Energy Efficiency

As part of its efforts to grow and differentiate the brand while keeping energy stewardship at the forefront, Wendy’s® recently unveiled a new “Smart Family of Designs,” providing a portfolio of development options to franchisees, including buildings that fit into smaller footprints. Wendy’s recently introduced the Smart 2.0 design, which reduces environmental impact and includes features that promote energy efficiency.

The link between sustainability and innovation is clear at companies like UPS. With Earth Day ahead, European Director of Sustainability at UPs shares how embracing sustainability and collaboration has led to innovative new clean technologies.

CBRE Group, Inc. announced today that it has made a strategic investment in energy services firm Redaptive, Inc. Headquartered in San Francisco, Redaptive is a fast-growing provider of integrated energy efficiency solutions and energy financing for building owners and occupiers.

Today, Walmart announced that suppliers have reported reducing more than 20 million metric tons (MMT) of greenhouse gas emissions in the global value chain, as part of the company’s Project Gigaton initiative. Walmart launched Project Gigaton last April, seeking to work with suppliers to reduce emissions from the company’s value chain by a gigaton, or one billion metric tons, by 2030.

From March 9 to April 1, Marina Bay Sands featured 22 sustainable light art installations created by artists all around the world for “i Light Marina Bay” around the Marina Bay waterfront. As Asia’s leading sustainable light art festival organized by the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore, these installations reinforced the property’s position as a sustainable precinct.

The Arbor Day Foundation announced today the beginning of its spring tree planting initiatives through its Energy-Saving Trees and Community Canopy programs. Through these two community-based homeowner education programs more than 30,000 trees will be distributed by 50 partners across the United States bringing the total number of trees planted on homeowner’s properties free of charge over the last three years to more than 250,000.

As a Main Street bank organized around its customers and communities, we recognize that success isn’t about whether we sold another deposit product or booked another loan. It’s about whether we helped people and institutions achieve their financial goals. It’s about whether we are helping our communities to thrive. It’s about whether our employees are achieving their career aspirations and whether we are collectively living our values in a way that makes us all proud to work for PNC. It’s about whether we are doing right by the people we serve. And we know that when we do, financial success follows.

This week, Michael Oxman, managing director of the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business and Professor of the Practice for the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business talks about the the fact that Atlanta has one of the highest concentrations of energy burden among major metropolitan areas in the United States. With funding from Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute’s Energy and Policy Innovation Center and the Georgia Tech Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain, students and faculty from the Scheller College of Business and the School of Public Policy are conducting the study (with input from a range of stakeholders) to identify potential solution platforms.

As part of Twentieth Century Fox’s commitment to environmental sustainability in its film productions, the studio recently led efforts to green the set of The Post, Steven Spielberg’s Academy Award-nominated drama starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks about The Washington Post’s role in publishing the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The filming process lasted 52 days and took the cast and crew across dozens of locations in New York and Washington, D.C., with each new site presenting its own unique sustainability challenges. However, the combined efforts of the cast and crew allowed the movie to save 32.5 metric tons of carbon emissions, divert 80% of its waste from landfill, and donate more than 2,600 meals to those in need.

Future growth hinges on the appropriate response to present conditions while strategically developing longer-term plans. For most industries, social, environmental, and political issues are having increasingly greater impact in reshaping the present and future business environment. In particular, the oil and gas (O&G) industry is challenged to reliably and economically deliver transportation fuels in the present day while working strategically to provide “cleaner” energy products in the future.