Climate Corps Targets Corporate Energy Efficiency
Posted by Melia Dicker on Mon, Feb 01, 2010
For years, companies across the United States have missed out on opportunities to cut operating costs by reducing their carbon footprint and increasing their use of alternative energy. Climate Corps has set out to meet that challenge by helping firms revitalize and green their business strategies.
Climate Corps, which is run by the Environmental Defense Fund in conjunction with partner Net Impact, harnesses the energy of young people to make a difference. The national program dispatches trained MBA students from top business schools to corporate clients. The student interns spend several months poring over the host companies' operations and helping them implement green business strategies. Among other things, the interns look out for inefficiencies related to space utilization, heating and cooling systems, lighting and computer equipment.
The program isn't just for businesses that are lagging in the green sector. One of Climate Corps' newest host companies, Target Corporation, already focuses on building energy-efficient stores and implementing energy-savings programs. The Climate Corps intern will help Target to fine-tune its devotion to green business by developing innovative alternative energy projects.
Participating in the Climate Corps program can bring more than an environmentally friendly outlook to a company. Corporations also reap big savings. For example, when working with networking equipment firm Cisco last summer, interns Emily Reyna and Sarah Shapiro implemented changes in the way energy use is managed in the firm's data labs. Once it is put in place throughout the country, the plan will cut Cisco's energy costs by $8 million annually while also reducing the company's carbon footprint by 3 percent.
By guiding companies toward their goal of energy efficiency, Climate Corps is helping green strategies assume a greater priority in the business world.
While energy efficiency is the right thing to do, it is only a small part of the solution.
As Bill Gates says on his website, Gates Notes, we need innovation and not just conservation. Innovation meaning bringing the emissions from transportation and electricity generation down to zero.