Monthly Archives: October 2011

NRDC OnEarth

Meet the Change Makers: How Verizon is dialing in efficiency | OnEarth

Greening fleets, mining copper cables and tweaking data centers at Verizon

Verizon can trace its technological roots back to the 1880s, when Alexander Graham Bell’s invention first relayed voices between Manhattan and Boston. Now, as then, the New York-based company still connects old-fashioned phone calls. But these days, digital business services are emerging as big telco’s main focus, from tending corporations’ high-speed networks to building advanced mobile cell services that keep us connected everywhere.

As demand for these digital services grows, Verizon finds itself in a tight race for the top spot in the U.S. telecom market. With $107 billion in revenues last year, it trails only AT&T, which posted $113 billion in sales.

Verizon’s first chief sustainability officer, as well as vice president of supply chain, James “Jim” Gowen believes that focusing on green technology will offer Verizon a way to close the gap with its rival. The company’s efforts, Gowen points out, are already improving Verizon’s efficiency and reducing its environmental impact. In time, he says, they’ll open up new markets, too.

Verizon’s commitment to sustainability is still in its early stages. It was just two years ago that the company formally wove together a variety of ongoing eco efforts that were happening across its far-flung operations. Gowen, who is a long-time veteran of Verizon’s supply-chain operations, was promoted to his post in September 2009. Outside the office, he sits on the sustainability council at Penn State University’s school of business.

One of the biggest challenges to scaling up green efforts, Gowen admits, is Verizon’s enormous size. But that also means the impact of Verizon’s choices is proportionally large, he says.

OnEarth contributor Adam Aston recently spoke with Gowen to learn what lessons Verizon can offer other corporations greening their operations on a large scale.

What’s the scale of your global operations?

Verizon is bigger and broader than many folks realize. We have more than 190,000 employees globally, and have followed our customers overseas, so we’re doing business in more than 150 countries, with more than 90 million retail customers.

In terms of facilities, we have approximately 30,000, ranging from remote equipment sheds to very large data centers. To keep our cellular network humming, we operate approximately 40,000 cell towers.

Only a few dozen U.S. companies listed on the stock exchange, out of more than 7,000, have appointed chief sustainability officers. What led Verizon to take that step?

It was a long time in coming but was really formalized in 2009, when we surveyed green efforts across the company. Verizon was already doing a lot of work in sustainability, but our efforts were separate and often unaware of related work elsewhere in the company.

When we looked at our two big divisions — wireless and conventional wire-line services — it was amazing to me how much was going on. But it hadn’t been brought together yet. So the decision was made to create an office of sustainability, led by a new chief sustainability officer.

The next decision had to do with what the main focus of this role would be: more operational or more policy and marketing? And that affected where the new sustainability office would be based. Some companies opt for Washington, D.C., which implies more of a policy focus. We chose to emphasize operations, so the role was put into the supply chain area, under my watch, at our operations center in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

Why now?

The pressure was coming from both outside and inside. From our corporate customers, the number of requests to document our sustainability practices as part of quotes for new business was growing steadily. Some of our partners are documenting their carbon footprints, for example, and need us to be able to estimate the impact of the services we provide to them.

Internal pressure was rising, too. There was a groundswell of employees eager to see change move faster. I was getting very frank calls, with folks telling me things like, “I work in Tampa and we don’t recycle.” That caught my attention right away. Green practices are becoming more and more important to attracting and keeping top people.

You mentioned that Verizon operates a huge fleet of vehicles. Is it a target for your green efforts?

The fleet is a major focus. On the road, we operate the third-largest private fleet in the United States, with more than 39,000 vans, trucks, and cars. Keeping them running requires 56 million gallons of fuel every year. Right now, about six percent of our fleet runs on alternative fuels. We’re aiming to boost that figure to 15 percent by 2015.

In 2010, for instance, Verizon added 1,600 alternative-energy vehicles, including specialized vehicles, such as our aerial trucks, which use a hydraulic arm to lift up a worker in a bucket and access overhead wires, as well as hybrid pickup trucks and sedans. As fuel supplies become more reliable, we’re boosting our use of biodiesel and ethanol as well.

It can be simple stuff, too. By discouraging idling by our fleet drivers, we estimate that we saved 1.7 million gallons of fuel in 2009 — roughly the same amount used by 2,800 average cars over a year.

We’re also working with other big fleet operators. In April 2011, Verizon was among five charter members of a new National Clean Fleet Program initiative by President Obama. Some of the other participants are our day-to-day competitors, but by working together, if we go to the auto industry to request greener features, its more likely those changes will happen.

