Category Archives: Green Executives

Leith Sharp

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Harvard University
Image via Wikipedia

While working in the Greening job I learned a lot in terms of systems and inspiration from Leith’s work at Harvard. She has done some amazing stuff at a bureaucracy like Harvard.

She was the first paid environmental officer on the Kensington campus when still a student and after graduation was hired to “green” the university, which she did for five years.She pushed for sustainable solid waste disposal, worked with the state transit authority to cut commuting times to the campus, and ran a greenhouse gas challenge, an environmental living program so people could learn how to live sustainably, and a “green office” program.

By the time she took up a Churchill Fellowship in 1999 there were eight staff, funded by grants from not-for-profit groups, and government and university funding.When she set off to study international trends, she discovered “we were the ones leading, and instead of me learning from everyone else’s programs I used to get invited to present the UNSW case study.

It was exciting to be asked but on the other hand I was devastated to realise that no one had the answers in the higher education sector.”She spoke at Harvard and was recruited to create and run a program aimed at the enormous task of greening the campus.Her initiatives at Harvard are estimated to be saving $US7millon annually and have set the pace in the US higher education sector. Sharp has plenty of practical advice on inculcating the cultural change that must support technical measures such as equipment upgrades, lighting and insulation improvements, and making it self-funding.

via Harvard visitor Leith Sharp sharpens focus on sustainability | The Australian.

Project Better Place – Concept Video

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Shai Agassi was predicted to be the future CEO of SAP. Instead, he started Project Better Place. This is an ambitious game changing idea to create infrastructure to support electric cars. In a way, his work is one part of the chicken and egg problem of extending the range of electric cars.

Israel and Renault-Nissan will be the first partnership to deploy electric cars on a large scale. Denmark is the second country. Shai explains it on his blog about the partnership and the concept.

You can follow more at Shai’s blog. Check out the video.

Carbon Neutrality to Carbon Advantage

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Dave Douglas in a Op-Ed in Business Week writes about the carbon or sustainability opportunities available for companies. Dave is the vice-president for Eco Responsibility at Sun Microsystems and like other Sun executives he writes a blog which makes for good reading.

Dave writes about the growing interest in Carbon Neutrality, which is impossible in actual reduction of carbon to zero. What we can do is increase efficiency and buy green energy and offset the rest.

Dave writes that working only for carbon neutrality is a missed opportunity.

It’s good for companies to invest in others’ good deeds, but right now it’s absolutely critical that companies invest in creating more sustainable versions of themselves. More than ever, we need the innovation that comes from competition and open markets. We need companies that view climate change not as a threat but as an opportunity—and are pursuing it with the enthusiasm that big opportunities engender. We need companies to go beyond carbon neutrality to something I call “carbon advantage.”

You can create a carbon advantage for your company in two ways: First, you can use efficiency and resource reduction to provide a fundamental cost advantage in your operations and products. Second, you can use innovation in green products and services to offer customers a competitive advantage, thus differentiating your offerings.

This has been my learning and the theme of my writing for some time now. I believe that there is a great top-line opportunity in this area rather than just risk reduction, cost savings or bottom line increases only. This is where sustainability and carbon become a business strategy.

Incidentally, it seems that Business Week’s subtitle on carbon offsets missed the point and Dave clarified his position again on this weblog. Business Week seems to have changed the sub title now. It just shows the exact point that Dave was trying to make – to move away from just Carbon neutrality and concentrate on carbon opportunities.

Green Jobs – How to find them?

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The Environmental Magazine – E, has a list of 10 Green jobs to look at. The specific jobs are not important. What is important to understand is the potential of ‘green’ jobs.

“People think there is some kind of mystery, ‘Where are the ‘green’ jobs?’” says Marie Kerpan, founder of consulting practice Green Careers, “There are a bazillion companies where you can take your skills and put it to work in a ‘green company.’”

So how do you do this?

There’s no secret to getting a job in the new green economy. It’s as basic as applying the job skills you’ve already developed (web design, sales, management) to a nonprofit or sustainable industry, or coordinating sustainable practices from within a corporate entity. Sometimes, as in green building or solar panel installing, these green jobs require a specific set of skills—and classes are organizing to fill the growing need. Other times, as in the organic food industry, ecotourism or sales and marketing of energy-efficient technology, anyone with a good work ethic can get in and create a great green career.

This is exactly my thinking. As there are opportunities in different organizations to reach and embrace this green opportunity, there are avenues for people to do the same. This is the same thinking I am using for myself.

Michael Norster on China, India and Alt Energy

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From the Eureka Report:

Will China’s growth impact on your investment decisions?

