Renewable Energy Saves Fortune 100 Companies $1.1B Annually 116
Lucas123 writes: A new report authored by several environmental groups say data shows more than half of Fortune 100 companies collectively saved more than $1.1B annually by reducing carbon emissions and rolling out renewable energy projects. According to the report, 43% of Fortune 500 companies, or 215 in all, have also set targets in one of three categories: greenhouse gas reduction, energy efficiency and renewable energy. When narrowed to just the Fortune 100, 60% of the companies have set the same clean energy goals. Some of the companies leading the industry in annual clean energy savings include UPS ($200M), Cisco ($151M), PepsiCo ($121M) and United Continental ($104M).
Meanwhile... (Score:3, Interesting)
Citation? (Score:4, Interesting)
Germany doesn't sell daytime power "at a loss". Power at night on the European grid doesn't sell for high prices. Show some citations, ye of eyebrow raising claims.
Re:Careful (Score:5, Interesting)
Aggressive skepticism has been the response to every single environmental conservation claim in my memory since the government recommended people turn off the lights when they left work (remember those light bulb stickers people stuck to the light switches to remind you?), and it turned out that companies' power bills did, in fact, go down (le shock!).
Every single time, we get a round of "nuh uh! There's no way them environmental hippies could save money! Imma gonna go burn tires to prove them wrong!"
By the time the "fad" has reached actual corporations with stockholders and accountants, you can be pretty sure that the beancounters have crunched the numbers and come up with a good reason for it.
If you're going to claim that its due to a tax credit somewhere, I'd point out that at this point, most everyone is assuming the next administration will be Republican and will probably cancel all the environmental regulations and credits again.
perfect sense (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Actual savings? (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of companies are switching from old-school fluorescents (which aren't quite as efficient) to LEDs as the fixtures wear out. And yes, they do wear out, along with things like ballasts. There are a LOT of the old T12 fluorescents out there still, not to mention the newer (but still somewhat outdated) T8.
They also make LED tubes now - a line of LEDs in a package the same size as the old fluorescent tubes. They cost a lot, but over the long run, they're cheaper to run. Once you include lowering air conditioning costs and less manpower spent replacing tubes, they're often worth the money. All you need to do is bypass the ballast (which also saves money in the long run - those things wear out too).
A lot of factory floors used mercury vapor lights, and those are going away as they get old, replaced with clusters of LEDs.
Re:drops in the bucket (Score:4, Interesting)
How is a 1.5% bump in profit for Cisco or 2% for UPS a rounding error? Most CFOs would kill to find an extra 1.5%, or put another way it's one fewer round of layoffs to meet Wallstreet's latest estimate.
Avg CEO earned more than 11 million (Score:2, Interesting)
11 million times 100 = 1.1 billion.
So the headline should be, "Renewable Energy Savings By Fortune 100 Doesn't Even Cover CEO's Salary"
Re:drops in the bucket (Score:5, Interesting)
Specious argument. When you break a $100 bill at the grocery store, and the change is less than $20, do you tell the cashier to keep it because in terms of your net salary per year it's "rounding error"?
Money is a limited resource, and no matter how much a company makes, I can almost guarantee you there was some one who didn't get the budget they wanted due to scarcity of resources.
Additionally, energy efficient lighting savings keep adding up. It's not like cisco will just save $151 mio. They'll save it year over year, which may turn out to be an additional few billion to their bottom line.
Old Story Soon Forgotten (Score:2, Interesting)
After the Arab oil embargo, the US funded a program for business education on energy conservation in industrial plants. It was a six month course with a lot of solid material. Applying this to the processes in the chemical plant where I was working saved a ton of money -- well beyond the costs of implementation. And in general the manufacturing processes ran better. But changes like this are not a one time fix but an attitude, much like cyber security. The abandonment of small cars and rush into SUVs was symptomatic of a collective 'we dont need to care anymore...' attitude. So from where I sit this just looks like a rediscovery of the lessons of the past (so many mistakes...). Industry is different from residential -- in the later good design is probably more important than ongoing management. In the former, from my experience, production requires active management to maintain that balance between costs and output. Given the costs of most RE gear, my bet is that the real savings are in energy management and not covering the roof with solar panels or the parking lot with wind turbines. Same old story -- maybe it will persist better this time.
Re:Saved? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see any problem with that if the taxes and subsidies are there to offset the damage done by pollution. You produce less pollution, you pay less towards dealing with it. Maybe we even off an incentive to get you to invest, with the expectation that it will cause prices to fall more quickly.