"Green to Gold" Daniel Etsy

Incentive to sell extra permits, to people having trouble reducing, people good at reducing keep reducing. EPA modeling, how much it cost to get a ton of sulfur out of the atmosphere. est $750, electric co. said way too low, actually $1,500. Once there was a real price to be paid for releasing sulfur, companies got real creative, (the strength of a Market Based approach) facing real payments for their emissions. Every utility facing incentives to think hard at reducing emissions. It wasn't the gov't dictating the price, all utilities figured how to cut the emissions. First trades came in at $300 a ton, then a year later the price was down to $150 a ton. Price signals. Hard figure out in advance how to reduce.

Railroad de-regulation. Why don't we just ship low sulfur coal. Shifted to low sulfur coal. and saved a lot of money.

Carbon tax or Emissions allowance trading system.

Shifting the burden to some bureaucrats in Washington to thousands of companies, gives a much broader set of people to think about the problem and find interesting solutions, and test out ideas. Business world better at testing success and making mistakes. Gov't set the standard, business in the hot seat how to regulate. Corp. envir. strategy. Or pay a premium. Or buy technology from someone who already figured it out.

We don't have regulation in thinking about Climate Change.

Regulation is a critical driver. Real emission obligations. Huge amount of money going into the alternative, in Europe. beginning to in US.

Corporate environment interface.

Corn based ethanol is a terrible energy translation. 3 units of fossil fuel to produce 4 units of corn energy output. Price of corn doubled.

Australia banning incandescent bulbs.

GE- CEO Jack Welsht, failed to clean up the Hudson Rivers, fought the EPA every year... now committed to cleaner company. wind turbines, envirn solutions provider. putting it into wind power, solar... high growth high margine is the envirn. position.

Intel- making themselves environmentally attractive to the highend workers.

Walmart- ambitious envirn. goals. big reductions in green house gases. big reductions in wastes. driving the demands in the supply chains. Whatever is delivered to the store has to be put out to the customer, or is taken home. Delivered in a plastic, take the plastic home. Delivered in boxes, take the boxes home.

Juxtaposition of Ford and Toyota:

Ford- CEO- environmental guy. rebuild their river rouge plant with green roofs, natural lighting, natural ventilation . but they didn't intervene with the cars. giant fuel guzzling cars with a "natural building" doesn't match.

Toyota- prius. light weight vehicle. smart systems. no idling. cost effective. * check their consumption and use of nickel. Toxic and unsustainable uses.