Green Wombat

Silicon Valley Wants Plug-In Hybrids to Hit the Road

What do Silicon Valley's leading business organization, the Rainforest Action Network and California's largest utility have in common? They're teaming up to pressure  automakers to produce plug-in hybrid vehicles as a way to fight global warming and reduce U.S. dependence on Middle Eastern oil. The Silicon Valley Leadership Group and its new allies in Plug-In Bay Area got together yesterday in Palo Alto to launch a campaign to get companies to place "soft orders" for plug-in hybrids, or PHEVs, to show Toyota (TM), Honda (HMC) General Motors, (GM), Ford (F) and other auto manufacturers that demand exists for cars that can get 100 miles to the gallon by using a rechargeable battery that extends the vehicle's ability to run on electricity. SVLG's membership roster includes tech powerhouses and green-leaning companies like Google (GOOG), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Yahoo (YHOO). "The specific action we are taking is to promote PHEVs among our 210 member companies, urging them to support these efforts to accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids through 'soft' fleet orders, employee incentives, education, demonstration projects, and support of favorable legislation," SVLG spokesman Duffy Jennings told Green Wombat. So far, the Bay Area cities of Berkeley and Alameda as well as Marin County have placed soft orders - commitments to buy -  for 160 fleet PHEVs, according to Plug-In Bay Area. (Yes, I know, that's a shocker.) That might not get Detroit's attention but it may be harder to look the other way if thousands of soft orders starting coming in from Silicon Valley. Plug-In Bay Area is part of the national Plug-In Partners campaign.

Green Wombat happened to watch Who Killed the Electric Car? last night and was struck by just how much things have changed since GM sent the last all-electric EV1 to the junkyard in 2005. The EV1 owed its birth in the 1990s to a California regulatory agency - the California Air Resources Board - which mandated that 10 percent of cars sold in the Golden State be zero-emission vehicles by 2003. General Motors offered the EV1 for lease in California while it and other automakers fought to scrap the zero-emission rule. They succeeded and GM then refused to renew the EV1 leases, claiming there was no consumer demand for electric cars despite the EV1's vociferous fans. The movie's conclusion: the auto industry, Big Oil, the government and indifferent consumers were guilty of killing the electric car.

Flash forward to today. Environmentalists, tech companies and electric utilities like PG&E (PCG) - a member of Plug-In Bay Area - are banding together to create the market for plug-in hybrids first, pre-empting the inevitable arguments from reluctant automakers that there's no demand for such vehicles. After all, it's much easier to argue against Big Government and "unfair regulation" than it is to to fight your own potential customers and the free market.

Utility Gets Jump on Carbon Trading Market, Buys Emissions Credits from Nike

While Congress debates establishing a national carbon trading market to combat global warming, New Orleans-based utility Entergy (ETR) today said it had purchased emissions credits from Nike (NKE) to offset 100,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases from its operations. The transaction was conducted through the Greenhouse Gas Registry program run by the Environmental Resources Trust,
a non-profit offshoot of green group Environmental Defense. Here's how it works: Corporations register their greenhouse gas emissions with the Trust, which verifies the numbers and sets an emissions target.  Outside auditors verify any qualified reductions in metric tons of emissions, which then can be sold as credits. For instance, the registry shows that since 2000, Entergy has  purchased emissions credits from DuPont (DD), Shell (RDS-B) and other companies. In 2005, Entergy's baseline emissions were 60 million metric tons but its actual emissions that year were about 45 million tons. In 2006, the utility reduced its spew to 38.9 million metric tons, Entergy spokesman Chris Winters told Green Wombat. Counting the most recent purchase, Entergy has bought credits worth a total of 740,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions and has been reducing its emissions steadily in recent years. "Environmental Defense and Entergy have partnered ... to stabilize Entergy's emissions at 20 percent below 2000 levels through 2010," Winters said. The company relies on natural-gas and nuclear plants to generate electricity and has joined utilities PG&E (PCG) and Duke (DUK) in calling for the imposition of a cap on greenhouse gas emissions. "The key to shifting markets and the economy to a more carbon-neutral position includes a robust carbon offset market," said Entergy executive Brent Dorsey in a statement.