How are you improving the environmental performance of your network and data centers?

Verizon is continuously upgrading our network of cables. The oldest parts of our network were built more than a century ago. There are many wires and switches that date back decades, all of which are being replaced with lighter, smaller, more energy-efficient digital systems. For example, in recent years, we’ve been replacing miles and miles of aging copper cables — some of the older ones are enormous, as thick as an arm — with fiber optics. Given the high value of copper lately, recycling this copper has been a significant source of revenue. It’s like mining our own cable network. These upgrades all deliver improvements in energy use.

Replacing conventional networks with fiber optics can deliver big savings. At a lab in Columbia, Md., Verizon is developing ways to use optical fiber in local area networks, to and from buildings on a campus or to homes in a neighborhood. To date, these have used conventional, older cable technology. Making a switch cuts the amount of power needed to send data between buildings by up to 75 percent and can deliver signals as far as 12 miles without the need to amplify them.

And within our data centers, we’re pursuing ways to lower energy use. We’ve set energy-efficiency standards for the gear we buy from suppliers of network equipment. These standards have saved some 90 million kWh of power consumption and avoided approximately 115 million pounds of CO2 emissions.

Speaking of greenhouse gas emissions, many companies have announced targets they’re working toward. Verizon hasn’t done that. How are you approaching this problem?

We are looking to lower emissions, but our focus has been on what we call an Environmentally Neutral Engineering Policy: for every kWh of demand we add to the network, we aim to remove one or more somewhere else. This has helped us cut emissions. We focus on the energy consumed by our network because electricity accounts for about 90 percent of Verizon’s overall carbon footprint. Of the remainder, about seven percent comes from fuelling our fleet, and most of the balance from operating our buildings.

Company-wide, the push to cut carbon really began in 2009. By the following year, we had lowered our CO2 emissions by a bit more than two percent. That reduction came despite double-digit growth in our network: the volume of data we moved grew by about 16 percent, to nearly 79 million terabytes. Measured this way, our “carbon intensity” efficiency improved substantially: we produced about 16 percent less CO2 for each unit of data we handled. In April, we announced our commitment to reduce our carbon intensity by another 15 percent and I’m happy to tell you that as of the third quarter we are on track.

Even as electronic gizmos become more efficient, they seem to be multiplying at our homes and offices. What is Verizon doing about its customers’ environmental impact?

In April of last year, Verizon launched two new energy efficient set-top boxes, which reduced energy usage by about a third for our customers. Then in January, we were certified as an Energy Star Service Provider for set-top boxes, and we’re now installing four different Energy Star models.

Beyond energy we realize that there are many other “green” opportunities with consumer devices. We’re working to reduce packaging and suspected toxins in our electronics. Working with cell phone makers, we’ve rolled out handsets with greener features.

Motorola’s Citrus, for example, is free of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs), chemicals that are believed to pose health hazards. The handset is manufactured from 25 percent post-consumer recycled plastic. Likewise, the packaging is four-fifths recycled, and the user manual is made from 100 percent recycled paper. And as a whole, the cell phone is certified CarbonFree through a deal with Carbonfund.org.

Verizon has played a big role in the Internet revolution, a shift that has on one hand lowered paper use and travel, but on the other has spurred the spread of power-hungry electronics. What’s that next big transformation that will affect energy trends?

The smart grid and electric vehicles are just beginning to emerge. We expect that in the long term they will significantly cut the use of fuel for transportation. Verizon is positioned to play a big role in this shift, by developing information technology, security, and communications services to help the utility sector speed the rollout of the smart grid.

For example, our Internet Protocol and wireless networks are a good match for the sorts of billing, tracking, and management challenges that utilities and car owners will face in re-charging electric vehicles at home and while traveling. By the end of last year, we had contracted with more then 20 utilities to wirelessly connect more than one million meters back to the smart grid.

Sidebar: Truth squad

NRDC’s Samir Succar on the prospects for telcos to pave the way for a smarter grid 

In the realm of sustainability, it’s common for companies to point to future green goals, whether reduced emissions or planned product lines. This can make assessing their eco-progress more of an art than a science.

Consider Verizon’s big green bet on the smart grid, the next frontier in telcos’ efforts to shape the energy impact of their customers. The need to wirelessly link digital power meters and smart appliances to the grid promises huge energy savings. Verizon, like its peers, is tackling this opportunity, but it stands out with ambitious goals to operate smart grid applications on behalf of utilities, relying on its deep expertise with data centers and complex wireless transactions.

