Financial

Governors want strong wind policy to build green jobs and energy security

From Green Right Now Reports

Image: Governors' Wind Energy Coalition

While there is no shortage of hot air swirling around various plans to harness wind energy to power our homes and businesses, a group of United States governors has hammered out a plan and is ready to take it all the way to the top.

On Tuesday, Iowa Governor Chet Culver and Rhode Island Governor Donald L. Carcieri released Great Expectations: U.S. Wind Energy Development, the Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition’s 2010 Recommendations. Culver and Carcieri are the chair and vice chair of the 29-state organization, which is attempting to shape a national policy to make wind power both viable and cost-effective.

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Investors want to know more from Exxon and others about climate change plans

From Green Right Now Reports

As climate change accelerates, leading investment groups are asking to hear more from corporations about their plans to adapt and survive in a changing world.

U.S. investors – pension funds, labor, religious and other institutional investors – filed a record number of climate change resolutions in 2009.

The 95 shareholder resolutions were filed with 82 U.S. and Canadian companies, some of which face special challenges from climate change, according to a news release by Ceres, a coalition of investors, environmental and social responsibility groups.

The number of resolutions represent a 40 percent increase over 2009 and were likely encouraged by recent guidance from the Securities and Exchange Commission on climate disclosure.

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Darden will roll out sustainable restaurant designs

From Green Right Now Reports

Darden Restaurants today announced that it has begun a system-wide sustainable restaurant design initiative involving the use of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards in its restaurant design process for all new restaurants and, where feasible, restaurant remodels.

The company, which operates 1,800 restaurants, said the initiative is part of its broader sustainability efforts aimed at limiting business impact on the environment while also enhancing the operational efficiency of its restaurants.

Darden’s three largest brands – Red Lobster, Olive Garden and LongHorn Steakhouse – are designing eight restaurants to achieve LEED certification from the United States Green Building Council. The company said it plans to apply learnings from those eight restaurants to new restaurants and remodels in the future.

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TD Bank investing in green

TD Bank is going carbon neutral and building LEED-qualified banking centers

From Green Right Now Reports

TD Bank, which touts itself as America’s Most Convenient Bank, has decided to build its next branches to green building standards, the corporation announced today at its first green branch in Farmingdale, N.Y..

The bank, with more than 1,000 stores from Maine to Florida, will be opening another green store, a prototype for more to come, at 214-32 Jamaica Ave., Queens Village, N.Y., this spring.

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Tool helps investors assess corporations’ climate risk

From Green Right Now Reports

Recently the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission decided that climate-related risks are material information that publicly traded companies must disclose to investors. Publicly traded companies now must share information about their exposure to risks associated with greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. But it will likely be several months before companies catch up with the SEC rule and begin those disclosures.

In the meantime, there is a helpful tool available from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of approximately 300 faith-based institutional investors that represents more than $100 billion in invested capital. The ICCR and Trucost, an independent environmental data company, have for the last year made available Climate Risk Profiles on more than 150 major companies, with a particular focus on companies facing proxy resolutions from religious shareholders.

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Wisconsin wind blade facility to create 600 jobs

From Green Right Now Reports

While Washington leaders debate whether the stimulus money has done enough for the economy, Wisconsin has latched onto money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to kick start a wind turbine blade manufacturing plant in Wisconsin Rapids, a small city in the center of the state. The new factory is expected to be the most advanced in North America and employ more than 600 people.

The Energy Composites Corp. (ECC) facility will be built with the help of $238 million in municipal tax-free bonds from a pool of money (the state’s Recovery Zone Facility pool) created with federal stimulus dollars.

While the financial arrangements took several steps, including new legislation introduced by Sen. Julie Lass, D-Stevens Point, and supported by several other state legislators — the desired outcome is a straightforward effort by the state to capture manufacturing for the fast growing commercial wind energy sector.

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2009 venture capital investments in cleantech fall 50 percent

The energy/electricity generation category garnered $118.5 million in venture investment in Q409.

From Green Right Now Reports

U.S. venture capital investment in cleantech companies in Q4 2009 decreased 45 percent to $564.5 million compared to the prior quarter, according to an Ernst & Young LLP analysis based on data from Dow Jones VentureSource.  The research found that more VC dollars are flowing into the energy efficiency category.

Ernst & Young said the San Francisco Bay Area was the leading region for cleantech investment in 2009, with $1.2 billion invested for the year and $295.6 million in Q4. Southern California came in second place with annual investment of $329.5 million and Q4 investment of $30.5 million. New England was the third-largest regional cleantech center with $283.7 million for the year and $38.0 for Q4.

The number of deals increased 21 percent to 62, according to the report. But investment in 2009 totaled $2.6 billion in 193 financings rounds, a decline of 50 percent in dollars and 16 percent in the number of deals compared to the record investment levels of 2008.

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Clean Energy Week brings activists, businessmen to Washington

By Bill Sullivan

Legislators wrestling with health care reform, job concerns and a spiraling federal deficit have another group vying for their attention in Washington this week.  Thanks to a hastily thrown-together coalition, it’s Clean Energy Week, with environmental activists and business leaders descending on Capitol Hill to press for money for more and better green initiatives.

An unlikely catalyst for that change: The jobs bill, which many hope will include more green items than normal. As the week began, the Senate was considering a proposal to deploy $11 billion of the potential jobs bill for efficiency measures. Creation of a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) and a Green Bank also were part of the discussion.

Reed Hundt, co-chairman of the Coalition for the Green Bank, says the clean energy movement has been presented with a rare opportunity, however strange the bedfellows in some cases may be.

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SEC issues guidance requiring corporate disclosure of “material” climate change risks

From Green Right Now Reports

In a 3-2 vote that fell along party lines, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday decided to issue new interpretive guidance that clarifies what publicly traded companies must disclose to investors in terms of climate-related “material” effects on business operations. Information covered includes the impact of new emissions management policies, the physical impacts of changing weather or business opportunities associated with the growing clean energy economy.

The guidance, the first economy-wide climate risk disclosure requirement in the world, was approved in a formal vote by SEC Commissioners meeting in Washington. Chairman Mary L. Schapiro and the two Democrats on the commission supported the new requirements, while the two Republican members voted no.

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Kohl’s increases its green power ranking

A Kohl's store in Laguna Niguel, Calif., features solar panels and has received the Energy Star certification

Kohl’s Department Stores has moved into second place among Fortune 500 companies for green power purchasing as recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the company announced today.

The Wisconsin-based retail chain retains its No. 1 ranking among retailers, buying 1,367,376,000 kWh of power annually from biogas, biomass, small hydropower, solar and wind installations.

The other top retailers, after Kohl’s, on the EPA’s Top 20 Retail Green Power Purchasers are: Whole Foods Markets, Walmart Stores (in Texas and California), Starbucks, Staples, Lowe’s and Safeway Inc.

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