As I’ve mentioned before, small businesses (and some large) are generally strapped for resources. More often than not, they don’t have the money or time to devote to things outside of business services themselves. This becomes an acute disadvantage at a time when the government is throwing billions of dollars at businesses across the country, especially those in the green business sector.

Luckily, the intelligent editors at Greenbiz.com have put together a map of the nearly $5.5 million that has been provided to the General Services Administration (GSA) from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The funds will be used to build new federal energy-efficient buildings, and weatherize and reduce water and energy consumption in existing federal buildings. The emphasis, according to Greenbiz.com, is “to convert the buildings into ‘high performance green buildings,’ including adding solar panels or small wind turbines, and weatherizing old, leaky structures.”

There are about 250 projects located in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and The Virgin Islands that are broken into four categories: new construction (including Land Ports of Entry), full and partial building modernization, limited scope projects, and small projects.

So how can the mapped be used by small green businesses?

Easy. Look for the region where your business is located and find out if there are any projects funded by the GSA. The map will give you the name of the building/project, address, and amount of money received for the project. A single federal building complex in Detroit received $30,000,000 for green renovations, which means serious business opportunities for Michigan business who are appropriate for the project.

The map does not give information about the bidding process though. For that, go to the Federal Business Opportunities site.

Despite a large increase in the United States’ overall greenhouse gas emissions during the last several decades, the United States has slowly but surely been able to produce more with less energy. Our energy efficiency has improved by leaps and bounds, but a new report authored by McKinsey Global Energy and Materials says that the full potential of energy efficiency initiatives has yet to be realized. If the United States were to implement a comprehensive strategy aimed at increasing energy efficiency, the resulting monetary and emissions’ savings would be enormous.

According to the report, a “holistic approach executed at scale” would yield gross energy savings worth more than $1.2 trillion, more than double the amount needed upfront for investment in these energy efficiency measures. This program is estimated to “reduce energy consumption by 2020 by 9.1 quadrillion BTUs, roughly 23 percent of projected demand, potentially abating up to 1.1 gigatons of greenhouse gases annually.”

The report seeks to simultaneously pinpoint the barriers of unlocking the potential for energy efficiency while also reviewing solution strategies. If a directed and comprehensive strategy in the United States was implemented, companies involved in all areas of energy efficiency could reap huge benefits. Manufacturers of energy-efficiency related products, energy auditors, builders, and contractors, among others, could see business skyrocket. But even if a comprehensive plan is not initiated, the report can be used by companies heavily invested in the energy efficiency field to focus their efforts towards areas with the most potential.

According to the report, a comprehensive strategy addressing energy efficiency opportunities would need to:

1.    Recognize energy efficiency as an important energy resource that can help meet future energy needs while the nation concurrently develops new no- and low- carbon energy sources.
2.    Formulate and launch at both national and regional levels an integrated portfolio of prove, piloted, and emerging approaches to unlock the full potential of energy effiency.
3.    Identify methods to provide the significant upfront funding required by any plan to capture energy efficiency.
4.    Forge greater alignment between utilities, regulators, government agencies, manufacturers, and energy consumers.
5.    Foster innovation in the development and deployment of next-generation energy efficiency technologies to ensure ongoing productivity gains.

The report identifies and maps “in detail the complex and persistent set of barriers that have impeded capture of energy efficiency at the level of individual opportunities.” As noted earlier, significant gains have been made in energy efficiency in the United States, but decisive barriers still exist. For instance, most energy efficiency measures require significant upfront investment, which deters many. “Efficiency potential,” the report says, is highly fragmented as a result of more than 100 million locations and billions of devices used in residential, commercial, and industrial settings. “This dispersion,” the report says, “ensures that efficiency is the highest priority for virtually no one.” And lastly, quantifying amounts of energy not consumed (potential savings) can be extremely difficult.

These hurdles can be overcome, but the solutions must be implemented in a holistic, rather than piecemeal fashion. Most simply, the report lists four categories of “proven, piloted, and emerging” solutions: (following is quote)

1.    Information and education. Increasing awareness of energy use and knowledge about specific energy-saving opportunities would enable end-users to act more swiftly in their own financial investment. Options include providing more information on utility bills or use of –in-building displays, voluntary standards, additional device- and building-labeling schemes, audits and assessments, and awareness campaigns.