“Digitizing the grid holds enormous opportunity,” says NRDC’s smart grid expert Samir Succar, “but it remains to be seen if Verizon will be just a neutral party relaying information to the utility, or if it can really play a role shaping customers’ habits.”

To deliver savings, Verizon and other network operators will have to alter their emphasis on performance over efficiency. Consider a recent NRDC study that revealed that by not enabling energy-savings settings on set-top boxes, cable, satellite, and data providers were costing consumers $2 billion per year in wasted energy. Verizon and the others have responded to those criticisms by rolling out lower-energy devices. 

It’s tough to gauge who’s winning in the telcos’ race for sustainability. Both AT&T and Verizon appointed chief sustainability officers in 2009, but the third-place carrier, Sprint Nextel, beat its peers in a recent green ranking of U.S. companies. Sprint was first out of the gate with four environmentally responsible cell phones. It has also committed to a 90 percent rate of collecting discarded phones, taken steps to lower its junk mail output, and is targeting cuts of 15 percent to its overall emissions by 2017. 

–Adam Aston

URL for original story: http://www.onearth.org/article/meet-the-change-makers-verizon

GreenBiz

What’s Next for PUMA’s Groundbreaking Sustainability Plans? | GreenBiz

Jochen Zeitz has had a busy year. I recently caught up with the long-serving Chairman and CEO of PUMA, the sports gear company where Zeitz blended an evangelical commitment to sustainability with smart branding to return the nearly defunct brand to the top tier of global sports fashion.

As a business story, Zeitz’s success is nearly legendary: he pulled PUMA out of the basement and up to a podium position in the global sportswear market, while boosting share price by 4,000 percent.

Among sustainability watchers, Zeitz has won plaudits for his commitment to develop an environmental profit and loss (EP&L) statement. By estimating a dollar figure on the value of its use of ecosystem services — any resource provided by nature, from clean water, to crop production, wildlife habitat, storm surge protection and so on — PUMA is expanding on the precedent set by carbon footprinting efforts and other self-assessment techniques.

The tool can identify where in its supply chain these costs are highest, and help PUMA develop responses to address these hot spots.

The first results of PUMA’s effort were unveiled last May, when PUMA announced a price tag of $133 million for its toll from water use and greenhouse gas emissions.

As the company outsources the bulk of its manufacturing, it follows that PUMA’s direct operations accounted for about only $10 million of this total. Its supply chain made up the balance. By impact, greenhouse gases (GHGs) and water were split evenly. The top culprits: Cotton farming, cattle ranching for leather, and rubber production accounted for more than half of water use, and about a third of GHG emissions.

Shortly before PUMA released these landmark results, Zeitz revealed he was moving up at PUMA’s parent company. In March, after 18 years of service Zeitzpassed the mantle on to a 32-year-old successor, Franz Koch. Notably, Zeitz was even younger — just 30 in 1993 — when he took over PUMA’s top spot. The move made him the youngest-ever corporate chairman of a listed German company.

Now 48, Zeitz’s new post will let him focus on sustainability more broadly. Zeitz’s new joint role at PUMA’s owner, PPR SA, straddles two titles: He is both chief sustainability officer as well as head of the company’s sport & lifestyle group. PPR, a $19.4-billion apparel empire, includes a variety of luxury fashion brands such as Bottega, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent.

As Zeitz’s focus shifts to a broader set of brands, his immediate challenge is whether he can repeat his successes at PUMA in developing sustainability practices and metrics. Developing the framework and practices for the EP&L at PUMA spanned a decade or so. “We wanted to get it right internally first before going public,” Zeitz told me. PUMA worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers and Trucost to develop the first version of the EP&L assessment.

Zeitz told me the challenges PUMA faced in developing its EP&L measurement were internal and external. Behind company walls, the process involved incremental, disciplined reinforcement of sustainability as a value.

“It needs to be clear that it’s must be a part of the everyday decision-making process,” Zeitz said. When people are accustomed to established practices, changes in workflow, remuneration, priorities and so on can be difficult, and can’t be rushed.

External aspects of the projects are complicated by a lack of direct control over trading partners and suppliers. To collect critical data from PUMA’s network of external suppliers, the exercise demanded similar shifts of business cultural and practices among PUMA’s partners. “Data collection is a challenge,” Zeitz says. Difficulties surfaced in terms of different standards in different markets, difficulty in securing cooperation from second and third tier suppliers.