I think China is an absolute powerhouse. The world has underestimated China for far too long even though there are all these platitudes now about how important China will be in the global economy. America has a serious problem because China will emerge as a global power. They have high educational standards and are hard-working people. Their biggest issues will be their inefficient use of resources and a big pollution problem. China is a well of opportunity for energy, which is what my speciality has been, and the energy sector up there has massive potential. I’ve got contacts working in China and I’m constantly monitoring its economic growth. The reason why I haven’t invested to date is that firstly, I don’t have enough money to play in the game up there and secondly, the risk of doing business up there is heightened by the lack of a proper legal system. I think this poor legal system has been their Achilles heel and has really impeded their growth. Compare that with the US, parts of Europe and Australia, which are very rules-based.

What about India?

I think India has huge potential but is a very different scenario to China. It has a very large middle class and an English legal system, which has served them well. It has the same type of potential and issues as China in relation to resources and pollution. I think the biggest problem with India (and this is also happening in Australia) is their huge paper-based bureaucracy.

Businesspeople and entrepreneurs just hate red tape with a passion and the bureaucrats want you to fill in forms all day.

What’s your view on alternative energy investments in Australia like wind farms and solar energy?

Alternative energy is quite limited in Australia because we don’t have the regulatory or economic climate to encourage investment in that direction. We have some of the cheapest electricity in the world down here and that gives no incentive to begin any large-scale alternative energy projects. My experience with the wind farms is a case in point. But on a global scale there are massive opportunities in the sector. I’ve been looking at solar energy and the feeling seems to be that it’s nearly there as an investment opportunity. There are lots of countries getting into alternative energy (including solar), like Brazil, parts of Europe, Germany and Holland. These will turn out to be great investments because people will start to deliberately buy their energy needs from alternative and green sources.

Gunns, Cousins, Wood and Turnbull

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Well, the story of the pulp mill proposed by Gunns in the state of Tasmania in Australia is the story of many names, environmental issues, political plots and cost-benefit analysis.

Starting with the names. Gunns is proposing the cleanest and greenest pulp mill in the world. Wood is the owner and millionaire founder of wotif.com; one of most successful internet travel site. Cousins was the politicial consultant to John Howard, the prime minister of Australia for a decade and is the Government-appointed member of the Telstra board. He also sits on big company boards like Seven Network and IAG. Turnbull is the $125 million  (2005, BRW) worth businessman turned Environmental minister of the Howard
government.

Gunns proposed a pulp mill in Tasmania which was fast tracked by the Premier of Tasmania and the Federal government along with the approval of the Labour opposition. With Labour losing 3 marginal seats in the 2004 election in Tasmania over its timber policy; current opposition leader Kevin Rudd was not ready to sacrifice the seats.

However, what changed in the entire game is the combination of big and small businessmen along with the Greens to campaign against the proposed Gunns mill.

Gunns is proposing to build the greenest pulp mill in the world in the beautiful Tamar Valley, north of the city of Launceston. I visited Tasmania last Christmas and Launceston is a beautiful town. Tasmania as a whole has one of the most well preserved natural beauty in Australia. And tourists like myself are a big growth industry.

As the Australian explains: While zoned industrial, the Long Reach site is on the Tamar Valley wine route, renowned for its world-class cool-climate wines and successful tourist industry built on fine food and quality produce.

With Cousins joining Wood and others in this campaign it is becoming one set of businessman against another busieness. And why is this happening?

However Tasmania’s peak wine group, Wine Industry Tasmania, which has a Gunns representative on its board, has bluntly warned the mill’s allowable emission of odours and air pollutants threaten to “devastate” the region’s 27 vineyards, visited by 150,000 tourists each year.

Tasmania’s peak fishing body, the Fishing Industry Council, has made similar dire predictions about northern rock lobster, abalone, scallop and shark fisheries if dioxins contaminate seafood stock.

Both industries are frantically lobbying Turnbull and the Upper House to ensure, at the very least, Gunns faces automatic fines and mill shutdown if it breaches the guidelines. But such controls appear absent from the state permit conditions.

Adding the 150,000 tourists who visit this area every year, this becomes a significant business issue for all those involved there. Interestingly, the only cost-benefit analysis conducted on the pulp mill has concluded negatively against the mill.

Gunns claims the mill, which will create 290 full-time jobs once fully operational, will add $6.7 billion, or 2.5 per cent to the Tasmanian economy and an additional $894 million in extra tax revenue between 2008 and 2030.

The roundtable assessment – the only cost-benefit study done on the project – concludes Gunns has double-counted the tax benefits and failed to show $847.3 million in subsidies to the project. It puts dollar figures on impacts predicted by the tourism and fishing industries and health impacts of emissions predicted by the Australian Medical Association.

