Feb 02 2009

The State of Green Business 2009

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

The good news about business and the environment is that 86 percent of U.S. companies in a recent survey said they plan to invest as much this year in green products and programs as they did last year, despite the turmoil in world markets.

The bad news is that most indicators show environmental performance in the United States "making a little progress here and there, losing ground in a few places, but mostly just hanging in there," according to Joel Makower, executive editor of Greener World Media, Inc., which runs GreenBiz.com and four other specialized industry web sites on green business.

Makower today delivered his company's second annual report on the State of Green Business to nearly 500 participants at the aptly named State of Green Business Forum, held at PG&E's auditorium in San Francisco (a LEED Gold-certified historic building).  PG&E co-sponsored the forum.

The GreenBiz Index consists of 20 indicators, ranging from carbon intensity (greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP) to paper use and recycling per unit of GDP, to assess business and social progress on environmental goals. Based on the level of performance, each indicator gets a "swim," "tread water," or "sink" rating.

In five areas, business is swimming. Clean-tech investments in 2008 were double the level a year earlier; clean-energy patents continue to grow strongly; energy efficiency shows continued progress;  paper use continues a downward trend while recycling is up; and the amount of water used per unit of GDP is falling. (Regarding the latter indicator, Makower noted that the full lifecyle of a hamburger requires 634 gallons of water; a double cheeseburger with bacon, he speculated, might require "a small tsunami.")

On the negative side, greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb, and despite continued efficiency gains, emissions per unit of GDP showed their slowest rate of improvement since 2002. "Emissions in 2007 were 16.7 percent higher than in 1990, the level to which President Obama wants to reduce emissions by 2020," the report notes.

Our society continues to be buried under mountains of electronic waste--at least 1.3 million tons per year of computers, printers, monitors and other items, of which only 18 percent ever gets recycled. Also "sinking" is the long-awaited promise of employee telecommuting as a strategy to minimize transportation, which remains just that--a promise, not much of a reality.

Makower noted a decision to downgrade progress on "green jobs" from "swimming" to "treading water," even through one source showed them increaseing from 8.5 million in 2006 to 9.1 million in 2007.

"We don't know what a green job is," he admitted. "We don't know how to measure them, even though everyone is talking about them. We [can agree about] about solar and wind installers, but what about truck drivers who deliver parts to the project? What about the CPA who keeps the books? Are these green jobs?"

One of the most hopeful signs Makower noted was recent news of major companies increasing their commitment to green programs, despite economic hard times. Within just the last three months, Dell announced plans to cut the amount of packaging it uses by 20 million pounds, Procter & Gamble said it was on track to sell $20 billion in "green" products, and Cisco announced a suite of energy management tools.

Probably everyone at the forum agreed with Makower's concluding assessment: "The coming year will be a critical one for the future of green busienss and, by extension, for the planet."

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