With that foundation built, the next stages may come more quickly. Where the first EP&L measured water use and greenhouse gas emissions through PUMA’s supply chain, the next phase — due in 2012 — will include dollar assessments of social impacts as well as broader environmental measures.

In the third phase, sometime after that, “we want to look holistically, at the positives of business,” Zeitz said. Business brings benefits that aren’t well measured either, he added, such as improving health, education and quality of life. “That’s something we want to start valuing,” Zeitz says. “At the end of the day, we have a new method of accounting, really, that looks at the world more holistically.”

Zeitz concedes the process will take time. After all, it’s taken a half-century or so to evolve today’s accounting standards. “This may go quicker, with modern technology,” Zeitz said, but until then, this is one tool among many to help develop greener solutions.

Meanwhile, Zeitz is open to sharing the intellectual property — the methods, standards, and processes — behind PUMA’s EP&L with other companies, including other sports gear players. “Yes, absolutely. For those who are serious and want to associate themselves with what we are doing in an open manner, we will be open with this process,” he said. “We have already had a number of requests from the automotive, chemical and beverage industries, as well as from one of our competitors.”

Eco-initiatives are gaining momentum in the sports apparel biz. In September, Adidas joined PUMA and Nike in a commitment to “detox” its supply chain and production processes by 2020. BusinessGreen reported that Adidas has been negotiating with suppliers, rivals and peers to create an inter-industry standard for toxicity reduction, following Greenpeace’s “Dirty Laundry” report, which revealed the use of and pollution from hazardous chemicals in textile production.

Photo courtesy of PUMA.

Global CCS Institute

Wedges reaffirmed: Robert Socolow updates his ‘wedges’ analysis of emissions reductions | Global CCS Institute

Remember ‘wedges’? For the broader public first learning about climate change – and even many energy industry insiders — back in the early 2000s, a single chart visualizing how the growth of global warming emissions could be reversed in ‘wedges’, helped to clarify the daunting complexity and scale of climate change.

That chart was created by two Princeton University scientists, Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, back in 2004 when they co-authored a paper in Science. The power of their interpretation — however simplifying — helped push forward the discussion of climate change into wider public circles.

Seven years later, Socolow has written an update to the analysis, reaffirming and intensifying the duo’s original message: that available-today technologies, including broadly-applied carbon capture and storage (CCS) have the capacity to reverse emissions growth. Socolow was stirred to re-visit his analysis because “[Our] core messages are as valid today as seven years ago, but they have not led to action”.

For CCS watchers, Socolow’s update is worth digging into for a couple of reasons. First, the exercise offers a grim reminder of how quickly the climate challenge is worsening. Where his 2004 estimate called for seven gigatonne-scale wedges of emissions reductions, Socolow’s update predicts we’ll need nine, if we started today, and it will take longer.

And, second, the muted response to Pacala’s ominous update is a worrying sign that the data is having less impact at a time when it should be attracting more attention. Pacala address why this is so, and how to respond.

To help illuminate both points, let me step back to review the content and context of the first paper. When the first wedges analysis was published in 2004, officials in the Bush White House were resisting climate change policy, making the argument that, even if the science is valid, there was no available technology to fix the problem.

Against this backdrop, the two Princeton scientists’ succinct paper, including the cannily clear ‘wedges’ analysis, made the case that, “humanity already possesses the fundamental scientific, technical and industrial know-how to solve the carbon and climate problem for the next half-century,” as Socolow recently recounted.

Here’s his description of their methodology:

“In a widely reproduced figure, we identified a ‘Stabilization Triangle,’ bounded by two 50-year paths. Along the upper path, the world ignores climate change for 50 years and the global emissions rate for greenhouse gases doubles. Along the lower path, with extremely hard work, the rate remains constant. We reported that starting along the flat emissions path in 2004 was consistent with ‘beating doubling,’ i.e., capping the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration at below twice its ‘pre-industrial’ concentration (the concentration a few centuries ago).

The paper is probably best known for having introduced the ‘stabilization wedges,’ a quantitative way to measure the level of effort associated with a mitigation strategy: a wedge of vehicle fuel efficiency, a wedge of wind power, and a wedge of avoided deforestation have the same effect on the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Filling the stabilization triangle required seven wedges.”

Among some 15 or so other wedges that Socolow and Pascala mapped out, three looked to CCS for reductions on the order of one gigatonne per year, to capture CO2 at present and future plants generating baseload power plants, H2 and/or coal-to-synfuel.

