressive e-waste goals, including the collection of nine phones for reuse or recycling for every 10 sold by 2017. To date, Sprint has collected more than 25 million mobile phones— keeping them out of landfills, helping to conserve resources, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and preventing air and water pollution.
 
For the second year, Sprint received the Sustainability Leadership Award from the International Electronics Recycling Conference for our full-lifecycle product approach. On the design end, we have more environmentally-friendly devices and accessories than any other carrier. We recently launched our fourth green device and first eco-friendly Android phone – the new Samsung Replenish. It's made with 82 percent recyclable materials, and is the first phone in the U.S. with a solar battery cover.  And it's the first mobile device to receive UL Environment's Platinum certification. 
 
At the other end of the lifecycle, Sprint's industry-first Electronics Stewardship Policy gave us the opportunity to work with environmental organizations like BSR, Basel Action Network and ABI Research to develop goals. The new national e-waste policy will enhance progress in the area of sustainable electronics management. Sprint's commitment to the new national strategy will boost our goals in several areas including greater transparency in our operations.
 
Sprint is honored to be among the first companies to sign the new sustainable electronics management policy and to make our commitment public.

Article by Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint

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Why do so many energy insiders insist that home energy automation will fail? Many whom I respect say the typical householder will never take the time to fiddle with smart gadgets that reduce energy costs.

Their skepticism, however, just elicits a verbal shrug from Peter Porteous, CEO of Blue Line Innovations, maker of the PowerCost Monitor, one of the many devices hitting the market to help homeowners manage their energy.

Porteous sees things differently because he spent several years selling products in other industries. Smart energy devices, he says, are really no different than food, automotives or any other consumer item.

“We are no different than any other market. The text book tells it all. First there are the early adopters, and you gradually move through the product lifecycle to where there is mass adoption. Business models evolve, and products evolve, and gradually you make yourself more appealing to a wider segment of the population. There are no surprises here,” he told me by phone this week.

We’ll know soon if he’s right. The company has worked with about 125 utilities on various pilots and projects since it was formed about seven years ago. But it’s not relying solely on that channel to get its product out. Blue Line is testing its ability to thrive in the mass market by offering its energy display monitor directly to consumers in stores like Lowes and Frys.

The PowerCost Monitor’s bragging rights are that it’s relatively cheap (about $100 for a basic model), easy to install (no electrician required), and does not rely on a smart meter. In fact, Porteous says the system works with 90 percent of existing meters, even the old-fashion analog kind. A sensor placed on the home’s meter reads your electricity usage and transmits it wirelessly to a handheld display inside the house. The display shows how much electricity you’re using both in kilowatt-hours and in dollars and cents. A more advanced cloud-based system (about $229) lets consumers slice and dice their home energy use and pinpoint the appliances that are energy hogs. The technology is increasingly moving away from the displays and toward use of cell phones, making it easy to monitor energy usage while away from home.

Porteous also is nonplussed by Google and Microsoft’s recent decision to quit the home energy display market. Skeptics cited the back-to-back departure of the two giants as evidence that smart grid devices have no place in the home. But again Porteous sees the event as a function of a normal market. Smart energy is non-core to Google and Microsoft, and “it is just the natural course of companies in harder times to focus their resources,” he says.

Their departure was something of a blow to Blue Line, since it used the Google and Microsoft applications with its hardware. However, Blue Line was already well on its way to launching a third option offered by People Power when the giants announced they were transitioning out. “The impact was quite minimal,” he says.

So will Blue Line prove that the home energy skeptics are off base? We’ll see. In the meantime, we should probably cut the skeptics some slack. Innovation is new to the electric industry. Those who frequent energy conferences have heard the line many times that while Alexander Graham Bell would be shocked at the changes made to telephones, and barely recognize the technology, Thomas Edison could pretty much pick up where he left off if he were to return today. But if Porteous and his competitors have their way, we’ll have a pair of bewildered ghosts.

Elisa Wood is a long-time energy writer whose work appears in many of the industry’s top magazines and newsletters. She is publisher of the Energy Efficiency Markets podcast and newsletter.

