Wal-Mart’s energy plan, human rights in Nigeria and European trucks

Wal-Mart energises its energy strategy

Wal-Mart has got fossil fuels in its sights. The world’s biggest retailer has announced new renewable energy and energy efficiency targets that it says will save $1bn annually once fully implemented. On renewables, Wal-Mart says it will “drive the production or procurement of 7bn kWh of renewable energy globally every year”. This, according to Wal-Mart chief executive Mike Duke, is “equal to eliminating the need for two fossil fuel power plants”.

The company also wants to cut its energy intensity per square foot of floorspace by 20% by 2020. “When I look at the future, energy costs may grow as much as twice as fast as our anticipated store and club growth,” Duke says.

Unsustainable sectors

Air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and the denuding of natural resources are undermining the global economy to the tune of $4.7bn a year, according to the latest report from The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), a programme supported by the UN and the G8.

Some sectors and regions are generating environmental impacts that are so great that their apparent profits would be wiped out many times over if the cost of unpriced “ecosystem services” was factored in. The activity causing the greatest relative damage out of a top 100 listed in the report is rice farming in northern Africa, which has a “natural capital cost” 68 times greater than the income it generates. In absolute terms, however, the most environmentally expensive sectors are coal power in east Asia, cattle ranching in South America, and coal power in north America, which between them generate about 15% of the global environmental cost.

Human rights reversal

Nigerian plaintiffs seeking damages against Shell for alleged human rights abuses during the early 1990s have suffered a major defeat at the United States Supreme Court. The court ruled that the US alien tort statute, which has been used to pursue multinational companies for human rights violations in other countries, has limited application for events outside US territory. Even if human rights abuses “touch and concern the territory of the United States, they must do so with sufficient force”, the court said.

The ruling was delivered in the case of Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, in which a number of Nigerians now living in the US claimed that the company, now part of Royal Dutch Shell, aided and abetted the Nigerian military dictatorship’s oppression of opponents of oil exploration in the Niger delta. The New York Times said in an editorial that the ruling was “a major blow to the ability of American federal courts to hold violators of international human rights accountable”.

Raising standards

There are too many green certification standards for products, so they should be supplanted by … another standard, the European commission says. The commission proposes an EU-wide “single reference method” that will measure the lifecycle environmental footprint of products. The standard will cover the impact of products “from the extraction of raw materials, to their production, distribution, use, up to the end of life (including reuse, recycling and recovery)”. The commission has published a call for companies to test the standard during a three-year period, after which an environmental footprint label could be made available.

No sustainability, no listing

The Ceres Investor Network on Climate Risk, a Boston, Massachusetts, sustainability investment group, is coming close to finalising a stock exchange listing standard for disclosure of corporate environmental, social and governance information. Sustainability disclosure should be a consistent requirement for corporate listings on stock exchanges, Ceres says, and the adoption of a disclosure standard will help to promote it around the world.

The idea is backed by the Nasdaq exchange, which is working with Ceres on the issue. The standard would identify which key performance indicators companies should disclose. The World Federation of Exchanges will discuss the idea at its annual meeting in October.

Pimp my truck

European lorries could start to become slightly more environmentally friendly because of a proposal by the European commission to relax rules on their weights and dimensions. Under a 1996 European law, lorries must keep to certain lengths and heights, but the commission says exemptions could be granted so that truck cabs become more rounded and less wind-resistant, and “aerodynamic devices” such as fairings can be added.

Transport & Environment, a campaign group, says the plan is “a small but welcome step” towards greener trucking, and that lorries with more aerodynamically shaped cabs could reduce fuel consumption by up to 5%. New lorry designs could be seen on European roads from 2016, the commission says.

Power to the people

It might be mired in economic crisis, but Portugal is leading the way on the generation of renewable power. During the first quarter of 2013, 70% of Portuguese energy consumption was met from renewables, according to a report from its power network operator REN.

Surprisingly, however, solar was not the main source in the sun-drenched country. Hydro and wind together provided 64% of Portugal’s electricity. A fall in electricity consumption, down 6% from 2010, also played a part in the shifting of the balance. At some points, renewables have covered Portugal’s entire energy needs. The country’s government decided in 2005 to go for green power, and Portugal is now one of a select list of countries that produce most of their power from renewable sources.

And renewables are not necessarily a choice for more developed economies. In Albania, almost all electricity comes from hydropower, for example.

Green downloads

The demise of the DVD in favour of digital downloads of movies and television shows could help Sony Pictures cut its greenhouse gas emissions by three quarters. The company said in April that it would “encourage consumers to acquire films digitally” as part of its sustainability strategy. This also includes incentive programmes for employees to buy fuel-efficient vehicles and to install solar panels at home, and resulted in Sony Pictures Studios in Hollywood becoming a “zero waste lot” in 2011.

The switch to digital downloads is increasingly evident, with a 49% increase in UK viewers’ spend on digital video entertainment during 2012, according to the British Video Association (BVA). However, the purchase and rental of DVDs still took up 78% of consumer spending in this area, the BVA says.

CSR news  Stephen Gardner  Sustainability news 

comments powered by Disqus