To be sure, the graph had its critics. Charles Petit at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker reminds us why it was also so catalytic, so much so that it perhaps encouraged false hope about the ease of fixing this problem:

“It was oversimplified, but for goodness’s sake, that’s what your typical members of Congress and White House senior staffers require. Wedges, for a while, were the currency of climate mitigation conversation. Yet since then emissions have gone on shooting up. Some critics said the Princeton pair so simplified that task, however abstractly, that it got translated subconsciously as an easy job. And easy jobs don’t get emergency attention. Thus for mapping a route away from climate peril Socolow and co-author Pacala got pinned, by some, as a reason policy makers lost their fear and, without it, did hardly anything.”

(To wit, earlier this year, Socolow was drawn into a brouhaha when a blogger reported he actually regreted writing the first wedges paper. Socolow responded to the contrary immediately and repeatedly since, and does so again in this publication.)

The update, while more alarming, has made less of a splash. The formal publication of Wedges II, if you will, was published simultaneously in two sites: the formal research paper appeared as ‘Wedges Reaffirmed’, in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; a more shorter adaptation can be found at the Climate Central website.

Following both versions, there’s a fascinating trail of comments filed by high-level climate experts and global warming pundits such as the likes of Nicholas Stern (Chairman of the London School of Economics Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and member of the Global CCS Institute’s

International Advisory Panel), Natural Resource Defense Council’s director of climate programs David Hawkins, and even physicist Freeman Dyson, a climate change ‘heretic’.

Further afield, however, very few media outlets have paid attention to this update, as Petit points out. This is partly due, to be sure, to the recession and global anxiety, but it also reflects the ways in which climate messaging has backfired. Even Socolow, in the less formal write-up of his research at Climate Central, acknowledges that the first wave of climate analysis made mistakes:

“I submit, advocates for prompt action, of whom I am one, also bear responsibility for the poor quality of the discussion and the lack of momentum. Over the past seven years, I wish we had been more forthcoming with three messages: we should have conceded, prominently, that the news about climate change is unwelcome, that today’s climate science is incomplete, and that every ‘solution’ carries risk. I don’t know for sure that such candor would have produced a less polarized public discourse. But I bet it would have. Our audiences would have been reassured that we and they are on the same team – that we are not holding anything back and have the same hopes and fears.”

It is not too late to bring these messages forward.

He concludes with an assessment that many in this carbon policy and energy fields have likewise come to — that changing public opinion about climate policy will take more than science: “To motivate prompt action today, seven years later, our wedges paper needs supplements: insights from psychology and history about how unwelcome news is received, probing reports about the limitations of current climate science, and sober assessments of unsafe braking”.

Important as his revised analysis of the ‘wedges’ is, Socolow’s ruminations on the challenge of how to frame and communicate about the solutions is sage advice to help guide thinking about the CCS policy agenda as well.

Additional resources related to the stabilization wedges are available online at Princeton University.

Read or comment on the original post here:
http://www.globalccsinstitute.com/community/blogs/authors/adamaston/2011/11/03/fighting-coal-plants-fighting-carbon-capture-and-re-use 

GreenBiz

Building Efficiency, Batteries Drive Johnson Controls’ Record Growth | Global CCS Institute

Green is proving to be a good bet for Johnson Controls, Inc. Despite the anemic condition of its two key markets — automotive and construction — JCI recently announced record sales and profits for 2011. And the record run will continue next year, too, company executives predicted at an analysts meeting in New York this week, with green technologies providing much of the lift.

With overall GDP growth inching along at close to one percent and talk of a double dip recession echoing widely, Johnson’s rapid resurgence and bullish guidance came as a surprise. Based on preliminary figures, JCI’s revenues hit a record $40.7 billion, growing by 19 percent as net income climbed by 24 percent, to $1.7 billion, in its 2011 fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

Looking out to next year CEO Steve Roell predicted revenue would expand by another nine percent to $44 billion, while earnings per share would surge by some 20 percent. Long term, Roell anticipates 10 to 15 percent annual sales growth, a pace that if realized, could double JCI’s size in five years.

How is JCI growing so quickly when the overall economy is stuck in neutral? There’s a hint in the breakdown of where JCI expects growth next year.

Sales will expand by about 10 percent next year in its Building Efficiency unit, spurred by accelerating spending on retrofits and efficiency upgrades. Likely to expand faster still is the Power Solutions unit, where revenues will rise by around 12 percent, stoked in part by rising demand for batteries for hybrids and electric vehicles.

The company’s largest unit, Automotive Experience, will grow by 6 percent, supplying interior components and subsystems to auto makers — think seats, dashboards and doors.