2.    Incentives and financing. Given the large upfront investments needed to capture efficiency potential, various approaches could reduce financial hurdles that end-users face. Options include traditional and creative financing vehicles (such as on-bill financing), monetary incentives and/or grants, including tax and cash incentives, and price signals, including tiered pricing and externality pricing.

3.    Codes and Standards. In some clusters of efficiency potential, some form of mandate may be warranted to expedite the process of capturing the potential, particularly where end-user or manufacturer awareness and attention are low. Options include mandatory audits and/or assessments, equipment standards, and building codes, including improving code enforcement.

4.    Third-party involvement. A private company, utility, government agency, or non-governmental organization could support a “do-it-for-me” approach by purchasing and installing energy efficiency improvements directly for the end-user, thereby essentially addressing most non-capital barriers. When coupled with monetary incentives, this solutions strategy could address the majority of barriers, though some number of end-users might decline the opportunity to receive the efficiency upgrade, preventing capture of the full potential.

For these initiatives to be completely successful, close collaboration needs to occur between governments, businesses, and non-profits. But regardless of whether a comprehensive nationwide approach is implemented, businesses of all sizes in the energy-efficiency field can pinpoint solutions outlined in the study and work on those in their local communities. They should work with their local utility companies and governments to start awareness campaigns that provide simple and user-friendly information for the public and business, while at the same time working with those same utility companies to provide tax credits or grants. Businesses should also work with local municipal governments and state governments to instate mandatory energy efficiency requirements such as audits and building codes. California has the highest standards for energy efficiency in the country and energy-efficiency related businesses prospered as a result.

These are just a few of the opportunities for energy-efficiency related businesses, but as you can see, the possibilities seem endless.

Leaders of the wine industry are beginning to prove that even creature comforts are still within the grasp of the environmentally conscience, despite the machinery-driven and agriculture heavy processes associated with wine production.  A winery in Umbria, Italy called Monte Vibiano, known for producing high-end wines, is one of these leaders, and they have set out on a quest to become the first carbon-neutral winery in the world.

Many other wineries employ innovative practices to reduce their footprint; however, Monte Vibiano is taking this to a whole new level by using all the basic sustainability methods as well as IT integration, applying new technologies to revolutionize age-old techniques of wine production.

Some of the implemented strategies have been to use new Microsoft software to reduce their servers to half of what was used before as well as cutting the energy needed to run those servers by almost 40%.  They made similar progress by adjusting their travel needs.  Instead of traveling long distances to meet with clients and arrange tastings, they are holding more of their meetings online, thus cutting travel expenditures by $30,000 and showing how simple changes in strategy lead to huge economic and environmental improvement.

These adjustments are only the beginning.   Solar electricity systems will eventually provide all the energy for the winery as well as their wheat and olive oil production facilities, and they even employ simple methods like painting storage facilities white to reflect sun away from the Earth, planting 10,000 trees to soak up CO2, and using golf carts and electric bikes to zip around the premises.  Tractors, meanwhile, run on biofuels, which they say they never use from food-source crops.  It seems there is nothing this innovative winery has not thought of or decided to leave to chance

Plans for the near future are even more impressive.  Monte Vibiano is planning to use up-to-date analytics and data collection with an intricate network of  crop sensors  to ensure the most quality end products with least amount of effort.  They presume by tracking everything they can figure out exactly where they need to adjust.   Radio frequency ID tags provide data on their olive trees, monitoring everything from natural variables to the effect humans have on production.  They will  monitor every variable to find the absolute greatest efficiency in production by eliminating any kind of waste possible.

Monte Vibiano predict their efforts will cut 10 tons of CO2 emissions and lead to vast savings in company expenditures starting in 5 years when the investment pays off.  As a serious business, environmental improvements don’t make sense if the figures don’t work.  The best part about news like this is when organizations like Monte Vibiano blaze the path others in the industry soon follow suit, especially when it makes economic sense.

And consumers can rest assured responsible business practices and new revolutionary techniques will ensure they do not have to give up this cherished luxury any time soon.

At some point, we have all been critical of corporate greenwashing. It is common to hear reports of companies adopting eco-friendly technologies for good PR or to benefit from government incentives. Some of these firms dubiously publicize their production process as being ‘green’ without actually endorsing the initiatives that they promise to undertake — there is a wide gap between supporting a green technology and adopting it. Further, with the economic meltdown hammering stock markets across the world, most of the global-scale private firms have toned down their investment in green technologies. For these reasons, it is heartening to see that IBM has taken the initiative to honestly and reasonably present its green efforts for the 2008 – 09 fiscal.