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In an important development on the intellectual property front, but with particular import for Israeli clean tech companies targeting the U.S. market for strategic partnerships and licensing, the Israel Patent Office (ILPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently announced a Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot project between the two offices.

The PPH provides that an applicant receiving a ruling from the ILPO that at least one claim in an application is patentable may request that the USPTO expedite examination of corresponding claims in corresponding applications and vice versa (see USPTO PPH info here).

This pilot project, like other PPH agreements already in place between the USPTO and patent offices in other countries, promises to accelerate and improve the patent prosecution process for patent applicants with interest in procuring both U.S. and Israeli patents on their inventions.

While the potential benefits of the program are not limited to clean tech innovations, this pilot project provides a particular potential boon to Israeli clean tech companies and their investors, especially if such companies also leverage the existing “green patent” programs in force in both the USPTO and the ILPO. Israel remains a hotbed of clean tech innovation and development, while the US market continues to be one of the markets of choice for Israeli technology, along with China and India.

Combining the PPH pilot project with existing “green” patent programs in the ILPO and USPTO opens up exciting possibilities for clean tech innovators.

Savvy Israeli clean tech companies, and the burgeoning Israel clean tech venture capital (“VC”) community that finances those companies, should work with patent counsel and determine whether their innovations qualify for inclusion in either the ILPO’s “green patent” program (allowing priority examination from the ILPO for applications classified as “green” via applicant request by letter, without the need for extra fees) or the USPTO’s Green Technology Pilot Program (offering successful petition filers expedited first Office Actions for “green” inventions).

For strategically important inventions, inclusion in either program could allow for quicker patent issuance, thereby increasing the attractiveness of the technology to later-round investors, strategic partners, and potential licensing or enforcement targets.

As an example, a hypothetical Israeli clean tech company could accelerate an existing pending patent application in the ILPO, by requesting classification in the “green patent” program, and then see that patent issue with reduced pendency. The company could then take the newly-issued “green patent” and utilize the PPH pilot project to get expedited examination and potential issuance in the USPTO.

This approach could shave years off the patent prosecution lifecycle for such a company, and thereby open up intellectual property monetization opportunities earlier in the investment lifecycle as well.

The USPTO has not been shy about touting the benefits of PPH agreements, like the one it just entered into with the ILPO. Among the benefits highlighted by the USPTO for these types of arrangements are: (1) cost savings to applicants, on the legal and administrative fee front at least, because of shorter pendency and fewer Office Actions, (2) quicker examination of PPH applications, usually within a few months of acceptance of the PPH request, and (3) a much higher allowance rate (>90%) for PPH applications over that of non-PPH cases (<50%).

Israeli companies, of all stripes, including clean tech companies, targeting U.S. patents can now avail themselves of the aforementioned benefits, subject to the minimal requirements of the PPH pilot project.

The pilot project started July 1, 2011 and is scheduled to run for one year. If successful, there is a possibility that the term of the pilot project will be extended. Alternatively, if the pilot project is underutilized or proves a burden on resources, it can be terminated early at the discretion of the respective patent offices.

Clean tech companies interested in procuring U.S. and Israeli patents would do well to consider use of the PPH, and where possible an expedited “green” patent examination scheme, in order to obtain those patents in a shorter time at reduced cost. Similar strategies have been discussed with respect to other patent offices that host both PPH agreements with the USPTO and “green” patent programs – it is now Israel’s turn to get in the game.

Article by Gaston Kroub, a partner in the New York office of Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell LLP. Gaston serves as the co-chair of the Greentech Committee of the NYSBA’s IP Section and has been accredited as a LEED Green Associate. Gaston is a registered patent attorney whose practice focuses on intellectual property litigation and counseling.

Article appearing courtesy Green Patent Blog.

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A study by Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang of the World Bank looked at the relative importance of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gasses from oil, natural gas, and coal compared to the life cycle and supply chain emissions of domesticated animals raised for food. They conclude that greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the lifecycle and supply chain of animals raised for food account for 51% of annual emissions caused by humans and should be given higher priority in global efforts to fight climate change.

While livestock are already known to contribute to GHG emissions, their levels have been underestimated or simply overlooked, former and current World Bank environmental experts Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang.

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