“If you add up risks to health and other (local) industries, plus the costs and subsidies, the total is $3.3 billion,” it concludes. “On a range of realistic scenarios, the pulp mill project may cause an economic loss to the state. The proposed mill does not represent sustainable development for Tasmania.”

The entry of Cousins is significant in this as he is taking this to Turnbull’s marginal seat in the coming Federal elections in Sydney.

Yesterday he (Cousins) told The Australian that he and others planned a campaign in Mr Turnbull’s eastern Sydney seat of Wentworth to inform voters about the minister’s “total cop-out” in approving the mill, which he said would devastate Tasmania’s tourism industry.

“A number of us are looking very carefully at Malcolm Turnbull’s failure to handle this matter in what we think is the appropriate way,” Mr Cousins said.

A bigger story was published in the Telegragh which calls it “Paradise Razed”.

On the Australian island of Tasmania, primeval forests are being felled and then napalmed, protected species poisoned, and water sources contaminated with pesticide – all to satisfy a rapacious logging industry, and all with the blessing of the government. Richard Flanagan reports on an ongoing saga of greed, corruption, political cowardice and ecological catastrophe.

It needs to be seen what happens in the end, but with the fight between the big names out in the open it is a very different ecological campaign.

China’s Green Incentives

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Incentives matter. China has been promoting and rewarding its local officials around the country based on GDP growth figures. This incentive model has played a part in the creation of the great Chinese growth miracle of the last two decades.

The Age reports that China has changed its incentive model:

CHINA has announced a new promotion system under which local officials’ careers will be judged by their performance in meeting environment protection and energy efficiency targets. The move comes as fears China’s surging economy is overheating and domestic unrest about environmental damage mount.

The State Council, China’s cabinet, is working on an environmental veto system under which green performance will be decisive in determining the futures of Government and Communist Party officials, a senior policymaker has told China Daily, the Government’s English-language newspaper.

This is a good major step taken by China. Even though with a communist background China has been clever enough to use some of the most important principles from Capitalism to drive its economic growth.

It goes back to the idea which Schelling talks about that government’s even though wanting to meet targets and deliver outcomes; the best they can and should do is concentrate on inputs and direction. In this case, the energy efficiency targets set by the central government will be supported by the green incentives to the party members. Hopefully this deliver the required outcomes. The bottomline is that this is a better model than mandating targets.

13 Socially Responsible Careers in Finance

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In Green jobs with Growth potential; I wrote that; “Makower has some good advice. It is important to gain a skill and then have a green tinge to it and not get pigeonholed into a environmental division… In that sense, environmental divisions will become redundant. The environmental lens will become part of the other lenses used by executives.”

Now ‘The forex blog has more on how to green (environmental and social aspects) your financial career:

If you’re interested in a financial career, you might be curious about how your interests can lead to reconciliation between your job and your belief system…Social finance means that financial instruments are used to promote social goals. Financial instruments used to accomplish these goals include credit, savings, investments, and loans, among other devices.

[...]

Social finance careers have expanded to the point where you can attend a school in London that focuses solely on social entrepreneurship. Whether your interests lie in a nonprofit or for profit participation in this specialized industry, you might wonder where your opportunities lie. Some social finance positions might include:

Community Investor: The community investor works with other individuals to gather, oversee, and direct capital to community investment opportunities in local or regional areas or abroad.

Micro-Financier:This individual seeks to provide impoverished individuals or communities with the means to invest or borrow money for business or community development.

Nonprofit Sector: The nonprofit sector is also the most diverse when it comes to opportunities. While some individuals are content to volunteer for nonprofit efforts, you can also seek a career as an executive or work as a freelance grant writer or project coordinator.

Social Entrepreneur: Unlike venture capitalists, social entrepreneurs provide innovative solutions to difficult social problems usually without seeking personal profit.

[...]

If you want to incorporate a social angle to your career objective, you will also need to expand your skills and experience through education and work. You can expect to gain the following:

Interdisciplinary Skills:You can also focus on technological, environmental, or leadership facets to social financial careers. Your interdisciplinary needs will depend upon whether you want to focus more on social or financial aspects within this field.

Leadership Opportunities: Social financing is a means to create innovative ways to improve social environments, and this field needs creative leaders who can take the initiative in many situations.

Flexibility: Careers in social financing currently may be definitive or broad and fairly undefined. You many find a way to travel the globe, or you may seek a situation where you’re alone and surrounded by books and archival materials.

Global Knowledge: Even if you end up in a back office surrounded by social financing accounting books, you will learn much about how people live in other communities around the world