Roell made the case that while broad pessimism was probably overstated — there’s a risk that the market will “talk itself” back into a recession, he said — JCI’s green focus is part of the reason it’s well positioned to grow in emerging markets and to grab share in slower-growth developed markets.

“Our market strength, product technology, and global distribution make us uniquely positioned to take advantage of the global mega-trends of energy efficiency and sustainability, and growth in emerging markets,” said Roell.

The green tint to these rosy results stems from JCI’s growing bets on building efficiency and electric vehicles. While VC-backed start-ups, and exotic new technology tend to attract the spotlight in discussions about the potential of clean tech, JCI’s outlook offers evidence of how methodically developed green offerings, coupled with strong execution, can mine huge growth from both established and emerging markets.

Panoptix and Bending Company Culture to the Cloud

Consider JCI’s last building efficiency initiative. Long a market leader in building control hardware, earlier this month JCI announced plans to push into the software services space. At Greenbuild, on Oct. 4 JCI unveiled Panoptix, a suite of cloud-hosted applications that promise to improve the collection and management of building performance data.

Building management software is complex challenge that has attracted, and spat out, quite a few players, such as Cisco, as I was reminded by Dave Myers, JCI’s president of building efficiency after the meeting. It’s a tricky space for pure IT experts to understand, so while they may “get” the challenge of connecting varied building systems, they often lack a deep fluency in the insular world of building control technology and practices, a world where Johnson Controls is a 125-year veteran.

“We have the presence in the market, the intelligence to operate buildings, and our gap was more of the connectivity,” Myers said.

To fill that gap, Johnson Controls built an in-house software development lab, importing coders from outside the building industry, specifically to cultivate a very open sensibility about standards. Doing so also meant bending corporate culture that the system must be open to communicate with competitors’ offerings. “It’s essential that Panoptix be able to talk with building control systems, including our competitors,” said Myers.

JCI’s entry into this space comes at a time when building owners are pressing harder for verification that investments in green technologies and retrofits deliver a payback. As critics of the USGBC’s LEED green building standard have emphasized, design standards don’t guarantee more efficient performance.

Better building performance data, Myers added, will not only spur programs like LEED, but should make it easier to finance retrofits too, by giving lenders clear data about improved operating costs.

The second green growth area that JCI emphasized was batteries — but not, to my surprise, the lithium-ion type that rule the roost in most advanced electric vehicles (EVs). Rather JCI sees big promise in old-school lead acid batteries, the sort cars have relied on for a century or so to start, for lighting and ongoing ignition.

In an era of space-age EVs packed with thousands of exotic li-ion power packs, where do lead-acid batteries fit in? JCI’s answer: start-stop systems for conventional cars.

While maybe not as sexy as Chevy’s Volt or Nissan’s Leaf, these lower-cost systems can stop a car’s engine when at idle, then fire it back up when the gas is pressed. At a premium that pays for itself in a year or 18 months, car makers can deliver 5 percent to 7 percent fuel savings.

Those mileage gains may be modest, but Alex Molinaroli, JCI’s president of power solutions explains, given its affordability, start-stop systems will have a deeper impact on the industry, and overall mileage, far sooner than advanced EVs. In the coming decade, Molinaroli said, advanced electrified vehicles — from plug-in hybrids to pure battery EVs — will make up only a few percent of sales. In the interim, the true “mass market” approach to EVs will come from start-stop systems added to conventional cars.

“It’s the math. Let’s say EVs mean 5 percent of cars improve their mileage by 100 percent,” said Molinaroli. “You have more impact improving the mileage of 100 percent of cars by 5 or 10 percent.” Already widely adopted in Europe, start-stop systems will make their way into the majority of U.S. models in coming years, Molinaroli added, as automakers begin the push to hit new federal 54.5 mpg standards by 2025.

In parallel, li-ion batteries will grow continue to grow, as well, and JCI rationalized its control of its advanced battery operations. On Sept. 30, JCI completed the $145-million buyout of its joint venture with France’s Saft, gaining ownership of Li-ion battery technology, rights to licenses and a recently completed plant in Holland, Mich.

JCI currently supplies Li-ion batteries to Azure (which makes electric trucks for FedEx and others), BMW, Daimler, Ford, China’s Geely, Jaguar/Land Rover, Odyne (another truck maker) and VW.

Lead acid batteries were recently at the center of a dust-up at JCI’s plant near Shanghai. Built by and acquired from Delco, JCI had to shutter its lead-acid battery plant in Pudong New Area last month when authorities requested the factory halt operations after exceeding its quota of lead emissions.

