Warner Bros Saving Cents With Green Sense

The New York Times reports today that Warner will cut its carbon emissions by 31 percent with new DVD cases containing less plastic:

Warner Home Video, by far the world’s largest distributor of television and movies on DVDs, has started releasing all of its new and library titles in cases that have 20 percent less plastic, a spokeswoman said. In some instances, the cases feature a thin layer of plastic; others have cutouts in the walls.

Lightening the load on the environment was the primary motivator, says Warner, which said the effort will reduce its home entertainment division’s carbon emissions by 31 percent.

But flimsier is also less expensive, and at a time when DVD sales are down sharply — 20 to 30 percent for some categories — every little cost saving helps. The changes save money on raw materials and shipping, although Warner would not estimate how much.

Now that makes both the business and enviro sides in me happy. And I love this great quote from the company’s green guru:

The initiative is “beneficial to the company’s bottom line,” said Shelley Billik, Warner’s vice president for environmental initiatives. But such moves are also “important in the preservation of natural resources” and “important to our employees,” she said.

Solar Thermal a Water Hog

I learned something new about concentrating solar power in the Washington Post yesterday–CSP uses a TON of water:

CSP, just like any thermal power plant, produces waste heat as a byproduct. In most cases, cooling towers release the heat to the atmosphere through evaporation, a process that uses gobs of water. In fact, CSP uses four times as much water as a natural gas plant and twice as much as a coal or nuclear plant.

Unfortunately, the best locations for new CSP plants are in southwestern deserts like Mojave, where sunlight is plentiful but water is rare.

Some environmentalists are also concerned about the effect new plant construction will have on endangered desert species. All of this presents interesting food for thought on what kinds of trade-offs we’ll need to make to cure our fossil fuel addiction.

Made in China: Renewable Energy Equipment

The manufacture of wind turbines, solar pv panels, and other clean energy products is increasingly happening in China and other rapidly developing nations. From the Financial Times:

While investment in renewable energy suffered in some of the world’s wealthiest countries last year, it is thriving in the BRICs [ed: Brazil, Russia, India, China]. China is becoming a big consumer of renewable energy: last year it added more solar capacity than any other country bar the US, and it has overtaken Japan as the biggest manufacturer of PV components. It is also reportedly introducing a preferential tariff for utilities for power that comes from utilities. But it is also pursuing rapid growth in manufacturing capacity of solar panels and wind turbine components.

A subsidy for solar manufacturing was announced in March, aimed at jobs growth. And it’s this sort of effort that could be the problem for all those green stimulus measures in developed countries, with their attached hopes of green jobs.

Not that we need another reason to get these industries up and running in the States, but the fact that green jobs are already going overseas should be strong motivation.