Every year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency honors Green Power Partners that commit to buying renewable such as a solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, biogas, and low-impact hydro. Last week the EPA honored 17 companies that buy a combined total of almost 4 billion kilowatt hours of green power each year. The Green Power Partners of the year are Whole Foods Market, Wells Fargo and Co., Staples, PepsiCo., Mohawk Fine Paper, Johnson and Johnson, and the City of Bellingham, WA.

Other winners;

Timberland Co., Macy’s West Division, and the City of Chico, CA all won for on-site generation. Kohl’s, PepsiAmericas Inc., Pepsi Bottling Group Inc., Pepsi Bottling Ventures, New York

University, Starbucks and Sloan Valve Co. were named Green Power Purchase Leaders. 3Degrees, Sterling Planet and SunEdison all won top renewable energy marketers for their work selling renewable energy certificates.

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LEED in China?

GreenBiz is the source for this very cool article about a green building initiative in China - yes, China.

“Under a program called the Urban Sustainability Initiative, U.C. Berkeley has been working in China, researching technologies and design of sustainable communities to make the EcoBlock a reality, first as a portotype, but soon to spread across China. A hugely collaborative effort involving an interdisciplinary team put together by the College of Environmental Design at Berkeley, the Tianjin Urban Planning and Design Institute and the Gordon Moore Foundation, the team has been working to integrate the best of clean technologies into the decision-making processes of urban areas throughout the developing world. In 2006, U.C. representatives met with officials from central and local governments in China to identify a site suitable for development of an EcoBlock prototype and settled on Qingdao, a 600-unit building that will be replicated eight and a half times across 23 hectare (56 acre) plot of land.”

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Product Review time

Hymini

HYmini is a handheld, universal charger/adapter device that harnesses renewable wind power/solar power and conventional wall plug power to recharge almost all of your 5V digital gadgets.

“Spend an hour outside in the sun with HYmini and you’ll get enough power for 2 full hours of MP3 playtime. Ride your bike for an hour, with HYmini strapped on your arm, or mounted on the handlebars, and you’ll have enough power for over 50 digital photos or about 15 extra minutes on your cell phone.

Mount HYmini on a car window, drive about 40 MPR, and you’ll generate enough power to listen to over 8 hours of music on your MP3 or chat on your cell for over 40 minutes.”

 

Solio

Solio is a hybrid charger that can accept power from either the wall socket or the Sun and is powerful enough to charge all your handheld electronics. One hour of sun will give you enough charge to listen to your iPod for about an hour or provide up to 25 minutes of additional talk time on your phone. Solio comes in Silver, White, Black, and Pink and goes for $99.95. Some interesting facts;

- One hour of sunlight will provide about one hour of play time on your iPod

- Solio can store energy for up to one year

- A fully charged Solio will completely charge an average cell phone at least twice

- 60 minutes of sunlight will provide approx. 25 minutes of talk time and 10 hours of standby time.

Reware

Reware makes a lot of different products, my favorite is the PowerPocket 6.5 Watt. Powerpockets use the latest in Thin-Film solar energy technology to quickly and efficiently turn sunshine into electricity. The PowerPocket 6.5 Watt charges most micro-devices at the same speed as plugging them into the wall. Reware also makes bags that are big enough for your laptop with solar panels on the side that can charge almost as fast as plugging in to the wall.

All of these chargers connect easily to most gadgets and provide free, environmentally-safe energy. Another example of some cool, affordable products that are easy to adopt and yet drastically decrease your energy consumption, and lower your electricity bill.

Trying to get your company to go green - just thinking about it? Here are two comprehensive reports that illustrate that not only does going green help the environment but that green companies outperform their rivals. According to a recent study of 1,500 companies there is a “strong, positive, and growing correlation between industrial companies’ sustainability in general, and climate change in particular, and their competitiveness and financial performance”. The study known as the Carbon Beta and Equity Performance was performed by Innovest, an investment research firm. As James Murray with GreenBiz.com wrote; “Companies with sophisticated and comprehensive climate change strategies have financially outperformed their competitors over the last three years”. That’s big.

The report predicted that “In the longer term, the out-performance potential will become even greater as the capital markets become more fully sensitized to the financial and competitive consequences of environmental and climate change considerations”. The report also called for more accurate reporting of corporate green initiatives to replace current muddied, inadequate methods. According to Matthew Kiernan, founder and CEO of Innovest, there is more than $40 trillion of institutional investor assets now concerned about climate change. Get the Carbon Beta and Equity Performance report here.

Innovest has also been the lead researcher for the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) since its inception five years ago. The CDP analyzes the climate change strategies and performance of the world’s 500 largest public companies, based on their responses to the questions put to the companies’ CEOs, on the investors’ behalf. The CDP is is also available for download from this site.

Get the Carbon Beta and Equity Performance report here

Harvard Business Review recently published a great collection of HBR articles about going green strategies and how a socially responsible strategy makes sense and can often be good for your bottom line. Regularly $19.95 but get it here through Greenbiz.com for only $13.57.

Howdy, I have an update on the cool Green Zebra site for the green crowd living in San Francisco. A friend, Rebecca Novelli at http://www.rebeccanovelli.com/ tells me that the Seattle version of the Green Zebra is the Chinook Book at (http://www.ecometro.com/seattle/coupon-book.aspx). So for those of you up in Seattle, check it out. Incidentally, anyone know if the Green Zebra has any connection to the vegetarian restaurant in Chicago?

Second - I ran across an article the other day on greenercomputingnews.com that is an interview between Greener World Media Contributing Writer Sarah Fister Gale and Dave Stangis of Intel while covering the Carbon Footprint Consumer Products Conference in Chicago. Dave Stangis is Intel’s director of Corporate Responsibility and spoke about the need to incorporate green responsibility into a company’s business objectives. The link to the article

Third - I have a couple of friends that are going to be excited about this next piece of news. Again, another article from GreenerComputing.com-

Dell Launches Global Competition to Design World’s Greenest Computer
Source: GreenerComputing.com
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Oct. 19, 2007 — As part of a challenge to what it calls the “ReGeneration” — computer users of all ages who care about the environment — Dell announced a competition to design the world’s greenest computer, and to lay the groundwork for environmentally responsible computing around the world.

Dell’s International Green Computing Technology Design Competition urges design students to offer ideas demonstrating fresh approaches and responsible solutions for green computing technology, but the competition is open to everyone. Prizes range from $10,000 for selected finalists to $15,000 plus a matching $15,000 for a winning student and his or her university.

The competition was announced at the 2007 ICSID / IDSA World Design Congress, which continues through Saturday in San Francsico.

Competition details are available at dell.com/designregeneration. Submissions will be accepted from January through April of 2008, finalists will be selected by a jury in May, and then the public will vote on the final winner.

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