New York Times has a history of running environmental stories about 2-6 years after they begin. 

Nonetheless, this is a great article on too big to fail banks rejecting or withdrawing financing for mountaintop removal of coal and other environmental destruction.  I am taking a lot of entrepreneurship courses right now and I will donate some MBA wisdom to the likes of Massey Energy (one of the main mountaintop removal companies);

If the big banks (none of whom are really known for stellar ethics) are unwilling to loan your balance sheet rich business money due to how you make your profit, it might be time to alter your business model. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/business/energy-environment/31coal.html?hp

http://www.carbonprinciples.com/

Sunpower issued B shares a couple years back.  If you're a finance geek it's a fascinating story. 

B shares have 8x the voting rights yet have traded much lower than A shares.

B shares carried a tax liability until sometime in 2010 since they were given to Cyprus Semiconductor shareholders. 

Other than that they are exactly the same.  They are finally coming close to the same price but not yet.  It's interesting how long this is taking.  In a perfect capital market........

I don't think so, but it's an interesting dilemma we're in. 

A new energy initiative, modeled after the department of defense funding, is "investing" (although it's not clear if taxpayers see the return) in new clean tech mostly in the fuel space.  This industry needed to grow and scale 30 years ago, but the question is can it now?  VC's and other early stage investors are hesitant to invest so how do we make this happen without government?  Well, maybe the government should become LP's in a hybrid venture fund but they shouldn't be the ones picking the companies, there's a conflict of interest and inexperience.  One of the qualities a good investor brings to the table is experience building solid companies and most of the people in the fed energy dept simply don't have that and they are likely going to end up throwing away more of our money. 

Then again, what's $400 million with $13 Trillion in national debt?? I'm sure we find ways to waste more than that in an hour. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/business/energy-environment/19fuel.html?pagewanted=1&hpw

With my work at Walmart this summer I've gotten to understand the practice of LCA (Life Cycle Analysis).  Basically, it's a tool that helps identify environmental (and perhaps very soon social) "hotspots" within a supply chain. 

Usually intuition is correct but sometimes the findings can be very surprising.  For instance, 97%ish of the impact in the manufacture of a lightbulb (CFL or incan) is from the consumer use phase.  All the mining, manufacture, transport, storage, etc makes a fraction of the carbon impact of what happens when the lightbulb is screwed in.  This analysis can also make for interesting environmental dilemmas like the Local British lamb having a higher carbon footprint than New Zealand lamb even when eaten in London! 

You can see an interesting take on LCA with the Open Input Output project, created by the Sustainability Consortium here:

http://openio.walton.uark.edu/visualize.asp

While LCA has a long way to go to achieve total supply chain transparency when I saw this photo below I was wondering how long it will be before we (consumers, suppliers, large energy users) know how much of this specific coal from this former mountaintop in WV is going to burn our lightbulb.  Would that make your house more energy efficient?  Maybe OPOWER should send this picture with their energy consumption data once they are armed with the data of where this coal is going?

Interesting article about Honest Tea's struggle with Coke (who owns 40% of the company) to remain "sustainable".  I have heard Seth Goldman speak as the keynote of Net Impact last year and it was awarded most sustainable brand or something.  I don't really see how single serve soft drinks can be sustainable. 

That's one of the things about Life Cycle Analysis that is really neat.  I would venture to say that the environmental and social impact of a can of Coke vs. an plastic bottle of Honest Tea would almost wash each other out to be equal.  The Honest tea would score slightly higher on the social but the Coke would probably be better on the environmental/carbon impact due to economies of scale.

Two thoughts: 1) Was Honest Tea ever a "sustainable" company? trucking around sweetened (cane sugar or High fructose doesn't really matter) water in plastic bottles with refrigation to sell a product that could be made with a tea bag and cup/bottle of water?  Is it actually greener now that it has the logistical efficiencies of the Coke distribution system? 

2) Is there really any other way to bring a beverage to mass market without Coke or Pepsi?  Odwalla was left with the same fate years ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/business/smallbusiness/08sbiz.html?src=me&ref=business