Green Products Gain a Competitive Advantage

Too often, eco-friendly companies were only able to compete with their run-of-the-mill competitors because greenies were willing to pay a price premium to protect the environment.

But things have changed. Not only have hybrids become more cost-effective–so have all sorts of products that don’t use high-priced energy in their manufacturing processes. From the Wall Street Journal:

Does it finally pay to go green?

Consumers typically have paid a premium for environmentally friendly products. But with soaring energy prices pushing up the price of mainstream goods, green products are becoming just as — or even more — affordable these days.

The reason is that environmentally friendly products usually have less fossil-fuel content than competing nongreen brands. Their manufacture also tends to consume less oil, since green entrepreneurs favor renewable-energy and energy-saving practices.

“It’s great for us,” said Eco-Products CEO Steve Savage. “Our products are made from a corn derivative, and our competition uses petroleum. They are having price increases where our prices are stable.”

Going green is starting to make a lot more sense for the corporate bottom line.

Honda Ups the Ante With Zero-Emission Clarity

The dream of a hydrogen economy took one step closer to becoming reality today:

Honda’s new zero-emission, hydrogen fuel cell car rolled off a Japanese production line Monday and is headed to Southern California, where Hollywood is already abuzz over the latest splash in green motoring.

The FCX Clarity, which runs on hydrogen and electricity, emits only water and none of the noxious fumes believed to induce global warming. It is also two times more energy efficient than a gas-electric hybrid and three times that of a standard gasoline-powered car, the company says.

Unfortunately, we have a ways to go before the hydrogen fuel cell cars become the norm, mainly because of a “dearth of hydrogen fuel stations.” Honda limited sales of the Clarity to customers living in the areas of SoCal with hydrogen stations.

Even in eco-chic California, the necessary infrastructure doesn’t yet exist for fuel cells to beat out the internal combustion engine:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for a statewide network of hydrogen stations, but progress has been slow.

The state has also recently relaxed a mandate for the number of zero-emission cars it aims to have on roads. By 2014, automakers must now sell 7,500 electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, a reduction of 70 percent.

Still, it’s very cool to have these zero-emissions cars on the road, even if that road doesn’t extend out of southern California.

World Cup Exclusion as Pollution Punishment? It Won’t Work

Finally, a story that connects my two passions: climate change and soccer.

International climate talks in Bonn, German are coming to an end “with recriminations about scant progress.” According to Reuters environment blog, “[S]ome delegates have been more agitated talking about the Euro 2008 soccer than about the threats to the planet.”

But Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists has a novel idea to get the delegates to focus:

If countries don’t comply [with emission targets] their teams shouldn’t be allowed to go to the World Cup.

Unfortunately, the plan is doomed from the start. Neither of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters–the U.S. and China–are soccer nations. Meyer’s proposal would provide zero motivation for either one to reach their emission targets.

No doubt, this World Cup punishment would disproportionately hurt countries in Europe and Latin America, where the Beautiful Game is an obsession.

(Clearly I’m taking this idea WAY too seriously…)

San Fran To Become Solar City

More good news out of San Francisco, via Earth2Tech:

After six months of hard-fought politicking, the San Francisco board of supervisors has finally approved the Solar Energy Incentive Program, the country’s largest municipal solar program. The program has been greenlighted for 10 years and has an annual budget of $3 million dollars. The money will be doled out as rebates in the form of tax incentives for private solar installations. Now the ordinance just needs approval from Mayor Newsom, who has been pushing for this program; it’s expected that the solar energy incentive program will be operational in the coming weeks.

The Sun Devils Love Sun Power

From the Arizona Republic:

More than 20 percent of the energy needs of Arizona State University’s main campus eventually could be met by one of the largest rooftop solar-power plants in the United States.

ASU planned to announce an agreement today under which three companies will install, at their expense, solar electricity-generating equipment on up to 330,000 square feet of rooftop space at its main campus in Tempe. [...]

The plan calls for 2 megawatts of generating capacity installed on 135,000 square feet by the end of the year.

That’s enough to run 4,600 computers and reduce carbon emissions by 2,825 tons per year, or the equivalent of taking 530 cars off the road for a year. Long-term plans call for up to 7 megawatts of solar-generating capacity to be built at ASU in Tempe, with additional solar installations at its campuses in downtown Phoenix and other locations.

$45 Trillion: That’s a LOT of Green

The International Energy Agency’s new report on the amount of investment needed ($45 trillion!!!) to combat climate change AND keep economic growth humming along has made quite the splash. IEA director Nobuo Tanaka doesn’t sugarcoat the difficulties we face:

Mr. Tanaka said the world would “essentially require a new global energy revolution which would completely transform the way we produce and use energy.”

The report said carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology will have to be part of the solution:

To reach the goal of halving emissions, it said, among the most important measures would be equipping more than 50 gas and coal power plants each year with equipment to capture and sequester carbon dioxide.

Trouble is, the amount of investment into bringing the CCS process to market is “lagging badly.” Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at Berkeley, said about CCS development: “It’s a total mess.”

And no doubt it will be an expensive mess. From the Wall Street Journal:

If clean-energy technologies – like “clean-coal” power plants that would bury CO2 emissions underground – don’t develop as smoothly as optimists hope, the cost of cutting emissions could be a lot higher: think $500 per ton, according to the IEA.

Solar Power Nearing a Tipping Point?

The soaring price of electricity means solar power may be competitive with other energy sources sooner than expected–one solar CEO thinks it could happy by 2010. Reuters reports:

The tipping point at which the world’s cleanest, most renewable resource is cost-competitive with other sources of energy on electricity grids could happen within two to five years in some U.S. regions and countries if the price of fossil fuels continues to rise at its current pace, they add.

“In the long run — as in two to three years — you should see competitiveness especially with the grid in a number of regions in the world,” said Vishal Shah, an analyst who tracks the industry at U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Tom Werner, chief executive of SunPower Corp, the largest North American solar company by sales, sees such “grid parity” for solar power in the United States and elsewhere happening in about five years, or possibly as soon as 2010.

“That’s actually more aggressive than what we would say previously, and that’s because the cost of electricity is going up faster than we had ever modeled,” Werner said an interview at the Reuters Global Energy Summit on June 3.

“It is becoming more and more clear it is a real possibility, and we believe, a reality,” he said.

The End of the Road for the Hummer

It looks like the Hummer may go the way of the De Lorean. From the New York Times:

Even General Motors, the steadfast champion of big sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, is thinking small now. [...]

G.M.’s chairman and chief executive, Rick Wagoner, said G.M. will cease production at four North American assembly plants that make S.U.V.’s and pickups by 2010.

And in a humbling admission that the S.U.V. era is all but over, G.M., Detroit’s leading automaker, said it was considering selling the gas-guzzling Hummer brand it once regarded as a pillar of future growth.

The Goracle Speaks

“While it’s important that people change their light bulbs, it’s even more important that we change the laws.”

–Al Gore, discussing the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act now being debated in the Senate.