Molinaroli said the closing came despite the fact, in the past, JCI has been solicited by Chinese authorities to transfer practices to help local plants lower their lead emissions. The Shanghai plant, Molinaroli emphasized, operates at the same standard as JCI’s facilities in Europe and the Americas. JCI has the right to resume operations at the plant on Jan. 1, and is developing four additional facilities elsewhere in China.

NRDC OnEarth

Meet the Change Makers: Maersk Gets Shipshape | OnEarth

How the world’s largest shipping line orders up efficiency. Maersk Line executive Jacob Sterling tells us how.

If global commerce has a circulatory system, it’s the network of thousands of container vessels that ply the world’s oceans, moving goods from port to port. On a typical run, one of these floating juggernauts might pick up thousands of tons of the latest e-gizmos from Shanghai, then a load of toys from Hong Kong to deliver to U.S. consumers. On the return trip, it might haul grain and other commodities from the Midwest, along with recycled paper and metal scrap harvested from New York City’s trash. Over the past half-century, the worldwide adoption of neatly stackable, truck-sized container boxes has driven down freight costs by 99 percent while spurring growth in global trade nearly 100-fold. Without the humble container ship, your glossy iPad would still be a figment of some designer’s imagination.

The dark side of this oceanic trade boom is pollution. Because they burn “bunker fuel” — the dirtiest and therefore cheapest type of oil  — the world’s floating freighters emit staggering volumes of black, sooty pollution. Recent EU estimates suggest that in a single year, a single gargantuan container ship vents the same amount of smog-forming sulfur oxide (SOx) gases as 50 million cars annually. By that count, it takes less than two dozen of the largest container vessels to belch out the same amount of pollution as the world’s entire stock of roughly one billion vehicles. In fact, the world’s freighter fleet is responsible for about 3.5 percent of global warming emissions, about twice the share of the aviation sector.

In the face of these numbers, Maersk Line, the world’s largest operator of container vessels, is taking steps to green its operations. This isn’t an entirely altruistic effort on Maersk’s part — it knows new air-pollution rules are soon tightening in both the EU and the United States and wants to get the jump. Last February, the Copenhagen-based company announced that it plans to build the largest, most energy-efficient container ships on the seas. In a deal with Korea’s Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering, Maersk inked plans to buy 10 new energy-efficient vessels, with options for 20 more, to be delivered by 2016. They ain’t cheap: At around $190 million apiece, and more than 1,300 feet long, the new ships will carry 18,000 containers apiece — 16 percent more than today’s largest vessels. Maersk says they will emit 20 percent less carbon dioxide per container, and featuring advanced new engines, consume 35 percent less fuel per container.

OnEarth’s Adam Aston talked with Jacob Sterling, Maersk Line’s head of climate and environment, about how the company’s very big boats can make a smaller impact on the environment.

Freight ships are among the largest mobile objects in the world. How do you decrease the environmental impact of their operations?

One way is what we call “slow steaming.” In a vessel as big as a freighter, if you cut speed by 20 percent, we found you cut fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by as much as 40 percent. We don’t run all lines 20 percent slower all the time, but we aim to do it as much as possible. For example, we may run slow on a delivery of low-value scrap metal and paper going from Europe to China, but boost speed on the return trip when we’re moving more valuable, time-sensitive fashion apparel. Also, if you slow a given vessel down by 20 percent you might need to add more ships to that route to ensure reliable service for the customer. Overall, though, we see 5 to 15 percent savings in fuel and CO2 emissions on routes that are slow steaming.

Are your big shipping customers asking for greener shipping options?

It’s growing in importance and is part of a mix of services they are seeking. But it can be challenging for them because the push to save energy and cut costs runs counter to many years of trying to make supply chains more efficient. That means that until now the paradigm has been: faster, faster, faster. So much so that in 2007, we took delivery of new, super-fast freight vessels — compared to regular freighters, they’re practically speed boats — that could go almost 30 knots [35 mph]. Conventional vessels cruise at around 25 knots [29 mph], and slow steaming is 20 knots [23 mph].

But now we’re selling off the speed boats because they’re so inefficient at slower speeds. Instead, the vessels we will take delivery of this year will have wide hull shapes and advanced engines that recapture waste heat, to be more efficient, not faster.

Is there any promise in efforts to replace the pollutant-heavy bunker fuel with biofuels?

