Which oil company has the smallest environmental footprint?
Posted Wednesday, September 9th, 2009New Greenopia report ranks oil companies according to environmental impact and effort.
Mother Nature Network, May 26 2009
Let’s face it, there are no environmentally friendly oil companies. It’s a contradiction in terms. Every major oil company in the world has a significant negative environmental impact — one that could only be eliminated by making a complete switch to renewable energy. But, green ratings and rankings site Greenopia.com has evaluated 10 oil giants to determine who’s causing the least damage and making the most effort to be greener.
“Fossil fuels are pretty much at the top of any environmentalist’s black list,” said Doug Mazeffa, director of research at Greenopia. “But until alternative-fuel coalesces into large-scale market availability, cars are a vast and current fact of life and they are powered by refined crude oil.”
British Petroleum came in first as the company that’s doing the most to lessen its impact. Greenopia praises BP’s user-friendly, transparent sustainability reports, its efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and its portfolio of renewable energy investment. Greenopia called BP “the place to go if you want some of the more responsibly sourced oil in the U.S.”
Coming in dead last is Citgo, which has the least complete environmental reporting of any company evaluated. Greenopia says,
‘We couldn’t even track down the total greenhouse gas emissions, something that every other company reports front and center. And even though Citgo had an impressively low number of oil spills, they don’t even report the volume of oil spilled, so there is no way of being sure how big of an accomplishment this is. Likewise we don’t have a feel for the amount of water consumed or waste generated. Lastly, Citgo could benefit from other alternative fuels besides ethanol. Ethanol has questionable life cycle benefits and there are many other greener fuel types out there.’
Production efficiency, oil spill efficiency, sustainability reporting, pursuit of alternative fuels, stance on climate change and resource efficiency were among the criteria used to rank BP, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, Hess, Citgo, Valero, Conoco Phillips, Sunoco and Marathon. Data was collected from the companies’ sustainability and/or annual reports and was normalized against production and revenue to determine each companies’ efficiency relative to its competitors.
Recession: The Mother of Innovation?
Posted Thursday, September 3rd, 2009Our special report looks at innovative ways businesses can turn the troubled economy to their advantage
BusinessWeek, July 22, 2009
Necessity may be the mother of invention. But could a recession be the mother of innovation? After all, many of the world’s enduring, multibillion-dollar corporations, from Disney (DIS) to Microsoft (MSFT), were founded during economic downturns. Generally speaking, operating costs tend to be cheaper in a recession. Talent is easier to find because of widespread layoffs. And competition is usually less fierce because, frankly, many players are taken out of the game.
Recessions can also help executives figure out how to improve products, services, and processes internally and for customers. Ideally, the creative thinking that’s needed to weather the storm of an economic downturn can lead to new markets and revenue streams. “Innovation originates from challenges,” says Vineet Nayar, CEO of HCL Technologies, a Noida (India)-based global IT services company.
HCL recently partnered with Xerox (XRX) to provide tech support for corporate customers using Xerox systems meant to reduce the amount of wasted paper. The systems themselves were inspired by the dual challenges of helping to save the environment and the need to slash office expenses during the downturn.
Inventing cost-effective and time-saving processes becomes a priority in a downturn, and it’s an area of interest for companies and organizations in a variety of fields, from high tech to health care. “In a recession, you can innovate to be more efficient,” says John Kao, author of the book Innovation Nation and the head of Deloitte’s Institute for Large Scale Innovation.
Lessons to Be Learned
Sure, there have been some signs lately that the economy might be picking up—Apple‘s (AAPL) quarterly profits jumped 15%, for instance. But a recent survey by consulting firm Bain & Co. found that 60% of 1,430 global executives polled expect the current recession to last through 2010.
And smart companies will continue to apply the innovation lessons learned during today’s tough times even when things pick up. The innovative processes, products, and services that hatch now can help executives understand how to curb costs or take risks on fresh ideas when the economy rebounds.