IBM has always been at the forefront of reducing energy use in its workplace and production environments, not to mention its efforts to use innovative technologies to curb greenhouse emissions and reduce hazardous wastes being dumped into landfills. The company started the trend of owning-up to its individual performance from a green & sustainable business practice perspective as a part of its annual Corporate Responsibility Report.

What is remarkable is that the Report does not try to promote the fact that it is sincerely committed to the cause of making itself environmentally compatible. Instead, the Report merely tries to educate people about the progress and even the drawbacks that IBM came across when trying walk along the greener route of conducting its business. The Report is truly exhaustive in its nature, spilling over more than 43 pages. It is precise in accounting for the performance of every green initiative across a wide array of company functions, from the supply chain, to community-cause related endeavors, to corporate governance, right down to among the employees. The Report highlights IBM’s efforts to  develop a more responsible global brand, supporting water conservation and helping develop energy-efficient workplace communities, while presenting an honest reflection of IBM’s slow transformation from energy dependent to truly “green.”

The noteworthy performance indicators of the Report are:

Conservation of Energy
•    Savings made by continuing with conservation projects have gone past the annual goal of 3.5%
•    Energy savings equaled 6.1% of the total energy use for 2008.
This translates into savings of:
235 million kilowatt electric hours
6.3 million gallons of fuel savings
215,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions

Overall, the total savings made through various conservation methods yielded $32.3 million in energy cost savings. Most of the energy saving projects were executed in IBM’s data centers that have conventionally used high-energy server operations.

Controlling Greenhouse Gas Emissions

•    Purchase of renewable energy increased to 450 million kWh in 2008
•    This equals 8.6% of IBM’s global electricity use for the year
•    This means a total reduction in CO2 emissions, due to energy use, by nearly 1.6 %

IBM has already been sensitive to its CO2 emission levels and it reduced the same by nearly 40% from 1999 to 2005. Not satisfied with this, the greenhouse gas emission reduction percentage has now been projected at 12% by 2012.

Controlling PFC Emissions — toward the end of 2008, the PFC emissions in CO2 were down by 30.4% in comparison to the 1995 baseline. PFC (Perfluorocompounds) is released during the production of semiconductors and IBM seeks to reduce it by another 25 % by 2010.

Managing End-of-Life Products — IBM produced 42,302 metric tons of waste products in 2008 that were further processed for proper disposal. Only 0.6% of it found its way to the landfills or got smoked in the incineration facilities. In 2007, this figure was a bit high at 0.8%. This means that in 2008, IBM was able to recycle or re-use more than 99% of its products that had reached the end of their lifecycle.

Recycling Plastic — Annual goal of recycling used plastic products is 5%.
Figures for:
2007: 10.6%
2008: 10.3% (a shortfall of 0.3%)

Minimizing Hazardous Waste — in 2007, hazardous waste products were reduced by 8,400 metric tons.
2008: 10,900 metric tons

Recycling Non-hazardous Waste — Annual goal for recycling non-hazardous waste products is 75%. Figures for:
2007: 78%
2008: 79%

Water Conservation — The figures released for conserving water are based upon IBM’s performance in its microelectronics manufacturing process. The annual goal is to conserve about 2% of the total volume of water used for this process, over a period of five years.
Figures for:
2007: 6%
2008: 4.6%

If you choose to be critical, it can be observed that in terms of year-on-year progress, IBM has not taken any substantial steps for endorsing newer, more innovative technologies. Most of the conservational technologies used earlier have been continued with, albeit their effectiveness has increased in some cases. However, it should be understood that given the size of IBM’s worldwide operations, it is comparatively difficult for it to adopt new conservation or recycling methods across all its facilities. Nearly every new technology that it adopts needs to be radically modified for vastly-different regional requirements.

What should be complimented is that even during an economically-challenging environment, the company has sustained its efforts towards actually adopting environmentally-responsible, greener business practices. IBM’s ability to sustain its progress on a greener path while keeping its business practices equally profitable should be a role model to smaller businesses that argue about the impracticalness of adopting greener production/manufacturing technologies. Further, IBM’s method of publicizing its green performance on an annual basis should influence other companies to come forth with their own honest progress reports. Perhaps, then, all businesses can learn from the successes and failures of their neighbors, and the business sector can make legitimate movement towards a sustainable economy.