We’re looking into it. But the volumes we need mean it’s a ways off still. The first generation of biofuels has been disappointing. Often these fuels don’t score well in terms of how much CO2 they actually save [over their entire life cycle] relative to fossil fuels. And the quantities, so far, are too low for our needs. But we’re optimistic. Unlike jets, which need very pure biofuels that remain stable at very low temperatures, our engines could work on biofuels that are less refined. It would certainly help with the challenge we face of getting sulfur out of our fuel supply, because biofuels have close to none.

In port cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle and Hong Kong, freighters are a major source of air pollution. How can you change this?

While in port and while approaching them, we’ve already begun to switch to cleaner marine diesel fuels. In Hong Kong, one of the world’s busiest ports, we led this effort, voluntarily, in a way that led about a dozen other shipping lines to do the same.

In port, the cleaner marine diesel we use is closer to automotive diesel. In Hong Kong, for instance, the fuel we’re using has just 0.1 to 0.5 percent sulfur, whereas regular bunker fuel has up to 20 times more. Bunker fuel isn’t like normal oil. It’s more like asphalt. It has to be heated first before it can be pumped into engines to be burnt.

What about using plug-in electric sources in port, as are offered in Los Angeles and other ports? Are those a factor in cutting pollution, and are they spreading in use?

Shoreside power is certainly a way to cut pollution — but it’s only an option in ports. We are looking into shoreside power, but it does have the downside that we then become dependent on the power sources available locally. Most often electricity production is based on fossil fuels, so it is not a silver bullet.

How well is the global shipping business prepared for the inevitability of rising oil prices?

Higher and more volatile fuel prices have become the new normal in the shipping industry. Increasing fuel prices increase the price on transportation, but they also has the effect that those shipping lines that are best at saving energy and fuel save a lot of money and are more profitable. So increasing fuel prices can actually drive development of cleaner shipping.

Step back and consider the full scope of Maersk Line’s efforts to green its operations. What has been the overall impact?

Since 2007, we have reduced our relative CO2 emissions by more than 14 percent per container moved. This is due to the introduction of slow steaming, as well as our continuous focus on running our vessels more efficiently. In terms of changing the culture of our company, it’s difficult to say. It has always been in the values of Maersk Line to protect the environment and try to be a good global citizen. But now environmental performance is a key element of our business strategy. I think that we as employees will become more aware of the role we play in driving Maersk Line and the shipping industry towards better environmental performance.

How do you feel the industry as a whole is responding to this challenge?

I think that the industry could step up its efforts to develop CO2 regulations for shipping. And Maersk Line strongly supports the goals of the International Maritime Organization to develop them. But without global CO2 regulations for shipping, the sector as a whole risks being seen as a laggard even though it has real potential to drive the transition toward an economy that uses fewer fossil fuels and produces less CO2.

Sidebar: Truth Squad

NRDC’s Rich Kassel weighs in on the pollution challenge facing the world’s shipping lines

Last June in Belgium, Maersk CEO Eivind Kolding told leaders of the world’s great shipping lines that if they are to maintain their role as primary carriers of the world’s goods, the industry must change. As environmental concerns multiply and technology improves, he said, the industry must reduce emissions and clean up operations.

Prodding its peers toward greener practices is nothing new for Maersk. The company “has consistently been ahead of the pack on a wide range of environmental issues,” says Rich Kassel, senior attorney and director of NRDC’s clean fuels and vehicles project. “It has continually signaled where environmental performance will go next.”

Maersk voluntarily lowered sulfur levels in its fuel at U.S. ports years before rules required it. Other industry players resisted the move, arguing that the use of high-sulfur bunker fuel was the only way to stay profitable. But emissions from the dirtier bunker fuels take a huge toll, both on nearby communities — typically low-income communities of color, which bear the brunt of the harm — and nationally, causing tens of thousands of premature deaths every year, as well as increased asthma emergencies and other serious health problems.

Maersk proved that it was possible to use cleaner fuel and still make profits. And its move made it easier for the International Maritime Organization and government regulators to require its competitors to follow suit. “When Maersk shows that something works, it’s easier to advance policies that change the entire industry,” Kassel says.

In the wake of Maersk’s switch to cleaner fuel, the IMO adopted new rules that will soon require all ships to use cleaner fuels whenever they are operating within 200 miles of U.S. coasts. Starting in 2015, ships in this zone will use fuel that contains 97 percent less sulfur than today’s average. This switch will translate into 14,000 fewer premature deaths and $110 billion in health care savings per year by 2020, Kassel says.

—Adam Aston

Original URL for story: http://www.onearth.org/article/meet-the-change-makers-maersk-gets-shipshape