Business & Finance

Every year, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) sends out a survey to PV solar manufacturers. Though companies do not have to respond, this does not stop the SVTC from evaluating them. It simply means there is less information and, consequently, they receive lower marks. The “Industry Leaders” on SVTC’s 5th annual 2014 scorecard are: Trina Solar (92), SunPower (88), Yingli Green Energy (81), SolarWorld (73) and REC (71).

While the practice of biodiversity conservation has matured over the past decade, decisions for proposed actions still commonly lack evidence-based and return on investment (ROI) frameworks. That picture, however, is beginning to change. Planners and practitioners are beginning to embrace operating frameworks similar to the “effectiveness revolution” in public health. Relatedly, rather than ignoring the economics of conservation practice, planners and practitioners are adopting approaches that incorporate the costs of interventions into prioritizations.

In a phone interview with The Huffington Post, Dennis Takahashi-Kelso, the Ocean Conservancy's executive vice president, said both Exxon and BP were reminders that plans for dealing with spills are meaningless if companies can't actually execute cleanup. Takahashi-Kelso was the Alaska Commissioner of Environmental Conservation during the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and says that the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was a "very substantial improvement." But companies still struggle with execution of the response plans when a spill does happen.

One of the ways our Fellows lead is by providing expert testimony before state and national legislative bodies. In March, Mike Wilson and Evan Hansen were called to testify before the U.S.

The federal clean-energy loan guarantee program that gave you Solyndra wasn’t just a multibillion-dollar political debacle – it also didn’t create jobs, didn’t reduce carbon emissions and ran up financial risk for taxpayers. And yet, the program wasn’t enough of a bust to outweigh the job-creation and emissions-reducing successes of the complete $90 billion “green stimulus” the Obama administration built into the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act four years ago, as the country was plunging deeper into recession.

General Mills has publicly committed to sourcing deforestation-free palm oil. This represents a major turnaround from just a month ago, when the company performed poorly in the Union of Concerned Scientists scorecard of palm oil sourcing commitments by 30 top companies. Sharon Smith, campaign manager with UCS's Tropical Forest & Climate Initiative, said: "Despite failing to make the grade on the scorecard, it seems General Mills is turning a new leaf.

Advances in technology mean the amount of digital information we collectively possess is growing exponentially. Estimates suggest that by 2020 there will be 300 times more information in the world than there was in 2005. Big data has the power to transform the way corporations understand the impact of their business on the environment, and prompt them to take action on sustainability. But storing and gathering this data is costly in itself, with large data servers located across the world consuming huge amounts of energy and adding to carbon emissions.

Palm oil is used in a huge range of consumer products, from food and fuel to beauty products and cleaning agents, meaning that demand for palm oil has risen fast. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), growing demand is driving increases in deforestation, which accounts for 10 percent of the emissions that cause global warming. Clearing forest for plantations also destroys trees that are home to endangered species and a resource for forest communities, the U.S.-based UCS said.