At the recent Greentech Conference in San Francisco, Betsy had a buoyant chat with Silicon Valley mover and shaker Sunil Paul. Sunil is known for putting his money where his mouth is, and going by what he says here, the future for Green (energy!) technology is bright indeed. LISTEN (7 min)
Jonathan Lash of the World Resources Institute presents the San Francisco Clean Tech Forum.
LISTEN (11 min)
Ira Ehrenpreis is with Technology Partners a Venture Capital firm in Silicon Valley that focuses on clean tech. LISTEN (7 min)
Image: Green Progress
Do you go green with the company you’d like to have, or the company you’ve got? Wal-Mart Vice President of Sustainability Andy Ruben tells Betsy how Wal-Mart is attempting to accomplish its three ambitious and open-ended goals:
1. Be supplied by 100% renewable energy.
2. Create zero waste.
3. Sell products that sustain our resources and environment.
He explains how the Green Xanadu of Wal-Marts in Kansas City uses 20% less electricity to operate and how their customers’ green living can begin with a lightbulb.
PART ONE (7 min) PART TWO (12 min)
Professor of Management and Engineering Systems John Sterman of MIT’s Sloan School of Management tells Betsy why being a green MBA is less of a lonely pursuit than when he was at Sloan, and of the launch of their S-Lab, a way of harnessing students’ demand to include sustainability in their bottom lines, and to begin working in the big leagues right away. LISTEN (8 min)
CEO of Natural Capitalism Solutions and co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Hunter Lovins sits down with Betsy to talk about writing Climate Protection Manuals for cities, Richard Branson’s $25 million challenge, and how the business case for climate change is simply a matter of supply and demand: "There’s so much money to be made and saved through behaving responsibly towards the planet, that business is now one of the leading exponents of sustainability. This is no longer philanthropy, or environmental activism. This is good business."
PART ONE (11 min) PART TWO (7 min)
NFL Director of Environmental Programs (take a moment to let that sink in) Jack Groh tells Betsy how the league of grunts and gridiron are going to offset the carbon emissions of one of the biggest consumer spectacles in the world. Betsy wonders if mentioning that fact during the game might make a bigger difference than anything that they themselves might do. LISTEN (11 min)
Joel Makower of GreenBiz.com sits down with Betsy to chat about Michael Dell’s emerging ‘green gene’, and the ‘race to the top’ that many of the world’s largest computer companies are engaged in. He also champions the E-Peat Green Computer Standards. LISTEN (12 min)
Carbon Neutral was 2006’s word of the year (no seriously, it was), and Joel Makower explains why carbon offsets are a good idea, and why simply reducing consumption probably trumps trading sins for halos. LISTEN (12 min)
When GreenBiz.com’s Joel Makower is hot to talk about something, you know that you’re about to hear a thoughtful analysis of global green business trends. When we invited Joel over to the studio last week, what did he tell us? "I’ve become fascinated with Wal-Mart. The conversations taking place in Bentonville, Arkansas right now are like none I’ve ever heard before." LISTEN (8 min)