Feb 04 2010

The State of Green Business 2010

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

 Maybe it's just his optimistic personality, but Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com, made a strong case today that the glass is at least half full for the green economy going into 2010, even in the face of one of the deepest recessions in memory. 

Makower presented the highlights of his organization's third annual State of Green Business Report today at PG&E's Gold LEED-certified auditorium before an audience of about 400 people. The report identifies 10 major trends in green business and 20 key indicators of its health, such as green power use, toxic emissions and energy efficiency.

"Something remarkable happened in 2009," Makower told the audience of business executives and green activists. "Green business didn't go away--it even thrived. You not only kept your jobs but in many cases became more critical to your companies' mission."

Last year saw significant progress on six indicators tracked by the report, including the number of clean-energy patents (an all-time high), energy efficiency, the number of green IT products, the development of green office space, and declining use of paper and water. 

Makower said he's heartened by the "race to the top" in several industries such as computing, where Energy Star and EPEAT-rated equipment is rapidly gaining ground, and package delivery, where the US Postal Service, UPS and Fed Ex are all making great strides in acquiring cleaner fleets.

On the other hand, setbacks last year included the slow rate of improvement in greenhouse emissions per unit of GDP, shrinkage of telecommuting and inadequate recycling of electronic equipment.

Of the major business trends discussed in the report, one of the most interesting is the concept of "radical transparency," which refers to the "virtuous circle that develops when detailed information about companies, products and ingredients is instantly available, enabling consumers to make smarter choices, thereby moving markets toward less-harmful products."

This transparency starts at the grass roots, where the "tweet and text generation," as the report calls them, exploit social media to spread word instantly about good and bad business practices. It is also driven by the many web sites, like HealthyStuff.org, that provide sustainability information on a host of consumer products.

And, at the corporate level, it is being driven by ratings from groups like the Carbon Disclosure Project, Climate Counts and Dow Jones, with its Sustainability World Index. More and more corporations, including PG&E, are working with investor outfits like Ceres to produce annual corporate responsibility reports that detail impacts of their businesses on the environment, communities and employees.

Once transparency and disclosure start taking hold, they spread powerfully by example, and may eventually become required. A striking example was the ruling last month by the Securities and Exchange Commission that public companies must warn investors of significant risks that global warming might pose to their businesses.

Someday soon we'll all wonder why that decision was ever controversial. In the meantime, companies will either have to clean up their act, or informed investors will jump ship. That's the power of transparency.

 

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