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by: Joel Makower
The latest annual edition of Clean Energy Trends has just been published. My colleagues and I at Clean Edge have identified five key trends affecting clean-energy markets and produced our annual forecast of markets for four clean-energy technologies. And, working with our partners at New Energy Finance, we've analyzed the investment trends of the past year.
by: Joel Makower
I've spent the past few weeks on the road talking about the State of Green Business, listening to the questions and concerns of audiences at the companies and conferences I've addressed. There's one constant query: In a world gone green, how does a company make itself heard, credibly and authentically? And how does it do this in a way that minimizes the risks of being charged with greenwash, or worse?
Continue reading "Green Corporate Communications: The Unstoppable Urge to Talk the Talk" »
by: Michael Hoexter
The events of December when the US Congress dropped an extension of the existing tax credits for renewable energy from the 2007 energy bill have highlighted the need for the renewable energy industry to take a different tack in the area of policy support and marketing strategy.
Continue reading "The Renewable Electron Economy XIII: Valuing Energy and Energy Services" »
by: David Wigder
This past week, the Industry Standard (IS), an icon of the late nineties Internet boom, relaunched its online property. It did so, however, not as a publisher of industry content but rather as a consumer-driven platform to predict the future.
by: David Polinchock
If you want to know what's wrong with advertising and why it has so many problems, take a look at the list of reasons that mobile advertising isn't working. You'll notice that not one person mentioned there's no real value for the consumer. That's why mobile marketing isn't working right now.
Continue reading "Being Peter Kim: What's Wrong with Mobile Marketing" »
by: David Wigder
Today, online influentials are emerging as "celebrities" of sort, based not only on their domain knowledge but on their ability to attract and engage audiences online.
Continue reading "Tapping the Emerging Celebrity Power of Online Influentials" »
by: David Wigder
Today, dozens of social news sites exist where users bookmark content for the site's community to view and rate. Specific content related to the environment is available on both general news sites such as Digg, Newsvine, Propeller (AOL) or Reddit and green vertical sites such as C2NN, Hugg, Five Limes and plant change (Aus). Squareoak Media provides a fairly comprehensive list of social news sites categorized by vertical.
Continue reading "Green Content Syndication: Part III - Activating Diggers" »
by: Dick Stroud
Two very different subjects, one thing in common.
Firstly this article from Motley Fool: "60 is the new 40".
It looks like "boomer-focused" retail companies like Chico's CHS , Coldwater Creek CWTR , Stein Mart SMRT, Christopher & Banks CBK and Talbots (NYSE: TLB) are having a hard time of things.
by: Joel Makower
My colleagues and I at GreenBiz.com have just published State of Green Business 2008, an accounting for how, and how much, the greening of business is moving the needle on environmental issues.
The simple answer: not much -- and certainly not enough.
by: David Wigder
One of the most effective ways to syndicate content is to activate power users on sites such as Digg. Quite simply, “Diggers” uncover and bookmark interesting content – news articles, images and videos – for others to view.
Continue reading "Green Content Syndication: Part II - Top Environmental Diggers" »
by: Yann Gourvennec
Good morning, we are on Monday, the twenty first of January zero two thousand and eight. No this isn’t a typo, but rather a sign that we are taking into account the fact that humanity still has a few millenniums to go through. Well… hopefully!
Continue reading "Long Now Foundation: Slower Pace, Better Future ... Well Maybe" »
by: David Wigder
Traditionally, publishers have viewed websites as content destinations, challenging marketers to drive traffic to specific websites in order to engage consumers with relevant content.
Continue reading "Green Content Syndication: Part I - "Deconstructing" Websites" »
by: David Wigder
While many corporations leverage the Internet to distribute information about environmental initiatives, a few companies are going much further by facilitating two-way dialogue with stakeholders.
Continue reading "Corporations Foster Dialogue On the Environment" »
by: Joel Makower
Can a major consumer packaged goods company with a name indelibly associated with household bleach become a leading light in the green marketplace?
by: Michael Hoexter
Other than functional differences between renewable and fossil fuel generators, one of the main issues related to green and renewable energy are the capital and the per unit energy costs of new, cleaner energy systems.
by: Joel Makower
This just in: pretty much every consumer is concerned about the environment and is thinking conscientiously about what they buy — how it's made, under what conditions, and by whom. All you have to do is make good, green stuff and they'll buy it! We've reached the tipping point!
Continue reading "News Flash: 110% of Consumers Shop Green!" »
by: Joel Makower
I've long been an admirer of Gary Hirshberg, the idealistic and iconoclastic "CE-Yo" of organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm, which he co-founded in 1983. I first met Hirshberg a decade later, in 1993, when researching my book about corporate social responsibility, Beyond the Bottom Line.
Continue reading "Gary Hirshberg: Changing the Culture and 'Stirring It Up'" »
by: David Wigder
As companies plan their green investment strategies for 2008 and beyond, they should take into account that caps on carbon emissions are all but inevitable in the future. In fact, it is highly likely that caps will be in place in the US within the next few years. The 187 nations that attended the UN climate conference last month in Bali (including the US) agreed to negotiate a successor agreement to Kyoto by the end of 2009. Perhaps more importantly, Congress already has several climate bills under consideration.
by: Joel Makower
What would you say if I introduced you to an environmentally friendly cigarette — one made of organically grown tobacco, with organic cotton filters, rolled in eco-friendly paper, all manufactured with renewable energy, with a portion of proceeds going to environmental charities?