Greening the 10-K: Investors, Companies Press for Climate Change Disclosure

Investors controlling some $4 trillion in assets and their corporate allies this week launched a campaign to get the U.S. Congress to pass global warming legislation that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions 60 to 90 percent by 2050. Led by Ceres, a Boston-based alliance of investors and environmentalists, the group also called for the Securities and Exchange Commission to require public companies to disclose climate change risks in their financial reports. So-called green reporting has long been backed by environmentalists but now mainstream corporations like aluminum maker Alcoa (AA), oil giant BP (BP), Merrill Lynch (MER), utility PG&E (PCG) and Sun Microsystem (SUNW) are backing such efforts along with CalPERS, the world's largest pension fund. "We are hopeful that growing mainstream investor and corporate demand for SEC action will have an impact," Chris Fox, Ceres's director of investor programs, told Green Wombat. "This is not just socially responsible investors asking for this but mainstream fiduciaries asking for guidance." The investors and companies backing the coalition's Climate Call to Action want the SEC to clarify just what public companies must disclose about the risks and opportunities presented by global warming. Ceres is pushing for the SEC to modify reporting regulations to require corporations to disclose in their annual reports their current and historical greenhouse gas emissions; the physical risk climate change poses to their operations; the regulatory risk if greenhouse gas limits are imposed; and their strategy for managing climate change risks. (A growing list of companies have adopted "sustainability reporting" in recent years, including Bank of America (BAC), General Motors (GM) and Green Wombat's employer, Time Warner (TWX).) Fox says Ceres is continuing to meet with SEC officials about climate change disclosure but the agency has remained non-committal. "We think protecting American’s property and investments from climate risk is a winning issue," he says.

Green Giants: San Francisco's Solar Baseball Park

photo illustration: PG&E

Even Major League Baseball is going green. Sort of. In a made-for-TV-news media event, executives from the San Francisco Giants and PG&E (PCG) will join SF Mayor Gavin Newsom today to announce that the utility will install a 120-kilowatt solar panel system at AT&T (T) Park. The catch: the 590 Sharp solar panels won't power the park itself but will feed into San Francisco's grid. Still, the solar panels that will serve as awnings (photo illustration above) might raise the eco-consciousness of the ticket holders that drive to the bayside park in their Suburbans and Tahoes. Beyond the PR value of portraying San Francisco's team as the jolly green Giants, there's a more interesting dynamic at work here: the growing value of commercial  rooftops - or awnings in this case - as prime real estate for solar energy companies. In the April issue of Business 2.0 now hitting the streets, Green Wombat edited a story by senior writers Paul Kaihla and Michael Copeland on the land rush to lock up solar and wind sites and the opportunities to become a renewable energy broker, selling the rights to locales for wind farms and solar arrays. Typically, solar energy companies like PowerLight (SPWR) and financiers like MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA) install and/or own and operate the solar array and sell the electricity it produces at a discount to the building owner. Just take a look around at amount of rooftop square footage at the local Costco or regional shopping mall and you'll get the idea of the opportunity. The Giants-PG&E deal is structured differently but the idea is the same: the utility installs the solar system - PG&E hasn't disclosed the cost but given similar sized arrays it'll probably be around $1.2 million - and reaps the benefits of an additional clean, green source of electricity.

Green Shift: Solar Company Moves HQ to Auto Plant

photo originally uploaded by misterken

Call it industrial recycling. PowerLight, the solar panel subsidiary of SunPower (SPWR), is moving its headquarters from Berkeley, California, to a historic Ford (F) manufacturing plant in the East Bay city of Richmond. An icon of early 20th century industrial design, the bayfront Ford factory once was the largest manufacturing facility on the West Coast, according to the federal government. The reason for leaving eco-conscious Berkeley? Space - business is booming and PowerLight is bursting out of its current HQ, a company spokeswoman told Green Wombat. PowerLight will occupy about 175,000 square feet of the Ford plant's 520,000 square feet of space. The facility produced jeeps and other military vehicles during World War II and was considered a key cog in the war effort. And where once greenhouse-gas spewing cars rolled off the assembly line, the factory will now be enlisted in the fight against global warming, producing solar panels for homes and businesses.