February 25, 2008

Various strategies are on the table to cut global warming pollutants. Installing long-lasting light bulbs and planting trees are two. But a potentially more aggressive step is now underway -- the tightening of lending rules to coal-fired powered plants.

Some investment banks and environmental interests have developed the "Carbon Principles." Now, those participating banks must examine both the economic and environmental costs that come with financing coal facilities that are blamed for a third of all carbon dioxide releases that contribute to global warming.

There's a growing recognition that carbon constraints are coming sooner rather than later. The premise behind previous proposals is to put a price tag on carbon dioxide emissions that would make the continued use of coal-fired power plants expensive when compared to alternatives. Under such a regime, utilities would pay more to operate coal facilities. Quite simply, the banks do not want to get saddled with those potential liabilities.

February 11, 2008

In nearly every community across the United States, utilities are visible and participating in the common good. It's about corporate social responsibility -- or the idea that companies and the cities in which they prosper are irrevocably linked.

Some might call it public relations. But it's a new era and one that is still reeling from the high-flying 1990s when illicit corporate conduct seemed to have run amok.

Companies may find adherence to federal regulations cumbersome, but no entity wants to be front page news -- with the masses watching their corporate brass hauled off in handcuffs. Their business reputations have currency and as such they must project a positive public image.

January 18, 2008

Piles of ugly waste-coal dot Pennsylvania's landscape. But now an international power plant designer will take that abandoned mine cast-off and use it to create steam and additional electricity. Sithe Global, which is applying for permits to build such a 300-megawatt power plant, says that there is enough waste-coal to last well into the future.

Waste-coal, which is poor quality coal that is mixed in with dirt and which has sat idle for decades, poses a serious threat to the landscape and to local water quality. By reusing it, power companies not only mitigate those hazards but they also harness what would otherwise be a continuing menace.

January 14, 2008

Transmission developers may be in for a jolt. A proposed project to supply power throughout the East has come under fierce opposition. As it stands now, the 240-mile, 500 kilovolt line will get rejected by at least the West Virginia Public Service Commission, which will have jurisdiction over 114 miles of it.

It's a prickly ordeal. PJM Interconnection, which operates the transmission grid for much of the East Coast, says that the proposed Allegheny Energy power line is necessary to accommodate an annual growth in electricity consumption there of 1.6 percent over the next decade. But West Virginia's citizen activists and environmentalists are arguing that property values will drop while pristine surroundings will get ruined -- and all for the benefit of those in other states.

Companies should be preparing for carbon labeling, according to the latest edition of MIT’s Supply Chain Strategy newsletter, developed by the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics. In response to the green trend of environmental responsibility, the newsletter says that companies may soon be required to show consumers how much carbon their products have generated.

"The supply chain is an integral part of these labeling systems, because it is here where much of the basic information carried on labels is gleaned," Edgar Blanco and Anthony Craig write in the article. "Research is under way to find a robust methodology for defining this information. Supply chain leaders need to keep abreast of this work and understand the intricacies of carbon labeling before their products come under the microscope."