Continue reading "Introducing . . . The Eco-Friendly Cigarette?" »
by: David Wigder
So far, this holiday season has seen a rather muted push on green by retailers, both in terms of the products they sell and the messages they communicate to consumers. Marshal Cohen, Chief Industry Analyst at NPD Group, recently suggested that such lack of enthusiasm by retailers reflects waning interest in green. Cohen stated: “It’s basically a card that a lot of people played while it was hot and trendy…and it got overplayed.”
Continue reading "Green May Be Ho-Hum for the Holidays, But It's Here to Stay" »
by: David Jennings
One of those happy synchronicities has alerted me to two different ways of presenting information information about population growth. And, to compound the coincidence, the same topic was raised in a discussion with David Puttnam that I attended in the same week as I discovered them.
Continue reading "Animating the future of population and cities" »
by: Joel Makower
What is the stuff from which sustainability leaders are made?
It's a question that applies to individuals and organizations alike, and can be vexing for both. When one scans the landscape of companies seen to be sustainability leaders, questions quickly emerge: What do they have in common? How did they get there? What was the role of their leadership team, and of everyone below them, in achieving sustainability success?
Continue reading "Leadership Mindset and Sustainability Success" »
Continue reading "The Renewable Electron Economy Part IX: What is Renewable Energy Anyway?" »
by: David Wigder
Participation in social networks continues to grow seemingly without bounds as more people seek to connect, share and collaborate with likeminded individuals online. Today, hundreds of millions of online users have already signed up, with an increasing number belonging to more than one network.
by: Michael Hoexter
In Part 1 of this post, I started to construct a scenario where a medium-sized farm would do most or all of its work using electric farm equipment. This model of a farm had 1 large tractor with 250kW(335 hp) maximum power output and 4 smaller tractors with 50kW (67hp) maximum power output (though working at 50% power on the peak energy day).
Continue reading "The Renewable Electron Economy Part VIII.2: The Electric Farm - 2" »
Is green marketing just a series of lies?
That's one conclusion to be drawn from a new study that examines hundreds of environmental labeling claims and found pretty much all of them wanting, suffering from sins of either omission or commission.
Is it any wonder that consumers are overwhelmingly wary of green marketing and view it as "just a sales tactic"?
by: David Wigder
BBMG recently reported that US consumers increasingly say that words like “socially responsible” (88% say these as words describe them “well”, 39% as “very well”) and “environmentally friendly” (86% well, 34% very well) describe them. It should not be surprising then that many leading companies today are aligning their brands with more socially reponsible and eco-friendly activites and attributes. (See “Defining Green Brand Leadership”, Marketing Green, October 29, 2007)
Continue reading "Waning Opportunity to be Early Mover on Green" »
by: David Wigder
An Interview with Michel Gelobter, Founder and EVP of Cooler
Long-time environmental activist Paul Hawkins once described “green consumerism” as an oxymoron. Indeed, “green consumption” makes Wikipedia’s “List of Genuine Oxymora”. The reason: consumption by its very nature has an impact on the environment – to some degree or another – and therefore, is hard to call truly green.
by: Michael Hoexter
Urbanites and suburbanites tend to forget that our civilization is based on agriculture, an agriculture that is heavily mechanized and dependent on fossil fuel.
Continue reading "The Renewable Electron Economy Part VIII.1: The Electric Farm" »
by: David Wigder
“I have never seen anything equal to sustainability as far as attracting, motivating, and bring people together.” — Ray C. Anderson, Founder and Chairman of Interface in AmericanWay Magazine, October 1, 2007
Continue reading "Going Green to Recruit and Retain Employees" »
by: Dick Stroud
My chums at Millennium have researched the attitudes of the over-50s towards “green issues”.
Here is an extract of the results.
by: Joel Makower
This is "Green Week" at NBC Universal, a seven-day revelry of environment-themed content spread across the company's various TV channels and other properties. The 150 hours of programming — integrated into everything from news and sports to soaps and entertainment — is certainly a first for a major media company.
Continue reading "NBC's "Green Week": Not Media Business as Usual" »
by: Joel Makower
My travels over the past month have included speeches to two very different audiences on the same topic: The future of travel and tourism, as seen through an environmental lens. Based on these and other calls I'm getting, it seems that this industry is starting to pay attention . . . but only starting.
Continue reading "The Greening of Travel and Tourism, from Asia to Alabama" »
by: Dominic Basulto
The other day, the Wall Street Journal featured one of the most inspiring stories about innovation that I've read in quite some time. Shai Agassi, once a fast-rising senior executive at software giant SAP, left the company in March under mysterious circumstances and dropped off the grid, only to re-surface this week, flush with $200 million in VC funding and a radical idea for disrupting the automotive industry.
Continue reading "Radically Re-thinking the Automotive Business Model" »
Continue reading "Scary Thoughts on Business and Social Change" »
by: David Wigder
“We will not be measured by our aspirations. We will be measured by our actions” &nb
