The Sustainability Leaders Workshop

Happy New Year!

With the new year (and new decade) come resolutions and one of those is probably to do with advancing your organization's commitment to sustainability. If that describes you, then consider the Sustainability Leaders Workshop by Esty Environmental Partners. Esty EP has long been a pioneer in corporate sustainability strategy consulting, but this new offering (see the brochure below) takes the Esty framework and makes it available to a broader audience.

Kyle Cahill Joins Viridus' Advisory Board

We are thrilled to announce that Kyle Cahill has joined Viridus' advisory board and will soon be posting here on this blog as well as helping moderate the discussion on the Viridus private network. Now Kyle brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to Viridus, not the least being that he designed, built and launched an online corporate sustainability network for the Environmental Defense Fund called the EDF Innovation Exchange.

Here's a little more about Kyle:

Kyle Cahill is an experienced environmental strategist and business communicator who has worked with numerous Fortune 500 companies on corporate environmental innovations. Most recently, he was Director of Corporate Engagement at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a leading market-focused environmental nonprofit. While at EDF, Kyle created the EDF Innovation Exchange, a first of its kind knowledge management and network collaboration initiative aimed at crowd-sourcing a comprehensive library of environmental content, best practices, and tools through a peer community of practitioners engaged in environmental initiatives. Kyle is an active spokesperson to the media and at events on the business case for sustainability, climate change solutions, nanotechnology, environmental change management, marketing environmental initiatives, and public/private sector collaboration. He is co-author of the Guide to Successful Corporate-NGO Partnerships, developed the DuPont/EDF Nano Risk Framework and is on the Advisory Board of the NanoBusiness Alliance. Kyle earned his M.B.A. focused in corporate social responsibility from the Isenberg School at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and his B.A. in English Literature from Amherst College.

Welcome aboard!

Obama Speech on Clean Energy at MIT

Earlier today I was in the audience of students, faculty, local entrepreneurs and politicians at MIT when President Obama delivered a speech on clean energy. His talk was brief but made some notable points. The main point, I think, was him exhorting the country to "take a risk on ideas that might fail, but that could also change the world." Obama cited as examples some research at MIT where scientists are using viruses to grow batteries instead of building them. Pretty cool.

Obama started by touting recent achievements in advancing clean energy research and development. Apparently there is $80 billion of the stimulus money ear marked for green projects. And Obama mentioned Governor Patrick's tripling of investment in energy efficiency (the biggest short term opportunity, in my view). He then simultaneously held out a carrot and stick saying that the Pentagon had declared America's dependence on foreign oil a security risk and that there was a $2 trillion potential market in wind energy over the next two decades (Massachusetts just won some federal grant money to build a wind blade test facility).

I haven't read the press coverage on his speech yet, but I bet most will pick up on what he called the biggest obstacle to advancing clean energy legislation. What he called the "myth that there is little or nothing we can do; that politics is broken." I'm not sure that's the biggest obstacle, but it's real for sure.

He finished with some of the best lines of the speech saying that "Today's frontiers can't be found on a map" and that "pioneers are not off in the wilderness but all around us." How true. I see that on Viridus everyday where dedicated, passionate and talented professionals are advancing corporate sustainability.

You can see Obama's speech streamed online here thanks to the good folks at MIT.

By the way, the legislation that Obama mentioned (but did not go into any detail about) was the Boxer-Kerry bill, proposed climate change legislation. I've embed a summary version below or you can click on the previous link for all 800+ pages of goodness.

The center piece of the proposed legislation is a cap-and-trade program where the initial credits are auctioned off. This would put a price on a ton of CO2 and would do so rather quickly, similar to RGGI, here in New England. Come join the discussion on Virid.us on how this proposed legislation would affect business and the environment.

Lastly, I just have to say that I was able to briefly meet the President and shake his hand which was pretty cool.

Obama Leaves

That was cool. Good speech. Got to meet Obama, ever so briefly.

Obama Arrives

Obama Speech on Clean Energy at MIT

Waiting for the President to arrive here at Kresge Auditorium where he is planning to address MIT students, faculty, local business leaders and politicians. I started reading the 800+ page Boxer-Kerry climate change legislation last night that Obama is going to promote. Hopefully he'll have some way to summarize.


Lots of press here...they probably outnumber students!

Newsweek Unveils "Green Ranking" of Large US Companies

When I saw Newsweek's latest "green" rankings out on America's largest companies I was immediately reminded of the US News ranking of universities. The US News report is hugely promoted in the media and most if not all university bound students and their parents are at least generally aware of the top schools on the list. The schools themselves, however, hate the list. Actually I shouldn't say that, the schools who believe they should have a perch atop the list hate it...the little underdogs love it. Trust me, go ask someone at Harvard what they think of the list!

There is definitely truth in the criticisms about the ranking criteria, how performance is measured, etc. but I like Ariel Schwartz of Fast Company who wrote, "...the rankings aren't perfect...[but] as a tool for public humiliation--they can't be beat!"

Read the whole list for more detail but here are the top 20 greenest large companies according to Newsweek.

1. Hewlett-Packard
2. Dell
3. Johnson & Johnson
4. Intel
5. IBM
6. State Street
7. Nike
8. Bristol-Myers Squibb
9. Applied Materials
10. Starbucks
11. Johnson Controls
12. Cisco Systems
13. Wells Fargo
14. Sun Microsystems
15. Sprint Nextel
16. Adobe Systems
17. Advanced Micro Devices
18. Kohl's
19. Allergan
20. Staples

Click here to continue the conversation on Viridus with other corporate sustainability professionals.

Don't ask a question unless you already know the answer

That's some advice I would have given Congresswoman Blackburn before she questioned Al Gore during his testimony to Congress: