Green & Sustainable Business Ventures: For Entrepreneurs & Investors
John Friedman talks about the key factors that affected how the government, wall street and main street perceived sustainability in 2011. The occupy movement, the seven billion people, the up-one-day-down-the-next-day economy, the congress and its failures all affected the sustainability mission. 2011: A year in review.
President Obama put off a decision on the controversial Keystone pipeline that will carry tar sands oil from Central Canada through the Central U.S. down to refineries in Louisiana. The Administration’s action requires a full environmental review – a move that puts off the pipeline decision until 2013, following the Presidential election. But the pipeline approval has raised its head again in an unlikely scenario – a tax bill to extend payroll taxes for American businesses.
OPower teams up with Facebook and NRDC to roll out a new app that lets you add your utility bills to Facebook to see if you can use less than your friend network. Think of it as “Farmville” for utility bill savings.
OPower is a new customer engagement platform for the utility industry. It reinvents the way utilities interact with customers—from the quality of the information provided to the way it’s presented and delivered. It helps people use energy more efficiently and ultimately save money on their energy bills. And it vastly improves the overall customer experience by making energy use personally relevant.
To highlight some of the ways small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) contribute to market innovation, IBM and GOOD teamed up to produce this co-sponsored infographic that looks at recent findings published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international think tank. The research study outlined the many ways that SMEs may be small in size, but are often able to raise the bar for innovation.
2011 has seen a huge increase in drilling permits for the Marcellus and Utica deposits in Ohio. One permit was issued for Utica in 2009, and two were issued in 2010 – as of December 4, 131 permits had been issued. The Marcellus deposit has seen a little less action, with ten permits issued between 2006 and 2010 and another ten permits issued this year.
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