[i]dentif[ies] a range of international trade opportunities in various key economic sectors associated with the transition to a green economy;Identif[ies] policies and measures that may act as facilitators and overcome hindrances to seizing trade opportunities arising from the transition to a green economy; and
Assist[s] governments, the private sector and other stakeholders to build capacity to take advantage of sustainable trade opportunities at the national, regional or international level.
Recently, Ernst & Young "a global leader in assurance, tax, transactions and advisory services" and Greenbiz Group, an information service provider that assits companies to "integrate environmental responsibility into their operations" released a collaborative survey titled, 2013 Six Growing Trends in Corporate Sustainability (2013). According to the press release for 36-page document available here:Despite the decreasing likelihood of regulation to address climate change — at least in the United States — greenhouse gas reporting and reduction efforts remain strong, and interest in water usage, efficiency and stewardship is on the rise.
Also rising is stakeholder interest in the sustainable sourcing and availability of raw materials intrinsic to a company’s ability to operate. And sustainability-focused surveys and questionnaires from customers, NGOs, investor groups, analysts, media organizations and others continue to grow in importance.
These trends suggest that sustainability efforts are now well-integrated into the corporate fabric of a growing number of large and midsized companies.
But the effectiveness of such efforts may be limited by internal systems that don’t allow companies to effectively measure, track and optimize their sustainability impacts, or to understand and manage the risks of insufficient action. To do so will require new levels of engagement by the C-suite, and more sophisticated methods of sustainability reporting and assurance.
[t]his report, compiled by a group of international experts, focuses on the impact of metals on the environment as well as on their life cycle energy use. Currently, primary metals production is responsible for 7 – 8 % of the total global energy use as well as for severe local environmental impacts. The report suggests to apply best available techniques and to increase recycling of metals, which not only requires significantly less energy per kg metal produced than primary production but also helps decreasing the overall local impacts of mining. However, even if recycling rates are increased, rising global demand for many metals will remain a huge environmental challenge in the next decades worldwide.
Main issues of concern for policy-makers presented in this report:
- presently, the demand for metals is rising rapidly and this trend is expected to continue for the next decades
- a shift towards a renewable energy system implies the material, and especially metal, intensity of energy production will increase even faster
- in future, the energy intensity of the production of metals may increase as a result of mining lesser grade ores. For some metals, a trend of decreasing ore grades is visible, and for more it may become visible over the next decades
[d]ue to complex functionality, modern products contain complex mixes of almost any imaginable metal, material and compound. This growing complexity of modern products makes it difficult to extract and reuse valuable metals from waste products due to the laws of physics and related economics. For example, a mobile phone can contain more than 40 elements, including base metals such as copper and tin and precious and platinum-group metals such as silver, gold and palladium.
In order to boost historically low recycling rates, a global move from a Material-Centric to a Product-Centric approach, in which recycling targets specific components of a product and their complexity at its End of Life (EoL) and devises ways to separate and recover them, is essential. Optimizing the recycling of EoL products can avoid losses in efficiency throughout the chain of recycling. The global mainstreaming of such a Product-Centric view will be a remarkable step towards efficient recycling systems, resource efficiency and a Green Economy
Product-Centric recycling is discussed in this report by acknowledged experts. This approach is considered to be an essential enabler of resource efficiency by increasing recycling rates. This report provides a techno-economic, product design and physics basis to address the challenges of recycling increasingly complex products in the 21st century.
[e]very company in the S&P 500 except one reports some form of sustainability disclosure, but fewer quantify those disclosures in terms of bottom line impacts, accordi"ng to a new report from the IRRC Institute (IRRCI) and the Sustainable Investments Institute (SI2). That report is the first to comprehensively benchmark the status of integrated reporting in the U.S.A webinar to review the report findings is scheduled for Friday, May 3, 2013, at 2 PM ET (Register here).
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The 285-page report analyzes sustainability disclosures on a sector-by-sector basis, and examined a total of 56,000 individual data points, across both mandated SEC filings and voluntary sustainability reports. The report examined disclosures for 2012. Looking across the entire S&P 500, the report discovered that:
- 499 companies made at least one sustainability related disclosure, but only 7, or 1.4% integrate financial and sustainability reporting. Zions Corporation is the only company not to include any sustainability disclosure across the various reports examined. The 7 companies which included a statement on integrated reporting were American Electric Power, Clorox, Dow Chemical, Eaton, Ingersoll Rand, Pfizer and Southwest Airlines.
- Nearly three quarters (74 percent) of the companies placed a dollar figure on at least one sustainability-related initiative, though they frequently also mentioned other initiatives whose benefits/costs were not quantified.
- 43.4% of the companies linked executive compensation to some type of sustainability criteria.
Large corporations are increasingly turning to renewable energy to power their operations. Companies are investing in renewable energy because it makes good business sense: renewable energy helps reduce long-term operating costs, diversify energy supply and hedge against market volatility in traditional fuel markets. It also enables companies to achieve greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goals and demonstrate leadership on broader corporate sustainability and climate commitments.
This report shows that a majority of Fortune 100 companies have set a renewable energy commitment, a greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction commitment or both. The trend is even stronger internationally, as more than two-thirds of Fortune’s Global 100 have set the same commitments.
Through two dozen interviews with Fortune and Global 100 executives and analysis of public disclosures, the report finds that clean energy practices are becoming standard procedures for some of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, including AT&T, DuPont, General Motors, HP, Sprint, and Walmart.
This past week, European Commission released a proposal titled, Environment Action Programme to 2020, "Living well, within the limits of our planet" 2012/0337 (COD). The 37-page document which is available here, is discussed below:The proposed programme builds on the significant achievements of 40 years of EU environment policy, and draws on a number of recent strategic initiatives in the field of environment, including the Resource Efficiency Roadmap, the 2020 Biodiversity Strategy and the Low Carbon Economy Roadmap. It should secure the commitment of EU institutions, Member States, regional and local administrations and other stakeholders to a common agenda for environment policy action up to 2020.
General environment action programmes have guided the development of EU environment policy since the early seventies. The Sixth EU Environment Action Programme covered the period 2002-2012.
While many EU Member States are struggling to cope with the economic crisis, the attendant need for structural reforms offers new opportunities for the EU to move rapidly onto a more sustainable path. The new environment action programme points the way towards making the most of these opportunities.
