The City of London Corporation and partners have announced a new initiative to carry out investment research into technologies needed to tackle climate change.
Sponsors of the the London Accord are BP, Forum for the Future, Gresham College and the Z/Yen Group, the risk management firm. Reuters, London School of Economics, the Santa Fe Institute and Cambridge University are also supporting the programme. ABN AMRO, Credit Suisse,Morgan Stanley and Barclays Capital are some of the City organisations that have pledged investment research time. The research results are expected to be published in December 2007.
Hewlett-Packard has announced that it will improve the energy efficiency of its products and packaging in an attempt to reduce its energy use by 20% below 2005 levels by 2010.
“Sustainability should span the entire business, from product reuse and recycling, a socially and environmentally responsible supply chain, to energy efficiency in products and internal operations – it’s the whole package” said Pat Tiernan, HP’s vice president for corporate, social and environmental responsibility. This announcement is the last in a series of sustainability goals that HP has set over the past six months.
Xerox has redesigned over half of its office products in order to meet the US Environment Protection Agency’s new ENERGY STAR requirements that came into effect on April 1. It was expected that the new EPA standards would be so rigorous that only 25% of products on the market would meet the new criteria. However, Xerox had been working on product redesign for the past two years in anticipation of the new standards.
ConocoPhillips, the US energy company, announced that it has joined the US Climate Action Partnership and committed itself to cut emissions from operations. The partnership joins the company with one other oil company, BP, in the call for mandatory U.S. rules to reduce greenhouse gases. Many oil companies in Europe are already subject to the Kyoto Protocol framework, from which U.S. companies were made exempt when George Bush came to power. The US Environmental Protection Agency now has increased powers of regulation, however, and is expected to override some government decisions. ConocoPhillips has warned that laws requiring emissions cuts should be structured to avoid increasing the volatility of energy prices.
nPower, the energy company, may face prosecution over recent draining of a lake to dispose of waste ash according to the Campaign to Protect Rural England. The charity claims that even though the company had permission to use the lake, it did not have the right to cut down trees and that this has lead to a public enquiry into the case.
Ford has appointing a top environmental officer to lead all the company’s environmental and safety issues. Susan Cischke has been made senior vice president of Sustainability, Environment and Safety Engineering and will be responsible for establishing a sustainability strategy as well as Ford’s environmental and safety policy and will make sure that the company meets or exceeds all regulations for these areas worldwide. She will work with global regulators on issues ranging from carbon dioxide to pedestrian safety.
American International Group, the US insurance and financial services firm, has launched an alternative energy practice to serve the insurance and risk management needs of their alternative energy clients. They have also become the first insurance company to become part of the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), the US alliance of businesses lobbying for mandatory climate regulation.
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