According to the report released by independent research firm, Verdantix, increasing oil and electricity prices, the hidden cost of carbon, growing risks from energy supply disruption and board-level climate change compliance issues make energy efficiency a new imperative for the CFO.
Lobby groups are ramping up opposition to the Obama administration’s climate change plans, however not all their plans are perfect. In these difficult times it’s vital that companies stand up for what they believe in. Too often over the past 15 years, many firms have said one thing in public, and then allowed their lobby groups to do the ‘dirty work’ of lobbying in short term financial interest for them. This is not always true of course. Sometimes NGOs have said this was happening when it may well not have been, such as in the case of Starbucks a few years ago. But in the case of climate change, we are seeing some very aggressive lobbying indeed. No doubt. And one group, the powerful US Chamber of Commerce, is really going way too far.
Last week, at the National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 in Las Vegas, Energy Secretary Chu called for a revolution, “a second industrial revolution.” The first industrial revolution came with a “carbon dioxide cost” but “in the next industrial revolution, we must develop technologies that will enable us to get the energy the world needs to grow and prosper but “essentially reducing and eliminating the carbon dioxide,” he said. Chu said the United States has the greatest research and development centers in the world in universities, national labs and the private sector. “Once we get this great invention machine geared and going we’d be invincible. But the only trouble is, let’s get it going.”
